RECAP: Lost - "The End"

If you had asked me what my reaction to the Lost finale was going to be before I watched it, I would have predicted either mild appreciation or blind fury. After the shitfest that was season 6 of this show, I honestly wasn't expecting a whole lot in terms of satisfaction from the finale. The writers have made a habit of spitting directly in the faces of fans of the show, and there was no indication that they would do any different with "The End." And as predicted, initially I was pissed with the way the show ended. Significant questions were left unanswered, and the explanation of the Side-Universe at first seemed fantastically retarded. However, it's been a day or so, and now I'm left with a somewhat-startling feeling of indifference about the show. How, you ask, did one of the most important shows of our generation end up causing me not to care at all about it? Read on, my friends, and you will see a tale of stupidity the likes of which has rarely been seen.

The episode begins with Jack, Kate, and Hurley heading for the Light Cave, while Sawyer runs off into the jungle to find Desmond. Jack explains what little Jacob told him, and Hurley makes a lame joke about how Jacob is "worse than Yoda" when it comes to being vague. Arriving at the well, Sawyer finds Evil Locke and Ben, and while Ben initially gets the drop on Sawyer, after a brief conversation with Evil Locke (during which Sawyer predicts Locke's plan to the letter), Sawyer hilariously elbows Ben in the face, and Ben yells "Aw!" Sawyer takes off, and Evil Locke notices dog tracks on the ground.

Desmond awakens in Rose and Bernard's camp, and Rose explains that they have broken their "Don't get involved" rule by helping him. She asks Desmond to leave their camp, but before he can, Evil Locke arrives. Desmond agrees to go with Locke after securing a promise that Locke will never harm Rose and Bernard, and once again someone predicts Locke's plans, as Desmond guesses that they are heading for the heart of the Island, where there will be a bright light.

Miles discovers Richard laying on the ground immediately next to the Dharma village (yet apparently it took hours to find him). Richard frantically insists that they still need to blow up the Ajira plane, and they head to Hydra Island. As they canoe over to Hydra Island, they find Frank (called it), who reminds him that he's a pilot and can fly them all off the Island.

Jack and co. run into Evil Locke, Ben, and Desmond, and after Kate throws a hissy fit by shooting Evil Locke several times (he tells her to save her bullets), Jack says they should go to the Light Cave together, where he will send Desmond into the cave. Jack believes that Jacob brought Desmond back to the Island as a weapon to use to kill Evil Locke. Desmond, on the other hand, doesn't seem to care about all of this. He believes that when he walks into the light at the heart of the Island, he'll travel to the alternate universe (from the side-flashes). At the Light Cave, Jack and Locke lower Desmond down, and he pulls a giant stone plug from a pool of water with light shining from it (seriously? A giant plug?). The water seems to electrocute Desmond, and he passes out as the light extinguishes and is replaced by an angry red glow. The Island starts to shake and fall apart, as it turns out that Evil Locke was right: sending Desmond into the Cave could potentially destroy the Island. Jack punches Evil Locke and they realize that Desmond had done something else. Putting out the Light in the Cave had made Evil Locke mortal again. Jack and Evil Locke fight (with one particularly hilarious scene in which they run in slow-motion towards each other and then Jack does a jumping superpunch - screencap above), and Jack is stabbed in the armpit (but the wound appears in his side, because Lost is retarded and apparently doesn't care about details like that). As Evil Locke is about to win, Kate shoots him in the back, shouting that she saved a bullet for him. Good lord. Who the hell directed this scene?

Jack sends Kate and Sawyer to Hydra Island to get on the plane (but not before an absolutely terrible scene in which Jack and Kate say "I love you" to each other. It was totally out of place and added nothing to the episode). Hurley, realizing that he is too fat to climb the giant ladder down to the boat (which wouldn't have mattered, since Kate and Sawyer ended up jumping), goes with Jack, as does Ben. They return to the artist formerly known as the Light Cave, where Jack transfers his position as the Island's protector to a protesting Hurley. Jack explains that he was only meant to hold the position so he could get the Island through this crisis; the true protector was always supposed to be Hurley. He climbs down into the Light Cave, gets Desmond to the rope, and then replaces the cork. The Island fixes itself, and Hurley and Ben haul Desmond out of the Cave. Realizing that Jack is lost, Hurley asks Ben to be his number two, and Ben suggests that Hurley doesn't have to run the Island the way Jacob did, and that he could help Desmond get home. Meanwhile, Kate and Sawyer meet Claire on the beach and convince her to come with them. They get on the plane and take off.

