This will come as no big surprise to those that know me, but I knew almost everything that was going to happen in the finale before the episode aired. Part of it is managing expectations - the more prepared I am, the better I can deal - and part of it is being able to sing the "I know something you don't know" song. Knowing the ending doesn't typically ruin a good story for me as I tend to like the ride more than the final destination. In this case, I am very grateful that I knew the final destination ahead of time, or I may have thrown a shoe through the television.
I need to start by saying that I liked the finale. It was a good 2.5 hours of television that brought some closure to the characters that I had grown to love over the last six seasons. I'll never forget the kiss between Sawyer and Juliet, and I adored the look on Hurley's face when he went to Charlie's hotel room to drive him to the concert. If this episode had been a season finale, I would have been perfectly happy - knowing that more story was to come. But, it wasn't. This was the end of the series and this episode just didn't do it for me in that regard.
LOST was always a show that required me to suspend belief. How else could I watch an island with a killer smoke monster, time travel, Egyptian statues, and a magical man able to grant invincibility? My issue was not that the finale required me to suspend belief, I had been doing that all along, but that it was asking me to suspend thought. The finale attempted to distract me from its shortcomings with tearful reunions and an ending that had a strong whiff of Velveeta.
I'm sure some viewers got the ending that they wanted. But the shortcomings for me were the lack of answers, not just about the island, but about the "purgatory" story as well. Why weren’t Walt and Michael there? Why did we see the island at the bottom of the ocean in the Sideways timeline? How did Claire have a baby if she was dead? How did Eloise Hawking know what was going on all along? Why did Sayid end up with Shannon and not Nadia? Why was baby Aaron there?
In this final episode, the show didn’t only ignore major mysteries that once seemed essential to the plot, it also refused to answer the most fundamental questions of all: What was this island? Where did it come from? What was the nature of the power that it kept? Why did this power need so desperately to be protected? As Charlie asked his fellow crash survivors in the pilot, “Guys, where are we?” Lost was a drama based on science fiction with a variety of supernatural elements. In the end, it would have been nice to get some of those things resolved along with the romance and happy endings (cue the rainbows and butterflies...)
I'm sure some viewers got the ending that they wanted. But the shortcomings for me were the lack of answers, not just about the island, but about the "purgatory" story as well. Why weren’t Walt and Michael there? Why did we see the island at the bottom of the ocean in the Sideways timeline? How did Claire have a baby if she was dead? How did Eloise Hawking know what was going on all along? Why did Sayid end up with Shannon and not Nadia? Why was baby Aaron there?
In this final episode, the show didn’t only ignore major mysteries that once seemed essential to the plot, it also refused to answer the most fundamental questions of all: What was this island? Where did it come from? What was the nature of the power that it kept? Why did this power need so desperately to be protected? As Charlie asked his fellow crash survivors in the pilot, “Guys, where are we?” Lost was a drama based on science fiction with a variety of supernatural elements. In the end, it would have been nice to get some of those things resolved along with the romance and happy endings (cue the rainbows and butterflies...)
Although the finale episode wasn't all that I had hoped for, the series will remain one of my favorite television shows of all time. The final destination wasn't what I wanted, but for 6 seasons it was quite a ride.
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