WARNING: THE FOLLOWING POST CONTAINS SPOILERS FROM THE LATEST EPISODE OF LOST.
Mini-recap will be up tomorrow!
After the jump: Let’s freak out about this together, guys.
I loved this finale!!! For those of you who are still scratching your heads over that ending, here’s my own personal opinion on what happened:
The Flight 815 crash and everything after that really did happen just as we saw it. Then people died one by one, either on the island (Shannon, Boone, Sayid, etc.) or off; all the people on the plane – Kate, Sawyer, etc. and Hurley, Ben, Desmond all kept living their lives after the moment of Jack’s death, each dying later down the road. Then they all ended up in limbo, and one by one they were able to understand what was happening, and once they all understood, they could move on together. Think of the end of Lord of the Rings, with the hobbits and Gandalf sailing away, or the end of Titanic with Jack and Rose meeting in the ballroom with all the other people from the ship. Since time doesn’t exist in the afterlife, to them, they had all just died, despite the fact that Jack died in 2007 and Hurley died 60 years later. I think Christian Shephard was the one who finally helped Jack “let go” because he was the one Jack trusted most, but I don’t necessarily think Christan was god, it’s just that god/the higher power/etc. was using Christian’s face.
Overall I absolutely loved it, it was funny, moving, crazy, action-packed…basically it was all the things that we have come to expect from Lost. I am totally satisfied! They’re no longer Lost now that they’ve Found one another. Get it?
Questions:
1. How could Desmond go between worlds when one was actually the afterlife?
2. How did Jack end up on those rocks outside the waterfall?
3. Was David just Jack’s subconscious wishing he’d had a child?
4. While we’ll never really understand the magical light in the island, why did the light going out make Smokey vulnerable?
Thoughts:
So I guess after all, it was Live Together, Die Together!
So when Juliet was dying after the bomb went off, she was getting glimpses of the afterlife! Edit: I didn’t even realize she said “It worked” about the vending machine trick. Now we know what that meant – it had nothing to do with the bomb!
On Jimmy Kimmel they showed the first Sideways World scene when we saw the plane’s turbulence, and Rose looked over to Jack and said, “It’s okay, you can let go.” So that’s when it all started! Perhaps that turbulence was the moment Jack died.
Now we know what Desmond meant last week when he said Ana-Lucia wasn’t “ready!”
As many of you know, I am all about Sawyer/Kate, so seeing Jack and Kate make out and proclaim their love for each other was my least favorite part of the finale. Also, Sawyer and Juliet finding each other in the Sideways World was definitely very moving, but again, not what I was hoping for. I’m just going to pretend that Sawyer and Kate got off Lapidus’ plane and went and lived happily ever after together so I’m not completely bitter. :D
Now we know why Eloise was so hell bent on stopping Desmond – she was “enlightened” and could have moved on, but she wanted to stay with Daniel. I think that’s also why Ben didn’t go into the church – he didn’t want to move on without Alex.
I’m so happy Hurley was the one to take over the island, and that he was a much kinder and gentler Protector than Jacob ever was! And that Ben was his Number Two! I wondered why Jack couldn’t have just made Ben the Protector and left Hurley out of it haha.
So Michael and other people who were not in the church are the Whispers on the island – they’re stuck there. I get it now! They can’t get into Sideways World!
I’m so happy Richard gets to die of old age! And that Frank Lapidus was totally alive!
The epic way Smokey died was incredible. That was some crazy shit right there.
Lots of moments made me cry, but the Charlie/Claire/Kate/Aaron scene pretty much broke me. And the Sun and Jin flash.
I loved seeing Rose and Bernard again, and of course Vincent.
The very last minute, with Jack laying down in the grass in the same exact place he first woke up, with the plane flying overhead, was fantastic. As was that shot of Jack and Locke looking down the waterfall, which was the same shot as them looking down into the hatch at the end of Season 2!
I absolutely loved Ben and Locke’s exchange outside the church. Someone finally telling Locke he was special gave me the warm & fuzzies.
Seeing everyone in the church together was so awesome. And it was great seeing Shannon and Boone again!
