Lost Finale – What Really Happened (Updated)

There are a lot of stories going around, even on “popular” media outlets, that claim to explain the Lost series finale. Many of them, I believe, are wrong. Here’s my interpretation. Oh, yeah, this thing is pure spoiler. If there’s an issue with that I suggest you get around to watching the finale or get off the bloody internet. As I see it, everything that we watched on the island happened. It’s a real island, out there somewhere, that’s been a source of conflict for so many people. Oceanic 815 did crash land there, Dharma existed, the Dharma Initiative set up camp there to perform experiments, etc. etc. The sideways universe we’ve been following, that’s some sort of purgatory. Everyone there is dead and have yet to move on for whatever reason. Everything is pretty much laid out by Christian to Jack. “Everything that happened to you was real.” You need to take what he says literally. From the Oceanic flight, Kate, Sawyer, and Clair are all alive, seen flying away at the very end. Along with them is a now mortal Richard, Lapidus, and Miles. Besides the old couple, the only folks left on the island are Desmond, Hurley, and Ben. Hurley is the new protector of the island. There might be a few Others romping around somewhere. I don’t think we saw everyone get shot. There ya have it. Short and sweet. Any question? Here’re a few other random tidbits that might help… Purgatory Note that purgatory is a bad term for this other existence. It’s a step between worlds, life and the afterlife, not as we know it, a place you’re sent to suffer for a bit because you haven’t been a bad boy. There’s no sense of time in purgatory land that has any relation to the real world. When we see Hurley, Ben, and the others to make it off the island at the end, they most likely died years after everyone else. Charlie already knew about his past life but was unable to make the connection. Or maybe he was, and was just stuck there until Jack came along. There’s probably some interesting dialog from his conversations with Desmond that can help shed some light. Desmond, somehow in combination with his near death experience and seeing Charlie in the water, was able to sort things out. Being thrown in Widmore’s electromagnetic machine at the same time on Lost, may have been connected, but I believe it’s a red herring. Ben stuck around because he wasn’t ready to move on. He wanted to spend more time with the family he never got. Elouise didn’t want Desmond to complete his task because she liked this world, things were good. Mainly so she could spend real time with Faraday. Unanswered Questions There are a lot of unanswered questions out there. Most were left open on purpose, some left in the dust when the show went from sciencey to faithy. Here’re a few stemming, in part, from the finale… What was the light? Was it a connection to the afterlife? As I currently understand it, the light is some mysterious power buried deep within the island. People are suggesting it serves as a connection between reality and the afterlife. It makes sense to a point, especially with the Egyptian relics; we know how they loved that sort of thing. It’s also called the light. It could also explain the voices/spirits on the island, if they weren’t trapped souls on the island maybe they were just making their way to the light? Could the smoke monster been the embodiment of some force that didn’t want to move on? Buuuuut other than this random connections I don’t believe that it’s the case. For each line I can draw I can find two that don’t make any sense. Why would the light disappear when the plug was removed, would people have stopped being able to pass on if the island was destroyed, what about [nearly every other unexplained issue here]? Does drinking the water and becoming the protector of the island really endow you with some extra knowledge? Based on Jack and Hurley’s reaction, I don’t think so. Maybe they’re just more confident, or have whispers in the back of their head, but it really seemed like they were just making it up as they went along. Alternatively, Jacob really seemed to know what he’d been up to, but then again he’s been around for (an estimated 1000) years. We’re lead to believe that Hurley, with Ben as second in command, live interesting lives afterward. But for how long? Considering how long Jacob and Richard were romping around all kinds of crazy shit could happen. There’s been talk of a sequel, even a possible movie, these two characters are likely to be focal points. Perhaps Jorge Garcia and Michael Emerson will be cryogenically frozen so five hundred years from now they can grace us with a long awaited sequel. That is if ABC survives the sudden drop off of in ratings. The End In conclusion, I thought the finale was great. I presume that a lot of the folks upset about either need to give it another watch or are so crazed that their years of hypothesizing about the show finally caught up to them in an instant. In the end everything wrapped back around to being about the characters and their interactions with each other. In the end, the island was just some crazy unexplained mystery. I think at one point the writers stepped off the beaten path and began to take things an episode at a time without really knowing where they wanted to go. I suppose that’s why there’ll always be some misgivings about the ending. While wrapping up the character element is always a good thing a lot of people were more interested in the island itself. With all of the random details that went into detailing the Dharma experiments and ancient structures very little surrounding the island itself has actually been revealed. Perhaps, little do we expect, that was the idea all along. Alright, I’m done talking out of my ass. I’ll most likely update as more info comes out (and the obsessed followers delve into every detail).