Lost - The End
May. 25th, 2010 12:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Now that the show is over, I'd really love to crank out a good solid thesis-style reaction – for this episode more than any other – but I find my thoughts on the finale are as disjointed as the series sometimes felt. Not that this is a bad thing, mind. I feel an overall immense satisfaction for how it ended. However, that isn't helping me to construct a well-thought-out reaction post. I'll have to settle for a random (if longish) list. Somehow that seems fitting too.
-- I should first say that I LOVED the episode. I loved the choices that were made, and I loved the way it was executed overall. It even held up well on a second viewing. Perhaps, knowing the outcome, some of the emotional punches of the "awakenings" weren't quite as strong the second time around, but they were still very much there. (Yes, I did indeed cry a second time in many instances.) I've read several reactions to the episode already – some of which were so dissatisfied and hostile that it made me wonder if we were even watching the same show. Everyone seems to agree that the end was a huge WTF, but hasn't that always been the series' bread and butter? Every single season has ended with game-changing event that redefined what the show even was. Why wouldn't the finale do the same? So I was satisfied with it: It hit oh, so many of my sappy, emotional kinks, while at the same time it never deviated from the formula that caused me to love this show from the beginning. I won't say I was left satisfied with every single moment (When has Lost ever done that?), but I definitely couldn't have seen it going out any other way.
-- I've seen mixed reactions to the final dénouement of the episode. (Particularly the last 10-15 minutes.) While many groused about the big reveal (a point I'll get to in a moment), others simply said it went on too long. I'd have to disagree there – at least as far as my own opinion goes. To me, it lasted just long enough. (Unlike, say, the finale of BSG, which easily went on for at least another half hour after it could have satisfactorily ended.) So for me the length was fine. As for the points raised in those final minutes, I can see where more of the dissension is coming from, even if I don't agree. More on that shortly.
-- There were so many little visual moments to love in the episode. For instance, I loved the shot of FLocke and Jack looking down the waterfall after lowering Desmond toward the Light. Exactly like the shot of them staring down the blown hatch at the end of Season 1. (And who was down there then but Desmond!)
-- The Awakenings went right to my sappy, romantic heart:
* Sun & Jin – Probably the most beautiful love story in the whole series. (Which is a little peculiar considering how much time they actually spend apart from each other. Or maybe it's a beautiful love story because of that.) Their moment in the hospital turned on the first real waterworks for me. (And I cried a little more for them after the fact because the direction the ending went meant that they actually did leave their daughter without parents in the primary universe. That fact remains one of the bitter points of the finale for me, even as I loved their story together.)
* Sayid & Shannon – I didn't have a problem with this. I really didn't. Some said it seemed forced, in the 11th hour, to shove Sayid together with someone he'd had a comparatively brief romance with during Season 1. But it comes down to the "show-don't-tell" school of thought for me. What did we really know of Nadia and her ranking as the love of Sayid's life other than what he told us? Whereas we actually saw the development of the relationship between Sayid and Shannon (brief as it may have been). We were invested in her because she was one of our castaways. Shannon had a connection with us – the audience – that Nadia could never have – even as viewers bonded with Nadia for Sayid's sake. Perhaps the Sayid/Shannon reunion might have felt less forced to some had Sayid mentioned Shannon a little more often following her death. But really, their relationship had more of a basis and longevity than, say, Hurley and Libby – and everybody loves the Hurley/Libby story. (Or, maybe, it's just because everybody loves Hurley.)
* Kate, Charlie, & Claire – I'd been waiting for this ever since Charlie's reappearance in the sideways-verse a few episodes ago. No, scratch that. I've been waiting for something like this to happen since Charlie died three seasons ago! He earned it, and this was by far one of my two favorite "awakenings" of the night. The other, of course, would be…
* Sawyer & Juliet – I almost can't believe I couldn't stand her when she first appeared on the show. Seriously, I wanted her to die quickly and unremarkably, or simply walk off into the jungle and not come back. It just goes to show how much the Awesome Factor of a character raises exponentially when that person is paired with Sawyer. Just look at the evidence: Kate was usually much more interesting with Sawyer (even if I am pleased about her ultimate pairing with Jack), Hurley, Jin, and Desmond (who were already pretty awesome by themselves) were so much more fun when Sawyer was around, and Sawyer buddy-copping with Miles . . . heck, I'd watch a series on that alone! So yes, I was much more invested in Juliet once she paired up with him. I loved how their scene together paralleled some of their final interactions on the Island, leading up to that moment of realization. Very sweeping and romantic!
-- I loved the goofy smile on Hurley's face when he went up to Charlie's hotel room to bring him to the concert. Without Hurley even saying a word, you could tell just how much he had missed his friend and how overjoyed he was to see him again.
-- Wow. So Richard and Lapedis weren't dead after all. I was shocked about "The Dude's" return. Not as shocked about Richard. Although it looks as though he'll be growing old now. Plus he's finally going to make it to the "New World."
-- I've seen people speculating as to the point of David, Jack's son. I'd have to say I agree that David represents a second chance for Jack – perhaps a chance for him to be a better father than he had perceived his own to be. Although he didn’t actually "exist" in the conventional sense, David served an important purpose and that made him "real." (As Christian told Jack later, "Everything that's happened to you was real." That would include David.)