Now Jack’s “appendix scar” and that cut on his neck that wouldn’t stop bleeding all makes sense! PHEW!
I’m sure we’ll all have more to say over the days to come, but I wanted to get this post up ASAP. WOO!
@Wendy: Thank you so much!!!!!!!!
@Polly: I’m so spoiled that I have this big group to talk about the show with, it’s really been so awesome.
@Rosie: I don’t think Michael OR Ana-Lucia found any emotional closure before their deaths.
@Clairedelunatic I don’t think Sun and Jin’s deaths were pointless because their deaths are what made the remaining candidates decide to finally take action against Smokey. Plus, Kate shot him because of what he had done – that would have never happened without the Kwons’ deaths.
@kid entropia And then uncle Ben will tell her funny/scary/absolutely creepy/adorable stories about smoke monsters, time traveling bunnies and polar bears, while eating fishbiscuits and drinking dharma root beer! :D
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@Jewel – yeah, totally forgot about the polar bear explanation – one of many reasons I need to rewatch the whole series!
3. Was David just Jack’s subconscious wishing he’d had a child?
I think David was BOTH Juliet and Jack’s subconscious child. Jack had the desire to be a good father figure and Juliet wanted a child as well.
I really enjoyed this finale up until the last 15 mins. The whole purgatory theme really ticked me off. But I was welling up for the whole episode. I’m generally satisfied but wish a couple of loose ends had been tied up.
I’ve always been a Jater and am in the minority here who liked Jack. He was full of flaws and just seemed so real to me, even when he was making stupid decisions. I loved him and Kate back together and thought the Sawyer and Juliet scene was fantastic too. Loved the coffee reference! There are so many things I want to write but no point in boring you guys ;]
I loved the last scene with jack and Vincent!
1. How could Desmond go between worlds when one was actually the afterlife?
This bugged me too. But my friend just pointed out theres no timeline in that world. So Desmond probably died at some stage but was the first to realise in the other world (once he met Penny). And he set off to help the others knowing what had to be done.
I would also really like to know the signifigance of Ben and his dad discussing the island in sideways world? Am I missing something?
2. How did Jack end up on those rocks outside the waterfall?
Flung out like MIB was I guess.
3. Was David just Jack’s subconscious wishing he’d had a child?
That’s a really good theory. I hadn’t questioned this.
4. While we’ll never really understand the magical light in the island, why did the light going out make Smokey vulnerable?
I have so many questions still about smokey. Was he really MIB? I figured not but then why was he as determined as MIB to leave the island?
“I wondered why Jack couldn’t have just made Ben the Protector and left Hurley out of it haha.”
I guess the candidate thing was still going.
“So Michael and other people who were not in the church are the Whispers on the island – they’re stuck there. I get it now! They can’t get into Sideways World!”
I still wonder why Ben told Danielle to run when she heard the whispers. Can someone explain? :(
Someone please explain to me…
How did Kate know, on the cliff, that THIS time her bullets would kill Flocke? Why would she even try if they bounced off before?
“As many of you know, I am all about Sawyer/Kate, so seeing Jack and Kate make out and proclaim their love for each other was my least favorite part of the finale. Also, Sawyer and Juliet finding each other in the Sideways World was definitely very moving, but again, not what I was hoping for. I’m just going to pretend that Sawyer and Kate got off Lapidus’s plane and went and lived happily ever after together so I’m not completely bitter. :D”
Ack my words exactly!
This is a way awesome post-discussion. It took me all day to get clear-headed enough after last night to come looking for everything :-)
If it makes you feel any better, Jaters didn’t get much more of a happy ending than you did – we had to watch Kate walk away heartbroken, and then watch Jack DIE. Which was actually awesome, except in its devastating implications for Jate.
@Shama: Locke might have been showing blood that Kate could see – he had begun bleeding by the time they started fighting. In any case, if I saw that happening and every instant counted, I’d try firing a shot on the way there to manually kick his butt.
