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Ben X

LOST

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I'm not really interested in arguing about it, but i'll just speak up as another person who was totally fine with how Lost ended and loved the show throughout its run. (The first half of season 3 really drags, and some of the halted plot lines created largely unresolved narrative problems, but everything else is great.)

Lost, first and foremost, was a mystery. The answers were never going to be as compelling as its mystery, and that it ends very ambiguously is kind of perfect.

I'm also not the sort of person who needs a perfect conclusion to justify all the entertainment the show has given me up until that point.

About the flash sideways, i kind of felt that it served to show that the characters had matured emotionally, that they had come through their experiences as better people.

Given that the show's title is a double meaning about people lost on an island and lost in their lives, given that the characters and their emotional arcs were always such a central part of the series, i don't think the last season is "meaningless".

The on-island story arc was being ridiculously rushed along though, there are definitely problems with that last season.

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About the flash sideways, i kind of felt that it served to show that the characters had matured emotionally, that they had come through their experiences as better people.

My post was probably way harsher than what my opinion is. It all works fine as a narrative device and was very entertaining, I thought. My problem was always that this sideways world didn't exist. I had a problem with it being purely spiritual.

BUT, I was thinking about this the other day after reading this thread and my own comments. They pretty much leave this open to interpret the way you want it. If you like the spiritual stuff, power to you. But if you like to pretend there's some scientific (well, as scientific as LOST gets) explanation to the sideways thing, there is the Desmond episode and Juliet whispering "we'll go dutch".

I'm not even sure what I'm saying. My head hurts now.. I liked the finale! :getmecoat

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I'll leave that to Ben. Many a time he's explained things to me that I thought weren't explained.

Ha ha, I also find this site very interesting even if my interpretation of certain stuff is a little different:

http://lostanswers.tumblr.com

I find it all makes general sense, but there are a few little logistical things that are a bit confusing. The writers have talked about how they decided not to go into a lot of that stuff because of the midichlorian effect. If you have a general idea of the rules and how things work, that's all you need.

The show itself told me: "You're watching it wrong." Merely asking "How does the island work?" means you are an evil person—it is the Man in Black's first (and only?) sin. It's also the sin of any audience member who wonders, "why" or "how".

I didn't get that feeling. The sense I get is that there are plenty of questions you're supposed to (and 'allowed' to) wonder about, but they won 't get answered. As Mother says "every answer I give will only lead to more questions". The show answered pretty much everything to do with Jacob's lifespan on the island, but left a lot of stuff outside of that open to interpretation.

It seems like a few people don't like the Jacob vs Man In Black story, and as that only started getting introduced in Season 3 I can see how that would be a change of story style that would put some people off. Personally, I'm glad that they widened the scope of it. That's what changed it for me from "people on an island where weird shit happens" to a full, deep story where everything ties in.

Thanks everyone for explaining your different views, I find it very interesting to see how the same show can illicit such a variety of visceral and intellectual responses.

Some of you may not have seen this second mini-epilogue which didn't make it onto the DVDs and further explains the Jacob/MiB mythos:

http://www.sl-lost.com/2011/07/22/new-official-lost-video

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Really I never thought LOST was about finding the answers, but rather the effects that the questions had on the characters. I enjoy pretty much every season except the final one, only because i thought the whole alternate universe thing was a decent ending, but consumed too much time from each episode.

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There were times when the sideways would get to me, but we didn't really know what it was at the time. I think if I went back and watched that season again I would appreciate the sideways a lot more. I think the sidways enforced that this show was ultimately a mystery with great characters in the middle of it. After a while, the writers realized that they cared more about developing these characters and using this mysterious place to overcome their demons instead of focusing on putting out answers to questions that most people probably won't be happy with. I am perfectly fine with this.

I also think it's worth noting that the finale aired two years ago today. I got married the day after. We made sure we were near a TV the night before to watch it.

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I really enjoyed the flash-sideways and how the writers kept us on our toes. At first you assume they're going to

link the two universes directly. Then after a while you realise that they're just interesting what-if's that reflect on the characters in the main storyline. Then Desmond makes a link and you realise they are going to connect them! And then right at the end, BAM, the afterlife twist that makes you re-evaluate all the previous flash-sideways as showing us what the characters needed to work through before they could move on and how those in the know helped the others do that. I must admit that I found the 'it's the afterlife' twist disappointed initially, as it's been done before, but I do very much like the fact that it was the twist many people (who weren't really thinking it through) assumed from the start that the show would pull, which they didn't resort to, teased us with in season three and then pulled on us exactly where we weren't expecting it.

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I think a lot of people initially thought that everything on the island was purgatory, which would've made everything we saw "not real" and I would've felt cheap, but I think the way they ended up handling it was a fitting way to send these characters off.

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Purgatory was everyone's first impression -- and it was also the first thing the writers said that the show wasn't.

The first two big things I remember from the writers were "It's not purgatory." and "It's not dinosaurs."

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The next thing they said was "it's not Dinosaurs", which seemed an unecessary clarification.

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The next thing they said was "it's not Dinosaurs", which seemed an unecessary clarification.

I vaguely remember a fair bit of speculation that the Smoke Monster was a dinosaur, or something? Or a landshark? Some kind of inane bullshit.

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And then right at the end, BAM, the afterlife twist that makes you re-evaluate all the previous flash-sideways as showing us what the characters needed to work through before they could move on and how those in the know helped the others do that.

What I remember thinking is that they can't possibly be heading for something this trite for several episodes, and then my fears coming true.

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I vaguely remember a fair bit of speculation that the Smoke Monster was a dinosaur, or something? Or a landshark? Some kind of inane bullshit.

Note my capital D ;)

The standard guess for smokey by the end of the first season was apparently 'cloud of nanobots'..!

brkl, like I say, I was disappointed initially but I think if you get over the triteness it actually works well to add another layer to the characters in the most effective way since the season 2 flashbacks. Also, it makes sense as a way to finish the story - the characters getting off the island or not (and presumably living a relatively banal life until they die) would be a pretty dull ending. The existing ending has more character resonance and resolution.

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I wonder how many of the objections to Lost's approach to mysteries (I've had a few since starting to watch it as it aired live during season 2) have to do with the way the show was marketed more than a fundamental objection to that style of storytelling. I totally respect the artistic freedom that the writers of the show had to go where they wanted to with the show and make it about whatever they liked, but that clashed with the preview of the following episode in the credits. "NEXT WEEK! ALL YOUR QUESTIONS WILL BE ANSWERED!" or whatever. Divorced from the marketing, I think people might have been more capable of letting the story go where it was headed without getting so incensed. 

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Thankfully, I was almost completely divorced from the marketing - I never saw a preview or advert (apart from some billboards for Season 4 on Sky for which their tag was indeed "ANSWERS ARE COMING"), and certainly never went on forums or listened to the podcast. I also learnt never to bring it up in conversation, because some people just don't understand "no spoilers please".

So you could be right, because I certainly realised very early on that there was no point in waiting on tenterhooks for anything to be explained, at least not before the end of the series and not without just raising more questions.

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I never saw previews or trailers, I just mainlined the first series on DVD, and found it intensely annoying just for being what it was: writer's room improv.

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