I stayed up till 3am last night/this morning to watch the finale of LOST after my flight home from New Orleans was delayed on Sunday night. I was/am totally exhausted but I had to watch it for myself before I heard about it from other people... people who seem very divided over the ending to this amazing era of television.
I, for one, was totally satisfied by the finale. Yes, there were a ton of questions left unanswered. (What the heck IS the island? And did Desmond, who I grew to love more every episode, ever get off of it to reunite with Penny?) But answers to those questions were not the big secret. The secret was that those questions were just the frosting used to hook the sci-fi geeks of this world into spending six years watching a love story without realizing it. ;)
Yes, that's my interpretation. LOST was a love story. It was about one character, Jack Shepherd -- who'd lost all meaning in his life -- finding love... not necessarily romantic love (although I do believe he and Kate loved each other that way, as did he and Juliet for a while), but love of life, of family, of community. He became a leader, willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to protect and save those he had come to care about -- Kate, Sawyer, Hurley, Rose, Benard, Desmond, even Ben Linus -- and in doing so, he found his redemption. LOST was Jack's story from the moment his eye opened in that bamboo field in the pilot episode, until the moment his eye closed in that bamboo field in the final scene of the finale, with loyal-till-the-end Vincent by his side.
Jack was not the only one who found love though. Each of the characters on the show were either reunited with their true loves (Desmond with Penny, Rose with Benard, Sun with Jin) or found true love (Sawyer and Juliet, Charlie and Claire, Sayid and Shannon, Hurley and Libby) during their time on the island... which DID happen. People are wondering if it was all a dream of Jack's. It was not. It really happened... that's how all those strangers from Oceanic 815 became "the most important people in each other's lives," as Christian Shepherd explained to his son in the final moments. That time on the island happened to each of them, with some (Boone, Shannon, Libby, Charlie, Juliet) dying and heading to the Sideways world earlier than others (Hurley, Claire, Kate, Sawyer).... all of them waiting for everyone else to die/arrive in Sideways-ville. Once there, they had to remember their life together -- which beautifully happened when they were reunited with their love (Juliet and Sawyer in front of a broken vending machine; Sayid jumping in to protect Shannon after Boone's bar fight), or experienced a moment of familial love (Sun and Jin hearing their baby's heartbeat; Kate, Claire and Charlie experiencing Aaron's birth; Jack saying goodbye to his father's casket) in Sideways -- and then remember/realize they were dead. Once they remembered, they "were ready." (People like Ana Lucia, per Desmond, were not.) They were ready to move on... first to that church to reunite with each other and then, together, into the light of heaven... or whatever you believe in. Yeah, it was kinda corny and reminiscent of Ghost ("It's amazing Molly. The love inside, you take it with you."), but I was balling my eyes out nonetheless.
The ending left me feeling at peace, knowing all these characters I'd spent six years with -- watching grow and change from a bunch of selfish strangers (remember Jacob's explanation to the final "candidates" last week: "You were all flawed. I chose you because you were like me. You were all alone. You were all looking for something that you couldn't find out there.") into a loving family -- were all together, in a good place. I didn't care about the electromagnetic force at the center of the island, or the Dharma Initiative, or the numbers. Those things were all just a mystical means to a spiritual end. I just cared that Charlie and Claire were together again, Sawyer really was a good guy, and Jack had finally found the peace he was searching for.
It was a good end.
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