@Ack: I loved all your comments here and in your other post. But I admit I’m confused here by “Think of the end of Lord of the Rings, with the hobbits and Gandalf sailing away.” The other comparisons I get, but how is the Grey Havens scene similar?
Re: Purgatory
I think it’s somewhat simplistic to say, “The Island (or the Sideways) was Purgatory.”
It’s not.
Purgatory is a place of punishment, where “the foul crimes done in [your] days of nature are burnt and purged away,” to quote Hamlet — a place of penance. The difference between it and Hell is that you get paroled eventually.
Instead, both the Island and the Sideways were places that allowed these characters — both individually and together — to be both blessed and cursed, to bring both their flaws and their virtues, to sin and to be redeemed, to be the wronged and the wronger, the victim and the forgiver.
The Sideways world was essentially a level “up” from the island, and just as the castaways remembered and were influenced by their memories of their past in “reality,” so too were they influenced in the Sideways world by their life on the island. Moving cyclically from level to level, always forward and upward, like the ending of Narnia (where there are always better and better Narnias after the Narnia we have come to know has crumbled and fallen away), the castaways came to a place that allowed them to keep their better selves, resolve old wounds, or in the words of the song so much associated with Hurley, “Wash away my sorrow/Wash away my shame/With the rain in Shambala.”
That’s more complex than Purgatory — and better.
@ Shama —
Shama, you said,
Someone please explain to me…
How did Kate know, on the cliff, that THIS time her bullets would kill Flocke? Why would she even try if they bounced off before?
**All of the following are possible:
1. It doesn’t register with any normal human being that anyone else is “really” impervious to bullets, even if you see it happen. Seeing Jack under fLocke’s knife, almost being filleted, Kate acted more on instinct and previous experience than on strict reason and fired the gun because she believed it would work. If it hadn’t, and Locke had been as impervious as before, she would have been surprised for a second.
2. It’s possible she realized the purpose of Jack’s mission, and understood that with the magic plug being pulled, the Island was no longer stable and neither was the immortality the island had granted Jacob and Smokey. She fired because she knew Smokey could be killed.
3. What other options did she have? Kryptonite?
@ peter re: the whole exchange b/t ben and is dad makes more sense now as we were having a hard time trying to fit in the timeline of when they left the island…. they did not leave they were dead! and just talking about it and this fit in with why they got along in the s/w world
@ henry gale: thanks for the narnia referance great catch… loved those books.
@ ACK: I love you sofa king much !!!
will miss this soooo much
Henry Gale:
Thanks! I have been kind of trying to just accept your reasoning #1. She just saw him killing Jack and HAD a gun and so she shot it. Who wouldn’t? Probably didn’t even think about the time she shot him 10 times.
And then… when she saw it worked, she came up with the snarky comment to him. “I was saving it for YOU!”
I don’t think it’s number 2… it seemed both fLocke and Jack were pretty shocked to see that blood in fLocke’s mouth.
It all would have ended differently if, after fLocke hit Jack with the rock, he would have thought… “Wow, I really clocked him! I might as well take a couple seconds to smash his head in a few more times while he is unconscious!”
Everything you have said is exactly how I feel!!!!! (well except that I can accept that Jate is fate ;P)
And I figured Desmond could go in between worlds for the same reason he survived the hatch explosion, Widmore’s testing, etc etc etc. He was special.
Jack got out of the waterfall the same way MIB’s body did … MAGIC! Or maybe there was a back way out, the way the water _leaves_ the cave?
Sorry to bring up the love triangle drama but I just realized something.
Juliet hit the bomb and died because she wanted Sawyer to be able to go home. Jack got stabbed the MIB but went back into the source in order to stop the island from being destroyed. After he suceeded he watched the plane take off and died. So Jack and Juliet ended up dying trying to get the ones the loved the most off the island. I don’t know if that represents anything I just thought it was a cool detail.
I’m totally stoked with how the love triangle came out. I know a lot of people on here are Skaters but I was a Jater from season one. I always thought Sawyer deserved someone better than Kate and he found it in Juliet. For those that are still disappointed remember that we didn’t see what happened after they left the island. (Like what Ack says above) Kate and Sawyer could have still gotten together but in the end they departed into the afterlife with the ones their hearts truly belonged to. Jeez that was increadibly cheesy and corny. Sorry for the lovey dovey overload.
