I was doing some surfing and came across an interview of Damon Lindelof, one of the writers of the Lost tv series. For those of you who watched it, the ending was, or may have been, a disappointment. One thing that bothered me is that he insisted that what happened in the series actually happened. Up until season 5 I would have agreed but it is in the beginning of season that they show the island at the bottom of the sea in the present. It is there because a nuclear bomb was detonated in 1977. If so then there is no island for the plane to crash. But of course it is after they crash that the island’s demise is set in motion. Fine. Maybe an alternative reality (world) plays out a future where Hurley is left on the island and another where the island is a reef. My thing is that it is arguable that one of these realities is derivative and unoriginal.
He compared the end of Lost, where a lot was left unanswered, to the Architect explaining everything to Neo in the second Matrix. That to him, and the guy interviewing him, is the worst way of handling a complicated narrative. But there is a difference in that the conversation between the Architect and Neo happens in the middle of a trilogy. As much as it explained, it set up more questions at the end of the movie, the second movie. Even today, I feel as dissatisfied with the end of the Matrix as with the end of Lost. But it did create a set of narrative structure with which to discuss alternate realities and endings. Lost is harder to pin down narratively. Again, the expression “really happened” means something different to the viewer from what it means to the writers.
I don’t think any of that stuff really happened. And the ending was weird. Got all religious on me about dead people and shit. Pretty disappointing.
I still can’t get over the final episode. The writers fucked us in the ass.
Huge disappointment.
Didn’t everyone fall into a hole or something? Or that guy Jacob came out but never explained himself or something…and everyone was already dead. I mean, at a certain point in watching, shit got so fucked up I had to ask myself…what will they postulate to resolve all this? Then as it got worse, I said to myself…there’s nothing they can at this point.
In the end, instead of dying the characters were in a purgatory-like place so that they could come together and accept everything that happened in their lives. Then they all walked into the light and passed to the next life.
That’s how it ended.
Thats what I was thinking. I mean but why did they need to come together? Who cares about the unfinished business of the dead? Why postulate all that for no reason other than to clean up the writers mess?
They wanted to please as many people as possible. So they went for the cheap finale.
Idiots.
Uh, this is commecial television, isn’t it?
Wow… I’ve been thinking of that TV show the last week or so… I asked a guy a few years ago I used to work security with about Lost- I only ever saw 5 minutes of it- some fat guy sitting infront of a timer resetting it. Everyone was worried what would happen if the timer counted down. I couldn’t care less… but that situation always sat in my head. I asked him if it was all a huge bluff, if nothing happened, and he look at me incredulous, saying ‘yes, something very very bad happened when that timer went off’. I wrote it off as being wrong, but never watched it.
I’m going to accept Smears outlook here as authoritive enough. Purgatory though?
Not a bad show if you don’t mind being a bit confused. There’s a lot of running and getting stabbed and fighting and stuff. Pretty well produced. But yeah someone started explaining the end to me when I told em it made no sense and they got all into some bible this…old religion that bullshit so I just said fuck it. Some people do get sucked into some hole at one point which was pretty cool, and there’s a smoke monster…so if you’re stoned off your ass you can imagine somehow rooting for it simply because its made of smoke and you love smoke in spite of it being some kind of evil force on the show.
Like yoooooooo man that smokes coming to get those bitches chinked! Oh word!
That kinda thing.
Well it was the fans that early on suggested that the passengers had died and that they were in purgatory. It made sense since nothing about the island made sense in a world governed by physical laws.
But I was disappointed in both the Matrix and in Lost by the shameless use of religious mythology to, in my view, zinch up a story that was too complicated to end under the assumptions it worked with. But I guess it was to be expected because only religion is good at the business of answering all questions. If they both had remained philosophical/scientific exercises they would not have had closure.
Yup, I know the feeling. My disappointment came from one scene only at the beginning of the sixth season. They showed for a brief moment the island at the bottom of the sea. Already the island had been made to disappear, so this is not a usual geological structure. So it disappears into thin air but is destroyed by a bomb?
Had they left that out then one could imagine that the island had been repositioned again, with all the people, somewhere in the real world. The final defeat of the smoke monster would still matter. It would have even allowed for a side-by-side reality where eventually there is an awakening and a reconciliation between the two. Put the island in the bottom of the sea and this is no longer tenable.
Lindelof and Cuse flat out said that that hypothesis was not true.
Yup…the but that was not rule out for the side-flashes of season 6. I guess the took the road suggested by the fans.
“No, it isn’t…but on second thought we need to wrap this shit up somehow…”
Season 6 was actually very smartly conceived in the sense that it made you think something else entirely was going on.
Season 5 ended with them dropping the hydrogen bomb down that hole with the hope that this would erase everything they went trough. I don’t remember the specifics but they would supposedly go back in time and it would be as if they never crashed on the island and met each other. The plane would just fly to its destination as planned.
When Season 6 started you see two different timelines, the continuation of the last episode of the season 5 ( everyone is on the island, bomb didn’t work and so forth) and a second storyline where everyone is off the island leading completely different lives never having met each other. You are left thinking that the hydrogen bomb created an alternative reality. This would be coherent with theories about time-traveling and some interpretations of quantum mechanics.
But in reality everything that was happening off-island, that entire storyline was not happening simultaneously with the on-island stuff. It was the future so to speak. The on-island timeline was the present and the off-island timeline happened after all the on-island stuff. Of course, we also learned in the final episode that that “alternative” timeline was a purgotary-like place created by the minds of the characters because they still hadn’t accepted and come to terms with everything that had happened on the island. So in a sense, it was not the future. It was a timeless place. I remember that even Jack’s father said something along those lines when he was telling the truth to Jack. That there was no time in that place.
In Buddhism and other religions there is this belief in “past lives”. The on-island stuff was probably, like you said, a break in the continuium. Did it create a warp in space?, another layer, another jump but now between the layers of the multi-verse? Perhaps…
It might be that they were co-opting the mythology of past lives as not rememberances of the past but of other dimensions. Perhaps there are more than one of you and under some circumstances the consciousness of one becomes available to the other. But then why would they need to go into the light etc? Maybe because it is not intended? Maybe like anti-matter, the relation to matter obliterates something. Who knows because in an imagined dimension there could be distinct laws of nature.
You all realize that the ending allows for a spin off. And yea the ending was not good. I followed it too, I missed a season though.
No spin-off was ever intended.