Jack wakes up in the jungle (where the Man in Black's body was found after he had been transformed into the Smoke Monster), and makes his way to the bamboo forest where he woke up in the first episode. He lays on the ground, and Vincent (the dog) comes and lays next to him. The episode (or at least the part on the Island) ends with Jack seeing the Ajira plane flying overhead and a closeup of his eye closing (mirroring the first scene of the pilot, in which we had a closeup of his eye opening).

[Disclaimer: The side-universe stuff is pretty dumb, so I'm going to be very brief in my recap of it]

In the side-universe, the various castaways met with other people from the Island, and one by one they all "woke up," remembering their lives on the Island. Some of these moments were pretty good (I enjoyed Sayid and Shannon's reunion), while some were stupid (Sawyer and Juliet's reunion was awful), but eventually everyone but Jack had remembered their old lives, and met at some giant nondenominational church. Jack arrives at the church and is greeted by Kate, who sends him around back. There he finds his father's coffin, and when he touches it he finally remembers everything. Christian Shepard arrives and helps Jack realize the truth: they are all dead.

That's right, the side-universe is a sort of purgatory (although I'm not sure that's the right term). It's essentially a waiting-room for the afterlife. The events on the Island were real, and because the characters meant so much to each other, they had created this alternate reality so they could all meet again and move on to the next life together. The show ends as Jack dies in the jungle, interspersed with shots of what might as well be a cast party - the castaways greet each other happily in the church, then sit down in the pews. Christian opens the doors to the chapel and the room is flooded with light. The end.

So the big surprise (that's not really a surprise) is that in the end, the Island didn't matter at all. Lost was a show about its characters, and the Island only mattered insofar as it helped them to attain what was missing from their lives. I guess it works, but it leaves so many unanswered questions that are infuriating to think about.

The biggest problem that I have with Lost (and I've said it before) is the fact that the writers knew exactly how much time they had left THREE YEARS AGO. That's virtually unheard of in television, and it presented them with a rare opportunity to tie up all of their loose ends, explain everything, and have a much more satisfying ending for their characters. Instead, they fucked around for almost all of season 6 until they reached a point where they could not possibly resolve everything well. The purgatory idea is a good one, I think, but it also feels like a cop-out. This way, the writers don't have to address what happened on the Island; all we need to know, in their opinion, is that the characters got a happy ending. The rest doesn't really matter. That attitude is enraging, because I feel like it's pretty disrespectful of the fans that devoted their time and energy to this show. As a fan of the genre aspects of Lost, I was always more interested in the mysteries of the Island than I was in the characters, perhaps because so many of them were stupid cliches that were impossible to believe in (come on, the con man with the heart of gold? The rocker/drug addict who turns over a new leaf?). The show ended up being full of inconsistencies that detract from the ending that they've left us with.

I'm going to stop now, because I'm sick of thinking about it. I'll leave you with a brief list of things that should have been addressed, as well as a couple of random observations.

- Children were so important in the first couple of seasons (with Walt and Aaron being kidnapped), and yet that was never addressed for the rest of the show. Why did Walt have superpowers? Why were the kids kidnapped? What made them so important?

- Why did the Others try to kill the castaways when they were supposed to be following Jacob's orders?

- What the hell is the Man in Black's name?

- Where did the four-toed statue come from?

- How did Jacob's mother end up on the Island?

- If the side-universe is purgatory, then what is Jack's son? A figment of his imagination? Why didn't Sawyer get to meet up with his daughter?

- And finally, what the hell were the entry requirements for getting into heaven or whatever at the end of the show? Apparently black people weren't allowed, as Mr. Eko, Michael, and Walt were nowhere to be found (Rose was there, but she's married to Bernard, so she barely counts). Why was Penny there and not Desmond's son?