I am continually amazed at how the writers kept inserting reaccuring characters/items/dialogue throughout the series. Like the pilot episode opening with Jack’s eye opening.. and the finale “ending” with his eye closing.. etc.etc. This happened all throughout. That takes some serious skill and intellect. Very clever. I just checked out some screen caps and noticed that when Christian opens the church door for them to go into the light.. guess what shoes he has on with his suit? ;-) yep… those tennis shoes. Extremely clever…
http://spoilertv.iimmgg.com/image/a87567ee242c46e405d091508e9728c3
It’s been great reading all these comments and I’ve started to feel a little better about the finale after being let down initially.
I think my main question/gripe is why make all of season 6 about this stand off between the man in black and the losties only to end the show pretty independent of that outcome? Whether the losties die on the island or elsewhere, they still end up in the sideways world together. So really as an audience we were pulled in one direction the entire season only to see that become trivialized in the finale.
But my take on Lost is that its more about the ride and not the destination. And the ride was amazing.
3. Was David just Jack’s subconscious wishing he’d had a child?
Yes. Once Locke tells Jack he doesn’t have a son, David just sort of disappears and we don’t see him again. Aaron is present and Sun doesn’t become aware until she is safely pregnant with her daughter so she can bring her along too. But David wasn’t real. Which is probably why he didn’t act real. :)
What was the island? The center had been fashioned by someone so the island was not a natural formation. Chang found a pocket of exotic matter adjacent to the donkey wheel chamber. Jacob said evil was under the plug. So exotic matter equal evil?
I think Desmond was able to bounce because he had a constant and his constant did not reside on the island. I think mentally he was flashing thru time like our protagonists were in season 5, but because he had Penny as a constant he had a proclivity towards withstanding the jumps that eventually killed Charlotte. I’ve no doubt Jacob recognized this and made sure that Des made it back to the island.
As far as Jack’s body was concerned… Moving the wheel put you in Tunisia and landing in the well put you in the stream. I think the island kicks things away from the exotic matter since it obviously has a different relationship with time and space.
I’m sorry Ack, but I loved Jack and Kate getting together. He said it himself that he’d screwed everything else up and this was all he had left so I think saving the island and he and Kate makes sense. He gave his last measure of full devotion to save their lives and the island. I think he deserves his reward.
QUOTING
“I would also really like to know the signifigance of Ben and his dad discussing the island in sideways world? Am I missing something?”
The island is a character too so it’s got to get it’s props.
Justin… MiB didn’t even know what would happen if the “cork” was taken out. Remember the conversation as he and Jack were looking down the waterfall after lowering Desmond down to uncork it? Neither one (jack/mib) knew what would “really” happen. MiB was hoping for a tumultuous outcome and I don’t think he even knew about sideways world…remember, sideways was a place that the main Losties created for themselves to wait for each other. The island world still existed and needed to be dealt with. It was inevitable that “something” happened because of MiB’s obsession with destroying it (along with the candidates). It was because of this that the Losties/candidates drew closer and closer together…united in that cause – to protect/save each other..and defeat MiB.
Was there any significance to the island being underwater in the sideways world?
I am so happy to read the posts here! You are echoing my thoughts and feelings. I have peaked at other fansites and so many people who were commenting had clearly not watched the show carefully (or at all!) and had very simplistic or negative things to say about the finale. I love this show so much and love the characters that I have been grieving and feeling very protective of them all. Those doubters really were getting to me. They were “disrespecting the memory by wearing the face” of a real fan. Thank you all for being real fans. I needed a memorial service to celebrate the LOST we loved and will miss. I know I am not ready to “move on”.
I am excited for the book and the DVD set. The podcast talked about Damon and Carlton having just done a commentary for Across the Sea (and others I am sure) which will be great.
Sites like this have been our Sideways world where we could come together to work things out together about the show. I was so pleased to see them all so happy and complete at the end. It made me hug my family extra tight.
