Lost: The Final Season

[Alexis]

I've been watching the show pretty much since the first episode, and have seen all but three or four episodes when they first aired. I'm ridiculous, I know.

While I did like the finale for giving us closure for the main characters, I agree that they could've answered more questions relating to the plot this season. The finale may not have been the place to do it though. It would be a little strange in the middle of all that was going on to answer what Walt's power was, or what was up with the food drops. They could've fit a few more answers in the episodes before the finale though.

Also, I think that if they did give definite answers to every single question on the show, their answers would never live up to what we might speculate the answers are. Better to leave LOST with a little mystery, than to know all the answers. I'm looking forward to re watching the whole series, now that I've seen the ending, and picking up on new things, and coming up with my own answers to things.

And BGC - I definitely wasn't taking all of those questions seriously. Some of them have answers that need huge sarcasm quotes around them.

[big giant circles]

Nah, I know. I thought the sarcastic/satirical answers were pretty obvious

Don't get me wrong, I don't expect them to spoonfeed the audience throughout the entire series, and I realize to the writers' defense that there are all kinds of outside factors that play into their writing, thus limiting their freedom to write the way we might want them to, such as network interference, and the pressing need to maintain good ratings and keep people wanting more. I just feel that they introduced a lot of mysteries specifically for the function of engaging the viewers so we'd still be counting down to next week's episode to find out just what was up with _______.

Anyway, while I think I will probably ever remain irked about their neglect for providing official resolution to so many of those questions, as I've said before, the series did at least keep me hooked and reasonably entertained until the very end, so I guess it's like comparable to watching an awesome movie that has kind of a bleh ending. Does it mean that the whole movie sucked? Not if you really enjoyed the action and were constantly on the edge of your seat. I guess it just is what it is. (Don't take that analogy too literally, I'm not specifically talking about the ending of Lost or anything, it's just an analogy )

[Vampire Hunter Dan]

Without getting too detailed, I feel that through watching anime for nearly 15 years, I'm fairly used to unresolved--and often unexplained--details, so they tend to not bother me and--if anything--elicit respect to the creators for allowing me to draw my own conclusions, regardless of their intentions. A great example of this is the Gainax film The Wings of Honneamise. It's basically set in an "alternate" World that resembles Earth, but has a great deal of odd differences, none of which are explained to the viewer. They simply carry on with the story, ignoring any questions I might have about--for example--why the telephones look so strange. I'm also used to anime films and series ending in such a way that they clearly defy anything remotely resembling a traditional "happy" or neatly-packaged ending. I guess I just tend to enjoy that. Viewed this way, I felt Lost brought to us the most "anime"-like ending I could ever have imagined, due to its lack of being straight-forward or "happy" in any traditional sense.

That said, I feel as though I was one of the only people I know who was truly saddened and depressed by the ending. I adore the show in its entirety, and have zero complaints, but it was difficult for me to view the final moments in the optimistic, positive way many of my friends did. Much like the Sopranos, however, I wouldn't wish a second of it changed.

I need to add here that the asinine questions wasted on the Lost cast during the Jimmy Kimmel Q&A basically hurt my soul.

[bladiator]

I think bgc hit this one on the head (well, not just thist last post, but multiple ones throughout here): If you remember the Borg cliffhanger in Star Trek: TNG, that was the one where (SPOILERS LOLWUT) Picard was changed into a Borg. On the extras of the DVD, the writer said that was the season that his contract was up and he wasn't planning on coming back, so he decided to just make something ridiculously cliff-hangerish, and then he didn't have to worry about solving it because he wasn't coming back.

Unfortunately, they talked him into a couple more seasons, and he had to get out of his own pit of nonsense, which ended up being that horrible computer bug. Blech. So yeah, that's how feel that Lost has kept things up and running for years ... making a cliffhanger every couple weeks, but then never explaining it because they wrote themselves into a corner every couple weeks. And if you explain them with something subpar, you get another ST:TNG "Blech".

BUT, COME ON. If I were a writer for a series that was this watched and this dissected, I would TOTALLY use the internet for my answers. Everyone is saying that no one would be ok with your answer because it wouldn't be scientifically good enough or whatever .. but there are people on the internet that are thinking about LOST probably 3x as much as the writers themselves! Just get out there and take the best hypothesis someone has come up with and then write it into the script. You simultaneously make one person on the internet feel like a predictive god, and you don't have to waste all your own time trying to resolve something that you weren't planning on resolving in the first place.

And you don't have to say that Lost was "about the characters lol"

[Global-Trance]

If Alexis wasn't going to answer them, I would have. Though I would have answered a few of them differently.

Walt's powers are implied to be attracting things with his mind (i.e. the birds that slammed themselves into windows and such, and probably also the polar bears from Hydra Island since he was reading Hurley's Spanish comic books) and also astral projection.

I don't think the Dharma Food Drop was time flashing though it was possible. I would attribute the Food Drop closer to the option behind the chess game on Mikhail's computer at The Flame (Check out the episode "Enter 77"). Considering Ben has a network of Others off island, some that can come and go from the Island (as supported by Tom Friendly in the episode "Meet Kevin Johnson"), they could call in food still stockpiled up somewhere. And it's always possible that since the Others supposedly served Jacob the food drop was to ensure the unknown Candidates to survive whoever they maybe within the plane wreck.

Why did Sun not get zapped into the 70s on Ajira 316? I would have said she was no longer a Candidate after becoming a mother... but Kate become Aaron's mother and was revealed to be no longer a Candidate later on. I guess that's just what the Island wanted. That and they ran out of things to keep Jin and Sun separated.

As for Christian Shephard, I always believed there were two of them. The zombie, emotionless one we see in Season 1 was definitely Smoke Monster. That is how he appears to most people (and yes he was confirmed to be the horse in a podcast). The other Christian Shephard the one that appeared in season 3 and onward, I believe that was his ghost. Remember how he appeared on the Freighter to tell Michael, "You can go now" ? He appeared after whispers and we were revealed the whispers were the voices of the dead who could not yet pass on. I don't quite buy it being Smoke Monster all the time. Though if it was the Smoke Monster, it could have been cleverly foreshadowed in Season 4 when he appeared to Jack off island when his presence came immediately after a smoke alarm went off which brought Jack out of his office into the hospital lobby where he heard and saw his father.