THE LOST FINALE
May. 25th, 2010 12:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rena_librarianI got to watch the finale with Michele, Dani, and Kia, and we got to debate and banter about it during and after, and this is my interpretation based on all the questions we brought up and logic-ed out. =) (Ie, this is how I tried to explain to my horribly confused mother.) This first bit is paraphrased from a comment I posted elsewhere.
This was how I took it; the entire "flash sideways" took place somewhere completely apart from Real Time. It was an alternate reality that answered everyone's "What ifs?"--if Jacob had never interfered in all their lives and 815 not crashed. I kind of want to call it Purgatory, but as Michele pointed out to me, you have to work your way out of Purgatory (or people pray you out? Catholicism is not my strong point) and this was more of like...a Waiting Room.
Whenever people died in the main timeline (which was covered by the main timeline, the flashbacks, and the flash forwards), their consciousness was transferred there (one could argue that they were born in that reality, or flashed to the moment they were on flight 815 and simply had a new set of memories of a life they didn't actually live). Their lives still all worked around to where they ended up on 815. After that they all started to meet up and when they ran into whoever had meant the most to them (hence not necessarily the first person they bumped into from 815--Jack and Locke is a good example, Jack was getting glimpses but didn't full-on remember until Kate), they remembered what took place in Real Time, realized they had died at whatever point, and all converged at the church for one last hello/goodbye before moving on (ascending to a higher plane, I guess--I think most religions that work on that kind of philosophy believe that you lose the sense of "self" as you go along, so they were happy to see each other but also all wanted to move higher). The flash-sideways allowed all the souls to have all their questions answered and go on without unanswered what-ifs.
I guess there are bits that left room for interpretation, but this is how they ALL make sense to me. (Like...if they all died on 815 originally, why did Widmore have to pay so much to fake the wreckage?) /commented elsewhere
The idea was tossed out on a commentary somewhere of some fan re-editing Lord of the Rings so that everything happened in order (ie the flashback of Boromir, Faramir, and Denethor would play before Council of Elrond, because it HAPPENED first), and I would kind of like to see that done to Lost. I realize it couldn't have been written and made that way by sheer virtue of the fact that you wouldn't care about the characters all separate (for example, everyone would probably hate Kate because she really was a mess pre-island--or Sawyer would be another good example), but I think now that everyone is attached to the characters and more or less gets their overarcing storylines, it would help to clarify what happened when.
That said, the more I think about the finale, the more I'm pleased with it, actually. I don't have any huge lingering questions. (I'm willing myself not to go back and watch that "Answers" song, because that would probably bring things up that I shouldn't think about, lol.) The ending was bittersweet, it felt a lot like Somewhere In Time (which is one of my all-time favorite movies). And no matter what the end would have actually been, it would've been bittersweet, because it's OVER.
I had been toying with the idea that the third-to-last episode (where we saw Jacob and his brother growing up) might have made a better finale, but no. It would've been anticlimactic. Now I think it should've been a bit earlier in the season, because where it was, it felt a little "Yeah, this is good info, we need to know this, but I WANNA SEE WHAT'S GOING ON IN THE MAIN TIMELINE." Or at least it did to me.
I loved that the final shot mirrored the opening shot, and Matthew Fox admitted that he had known the whole time that the series would end with that shot, of the eye closing and Jack being dead. Nice to know he wasn't lying about knowing the end. (Or, like I told the girls, he was the only one that was really sure of job security, lol.)
Just to see if my interpretation holds water, if YOU have any lingering questions, throw them at me.
Or if you just want to wibble over the Charlie/Claire and Sawyer/Juliet reunions, that's okay too. =)
Also: THE TARGET COMMERCIALS THAT AIRED DURING THE FINALE WERE GENIUS.
This was how I took it; the entire "flash sideways" took place somewhere completely apart from Real Time. It was an alternate reality that answered everyone's "What ifs?"--if Jacob had never interfered in all their lives and 815 not crashed. I kind of want to call it Purgatory, but as Michele pointed out to me, you have to work your way out of Purgatory (or people pray you out? Catholicism is not my strong point) and this was more of like...a Waiting Room.
Whenever people died in the main timeline (which was covered by the main timeline, the flashbacks, and the flash forwards), their consciousness was transferred there (one could argue that they were born in that reality, or flashed to the moment they were on flight 815 and simply had a new set of memories of a life they didn't actually live). Their lives still all worked around to where they ended up on 815. After that they all started to meet up and when they ran into whoever had meant the most to them (hence not necessarily the first person they bumped into from 815--Jack and Locke is a good example, Jack was getting glimpses but didn't full-on remember until Kate), they remembered what took place in Real Time, realized they had died at whatever point, and all converged at the church for one last hello/goodbye before moving on (ascending to a higher plane, I guess--I think most religions that work on that kind of philosophy believe that you lose the sense of "self" as you go along, so they were happy to see each other but also all wanted to move higher). The flash-sideways allowed all the souls to have all their questions answered and go on without unanswered what-ifs.
I guess there are bits that left room for interpretation, but this is how they ALL make sense to me. (Like...if they all died on 815 originally, why did Widmore have to pay so much to fake the wreckage?) /commented elsewhere
The idea was tossed out on a commentary somewhere of some fan re-editing Lord of the Rings so that everything happened in order (ie the flashback of Boromir, Faramir, and Denethor would play before Council of Elrond, because it HAPPENED first), and I would kind of like to see that done to Lost. I realize it couldn't have been written and made that way by sheer virtue of the fact that you wouldn't care about the characters all separate (for example, everyone would probably hate Kate because she really was a mess pre-island--or Sawyer would be another good example), but I think now that everyone is attached to the characters and more or less gets their overarcing storylines, it would help to clarify what happened when.
That said, the more I think about the finale, the more I'm pleased with it, actually. I don't have any huge lingering questions. (I'm willing myself not to go back and watch that "Answers" song, because that would probably bring things up that I shouldn't think about, lol.) The ending was bittersweet, it felt a lot like Somewhere In Time (which is one of my all-time favorite movies). And no matter what the end would have actually been, it would've been bittersweet, because it's OVER.
I had been toying with the idea that the third-to-last episode (where we saw Jacob and his brother growing up) might have made a better finale, but no. It would've been anticlimactic. Now I think it should've been a bit earlier in the season, because where it was, it felt a little "Yeah, this is good info, we need to know this, but I WANNA SEE WHAT'S GOING ON IN THE MAIN TIMELINE." Or at least it did to me.
I loved that the final shot mirrored the opening shot, and Matthew Fox admitted that he had known the whole time that the series would end with that shot, of the eye closing and Jack being dead. Nice to know he wasn't lying about knowing the end. (Or, like I told the girls, he was the only one that was really sure of job security, lol.)
Just to see if my interpretation holds water, if YOU have any lingering questions, throw them at me.
Or if you just want to wibble over the Charlie/Claire and Sawyer/Juliet reunions, that's okay too. =)
Also: THE TARGET COMMERCIALS THAT AIRED DURING THE FINALE WERE GENIUS.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-05-25 04:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-26 02:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-26 07:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-05-27 05:33 am (UTC)You know how we were talking about the flash sideways a few eps into the season and I said I was trying not to get attached because none of it was actually real? I feel much better about them doing it AT ALL now that they've wrapped it up that way. It actually makes sense within the greater context of the show.
(Like the super-long "ending" of the LotR movies; it doesn't feel so crazy-long if you actually watch all three of them together with the mentality of it being a single 12-hour movie.)