LOST lives in all of us…
My only thought on how it was possible that Desmond was able to be on both sides is what we call a near death experience. After the hatch incident and being hit with extreme electromagnetic energy by Widmore killed him momentarily. “there is no NOW” A nano-second in death, he was able to bring back days of knowledge.
When Desmond told Jack before he dropped down the waterfall, he thought he was going to another place and was convinced the Island didn’t exist…afterwards, as he so elegantly put it as Locke said in S2 “I was wrong”.
I will always remember that Charlie/Claire/Aaron moment!!!!! It made me cry… I’m so happy that they didn’t let my Charlie unmentioned and his story with Claire unfinished!!!! And I really liked the fact that we’ve seen Boone & Shannon etc…. Overall, for me at least, it was the best way to end LOST. I’mm totally satisfied!
A nano-second in death, he was able to bring back days of knowledge
Good thought. That makes me think of how time travel in reality might work by getting the time traveller to the speed of light so that what they experience as a few days/years is really a few seconds to everyone else. I love trying to find the real science based stuff in Lost!
I do not understand the lack of Ana-Lucia, Michael, Walt, and Mr. Eko in the church. Michael did not die on the island. He died on the freighter. The location of his death was further away from the island than the location where Sayid, Sun, and Jin died. Michael should not have been stuck on the island. Cuse and Lindehof have no real reason why Ana-Lucia did not move on. The whole thing, in my opinion, was a cop out to please the fans who disliked her. They could have used Miles to get Claire to remember the night she left Aaron behind and followed the MIB. They didn’t bother. Idiots. Considering that the MIB never took possession of Locke’s body (he only assumed Locke’s form), he should have never became a mortal after Desmond and Jack uncorked the island’s light (or whatever the hell it was).
In other words, I have mixed views about this finale. Typical of “LOST”.
As to how Jack got out of the cave, he must have been swept out downstream when the water started flowing again. On second viewing there was water coming out of the cave behind where Jack was. When they were going in to pull the cork, water was flowing into the cave and down a waterfall.
Second viewing of the episode is very interesting because all of Desmond and Kate’s mysterious comments actually make sense when we know what’s going to happen. I’m looking forward to watching all of Season Six again with this same insight.
Very great read! Honestly..
If only more people could hear about this!
http://www.bouilloiremagique.net‘s done it again. Incredible post.
The Jack/Kate part ruined it for me. I was waiting the whole time for Kate and Sawyer to find each other in Sideways World, because I figured they had so many wonderful moments together they’d have the biggest montage of all and would get together (fishbiscuits, the scene at the lake,e tc.). But nooo. Sawyer hooks up with Jack’s wife and Jack with Kate? What the-
I am a disappointed Skater, but a Skater nonetheless.
OMG the finale was awesome!
I think Kate’s “I love you” was like Buffy’s in Season 7, an “I know you’re gonna die so I’ll tell you what you want to hear” thing.
Ooh, Richard’s gray hair was so epic! And Lapidus totally couldn’t die, he has a coating of awesome proteting him :D
oh i know i’m very late to the LOST party! i never watched the show when it was on the air and only recently watched it this past summer in it’s entirety all at once. i’d have to say overall i loved the show although i am and always will be a skater from season 1 episodes on and just felt the whole jack and kate thing was ‘forced’. they did not work as a couple in the ‘real’ world or on the island, so for them to be ‘soulmates’ made no sense. as far as Juliet and Sawyer goes, yes she was good for him and good to him but i still believe Sawyer and Kate were in love with each other and Jsck and Juliet were only substitutes. so a skater for life! i really just want to say thank Ack for taking the time to do these recaps. they are absolutely hilarious. i stumbled onto them while looking for some info into the overall ‘meaning’ of the show and upon reading your recaps i laughed at times until my stomach hurt. LOST was a great ride and these recaps were the icing on the proverbial cake ;D
d’un compromis final, objectif des discussions. sac lacoste nettement élever leur niveau de jeu.
Cela fait-il pour autant de lui un Portefeuilles Femme moin cher ?crivain typically british ?