-- For as much as I liked the ending, I admit I did have a niggling moment of dissatisfaction with the big reveal at first. (Perhaps because of some of its lingering implications.) But as I already said, the end does fit the journey of the series. And I would have been even more dissatisfied had they rehashed something that had already been done before (like simply voting Smokey off the Island, or an abrupt fade-to-black, or a character waking up in bed with Bob Newhart).
-- As I read others' hostile reactions to the ending I felt as though I must have been watching a different show than they had. (Especially those whose rants were of the "OMG, I totally called they were dead the whole time!!!11!" variety. I sort of want to shake them and say, "Didn't you get it?") It seemed perfectly clear what was happening to me, even though some of the answers viewers may have hoped for were still murky. I got that the "church" was the meeting place of everyone who had been involved in the crash after death. But like Christian said, some died before Jack; some died much later - this was just the place they were all destined to meet at some point afterward. The people on the plane got home, Hurley got Desmond back to Penny, Claire raised her son with Kate's help, Sawyer and Miles became the bestest buddy-cop team ever, Ben was finally singled out as special enough to matter to the head-honcho on the Island (and probably became a better person for it), Rose and Bernard lived quiet happy lives in their cabin, Richard enjoyed his advancing old age somewhere in the "New World;" we just didn't see any of that because it all happened eventually. (The scene with Hurley and Ben was particularly telling because they both complimented each other on how well they had apparently worked together on the Island - a time period that could have taken centuries, really. We just didn't get to see that chapter of their story.)
As Christian told Jack, "There is no now here." (I hesitate to call it "Purgatory," as other have, because that seems to have such a negative connotation.) There is no time in this place, and no waiting around for decades until the others showed up. There is just the meeting for these special individuals – who became the most important people in each other's lives. Of course they would be together at the end of it all – whenever their own individual ends happened to come. On my second viewing I paid more attention to Kate's reaction upon seeing Jack after the concert. She put her hands on his face and told him she had "missed [him] so much." Clearly she remembered, not only their lives on the Island, but she also remembered living without him afterward. And while there was a good chance she had a happy life following the escape, he had been, because of their circumstances, the most important person to her. And their reunion was a meaningful one, no matter what direction her life had ultimately taken.
-- Something else that Christian said to Jack had more meaning to it following the second viewing: the fact that they had all had a hand in creating their special place. Since it was a product of their own design, it was interesting to see some of the choices that were made in putting the sideways-verse together. What we had perceived all season long as an alternate reality in which the lives of some of the characters would have been better if Flight 815 had never crashed was, in fact, a mental construct based, most likely, on what each person wanted for themselves: Hurley created a life in which he was the luckiest guy in the world. Kate was apparently incapable of forming a life in which she wasn't running from something, but at least this time, instead of merely claiming she was innocent, perhaps she actually was. Jack is a successful surgeon and also a father who is capable of reconciling and bonding with his own son. Sawyer finds himself on the right side of the law, though he hasn't lost his edge. The most interesting of these is, perhaps, Sayid. His sideways life still seemed to be one filled with hardship – where he doesn't seem capable of being a good man, no matter how hard he may try, where the woman he loves is married to his brother and, therefore, still beyond his reach, where he's in jail for triple homicide. In a world where the Losties are free to create their own stories, it seems interesting that Sayid would subconsciously choose such a negative existence for himself – unless he truly felt, in the basest part of himself, it really was all he deserved. Hurley explained it perfectly when he said that Sayid had been told so often that he's not capable of being good that he actually began to believe it – even, apparently, to the depths of his soul.
-- Because of the way the ending played out, there were definitely a few things that were more bitter than sweet:
* Jin and Sun actually did die and leave their daughter. And although they were reunited and had a beautiful awakening moment, it didn't change that fact.
* The escapees on the plane did have to live the rest of their lives without the people they had lost.
* It will probably be a very lonely existence on the Island for Hurley, at least for a while.
* Up until the very end, I still felt sorry for the Man in Black. (Whose name, apparently, was Samuel.) Although he became such a twisted creature, he was really just a victim of circumstance, and that was his biggest tragedy
-- I liked that Hurley has the ability to choose the kind of protector he wants to be. Jacob only knew what he was told – that no one can leave the Island – and everyone was eventually affected negatively by this. Hurley has a much kinder nature and will probably complement the Island as a result.
-- I liked Ben's decision not to move on yet. Something tells me he's doing a little voluntary penance to make things up to Rousseau and Alex. Maybe when they have their own awakenings he'll be ready to move on with them.
-- I loved the final frames – very appropriate that it mimicked the opening scenes of the series: Jack in the bamboo field, the shoe in the tree, Vincent's appearance, Jack's eye closing instead of opening as a plane flies overhead, safe and whole. (Jack never wanted to die alone; thanks to Vincent he didn't have to.)
Altogether, it really was a fitting end to a wonderful (if frustratingly complex) show!
ETA: Added a few more thoughts that came to me at work. :)
ETA 2: Ohh, I love
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