"Someone took a rock out of a hole. Someone put a rock in a hole."
"Learning that the sideways existed on a higher plane, that gives me true closure for the characters that I've watched for the past six seasons. Here, our Losties were given an opportunity to share experiences that their real lives didn't give them. It was also a place where they had to let go of certain character flaws. This is why Locke's story was changed. In his mind, Locke couldn't let go that his dad was a prick, and apparently Locke somehow though he was partly to blame. The same goes for Sawyer who couldn't let go of the evil Locke's father had done. All the best cowboys have daddy issues."
"My criticism here is that they've successfully removed all of the stakes and tension from every situation in the entirety of the series, because regardless of the conflict's outcome, the foregone conclusion would have always been the same.
And for me, a story that has an ending that is divorced of the rising action, conflict, and climax of events is poor writing."
"The purgatory angle stinks. It would have been better if they all woke up in a VR laboratory full of Japanese programmers and they realize that they had been beta-testing the first "total immersion" VR game. The final scene should have had them being each handed a check for their participation as they walked out of the lab and back to the mundane world."
"...Being an atheist, shows where everybody ends up in heaven or something to that effect are a real problem for me, particularly if they're mixed with some sort of preachy or spiritual message. Not here, though. Afterlife has been set up in advance, so I know there is this fictional life after death in this fictional universe. That, in turn, means that I care about what happens to people after they die. Resolution after death becomes a valid thing...I don't care about Michael Corleone going to hell, but I do care that Darth Vader gets to be one with the force in the end. Because in Star Wars, people keep on living after they die, so that is important, even if I don't think that happens to real people in real life...So on that level the flashpurgatory sequences worked. It mattered. Sure, it was cheating all the way through. We were seeing everybody circa 2004 just for the sake of being confusing (who knows what other things in Lost followed the same principle when they were introduced), even though it's pretty clear that all the ghosts are plucked from different points in time. Not the most elegant solution, but a valid one."
"The alternate timeline involving everyone (even though they may have died at different times) works because I believe that the idea of time is a factor only affecting those that are living and think, because of my religious background, perhaps I can more easily accept this idea that when you die there is no longer the concept of time (people having died in the past or future being able to experience this alternate life in the same time appearing to us, the viewers, as if it were an alternate reality like one in which we live today.)"
"Most of all I viewed the ending as tragic. It was not mainly about any particular account of the metaphysics of the island. It was about how few couples had the chance to actually live together, love together, and stay together. The perfect reunions of the couples in the "we're all dead" scenario only drove this point home. I found this contrast moving...At the end, the door is left open for Jack (the body of Jack?) to become the next smoke monster on the island and you can spot some clues to this effect, such as Jack's body being strewn on the stones in the same manner as it was for The Man in Black."
"Could it be that in resisting the geekiest, nitpickingest, most Aspergerian demands of their audience they swung too far in the opposite direction, dismissing as trivial everything but the cosmic (the tedious and largely unnecessary Jacob-Smokey background) and the sentimental (making sure that every character receives his or her designated soul mate or therapeutic closure of the most banal Dr. Phil variety)?"
"There were three reasons to watch 'Lost' — or to stick with it, more aptly, across six immensely engrossing and immensely frustrating seasons. You could watch for the characters, who were two-dimensional and archetypal in a way, but rich and relatable and even lovable in the way that great pulp casts can sometimes be. You could watch for the thrill of it — the endless cliffhangers, the constant narrative whiplash, the mobius-strip plotting, and the way the show could blithely disassemble and reassemble its narrative architecture (flashbacks followed by flashforwards! flashforwards followed by time travel!) and somehow have the whole thing work. And of course, you could watch for the macro-plot — the mythology of a mysterious island, which layered puzzle atop riddle atop intrigue like no show since “The X-Files,” promising all the while (or seeming to promise, at least) to be building up to a revelatory denouement...Last night’s series finale was a great success if you watched the show for the first reason, intermittently interesting if you watched it for the second, and a great crescendo of failure if you watched it for the third."
Sources:
io9.com, Marginal Revolution, Salon, New York Times
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