There, the last frame of Lost, ever. Jack on his back in the bamboo just like in the very first episode six years ago. I saw the final show a few hours ago and I was left with a searing headache — not because of all the lose ends and unanswered questions — but because I cried like a woman during all of the “connection”/”flashback” cuts.
Like many viewers I rushed to different reviews on the net to see what others made of it all. About 100 comments in I became really angry and saddened, I felt that people wanted more, a REAL ending — answers! I have no real say in what viewers are supposed to feel or expect. The reason I wanted to hear what others had to say was really about seeing if others had come to the same conclusion as I’ve had:
WARNING! THE REST OF THIS POST MIGHT CONTAIN SPOILERS. WARNING!
I realized something on my way home to see the show today. Something about the title, Lost. I had this strange feeling all of a sudden — it might not be that the characters are missing in the sense of the word. Since English is my second language I had to check Dictionary.com for this one. OK, here goes: NOT “no longer to be found” BUT “having gone astray or missed the way”. Yeah, that’s it. They all needed to make things right in the sideward/purgatory afterlife-reality, learn from their past mistakes, forgive and let go. Jack didn’t have a son, just as Locke pointed out near the very end. No he didn’t, but he needed to see what kind of father he would have been if he ever had the chance — a father figure who’s vastly, if flawed, different from his own dad. Jin got to be a better husband, Claire found out she had a real, loving family and so on. You get the idea.
Polar bears, the Dharma Initiative, giant statues with four toes and electromagnetic fields. These things meant nothing. The plane did crash on the island, the survivors survived, strange things happened. In the end some had died, a handful managed to leave the place and some stayed behind on the island living out their lives. In the show — as in reality — everybody dies sooner or later. The characters who had the strongest, most meaningful relation to each other from the stay on the island met up in limbo after they died. This is my own conclusion and I think it’s pretty solid. When the characters meet up in the “limbo-church”, Kate tells Jack “I’ve waited so long”. Jack, Kate and the others (not THE Others) worked a few things out on their own after death in a sort of purgatory (even though J.J. Abrams said it’s not purgatory — but this was back in 2005 when he also said that the viewers of the show came up with better stuff than the writers) and in the end they were all at peace ready to move on into a glorious cliché of white light. What that light is no one knows. By the look of the stained glass windows in the church, they were in a supermultireligious, anything-goes happy place beyond the imagination of the living.
To be honest, THIS is the last frame of the final episode. It showed up for a few seconds during the credits. Different angles (moving images) of the wreck on the beach. I wonder why they (Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse) chose to include these shots. The plane is obviously there, there are footprints in the sand but the place is empty, completely void of people. I better stop, I’m afraid I’m going to start speculating again – I’VE GOT THIS ONE FIGURED OUT! I really do, I think.
UPDATE:
Turns out that last shot of the wreck on the beach was added by ABC as “visual aid to allow the viewer to decompress before heading into the news”. What a crappy move ABC, I’m guessing Lindelof and Cuse feel the same way.
