Seen it, disappointed, but not really surprised.
So what happened there then? Here's what I think. Back in the mists of time the writers of lost came up with the original idea "It's a show about the survivors of a plane crash, but here's the clever bit - there were no survivors, they all died! The audience will not know this!". First episode airs / leaks on the internets and every single person who watched it says "oh, so they're all actually dead then and this is some fantasy / dream / ante room to the afterlife". "DAMN" say the writers, we must respond with "no,no, it's not that at all, wait and see, keep watching, all will be explained"... then one billion years later at the end of series 6 they say "ha, see, they were all dead really, you didn't see that coming did you?" and hope that no-one is still watching.
Disappointed but not surprised that the writers of Lost basically ignored all of the questions that remained about all of the previous series, and only decided to "wrap up" the new questions that they'd introduced in the final series itself. Or did they even do that? I don't believe the ending was planned out, I don't believe they truly ended the series, and the ending they did come up with was so full of holes that can only be explained by some vague and wooly Stephen King style "ah, god did it all, so I don't need to explain any more". Have just heard from @hpoom who watched the two hour special with the writers where they say
it is not about the answers or the end, it is about the life they lived and the views perspective on that... in other words they couldn't end it. So they said the ending is not important and it's the character story and progressing and relationships that are important
He's paraphrasing them and I'm paraphrasing him, so apologies if that's not what anyone actually said. It is the kind of cop out I would expect. Ah, from the subtitles of the special with the writers:
"lost" is, at its heart and soul, A character study. We're fascinated, as storytellers, By what makes people the way they are. the title "lost" was really about How these characters were sort of lost in their own lives. And for us, the real mystery of the show Wasn't, you know, "where is this island?" But the mystery of the show was, "who are these people?"
Glad that everyone else hated it as much as I did1, I especially like
For me its all a bit like a rubbish coin vanishing trick done badly, look the coin is not in this hand... yes I know! I'm concentrating on the first hand you haven't misdirected me at all!
So if I accept that they have no intention of answering any of the questions raised in the previous five series, the logical step is "Jack died in the plane crash, the rest was just his dream", so then why in Jack's afterlife are those the people who are most important to him? Because he met them on the plane and they are (literally) the last people who went through his mind? If the island did happen and Jack does not die until the end there, we just have to forget any of the sci-fi type elements, that just doesn't work either, you can't say you're wrapping the show up and ignore 99% of the things that happened in the show.
I did not expect it to make sense, and I guess this is closure in a way. It gave the nice fuzzy flashbacks and everyone being loved up to really kill off the show.
I will not be buying the DVD's to watch again. Lost was not as clever as I hoped it might be, except in the fact that I am still talking about it now. So I will stop.
Paul Clarke's weblog - I live in A small town, Kent. Wed to Clare + father to two, I am a full-stack web engineer, and I do javascript / Node, some ruby, other languages ect ect. I like pubbing, parkrun, eating, home-automation and other diy stuff, history, family tree stuff, Television, squirrels, pirates, lego, + time travel.