If they were all dead then there should have been a bunch of bodies all over the place. I don't know what to make of it but I wouldn't read too much into it.
I wouldn't read too much into it either. It could have just been a last peek at the original wreckage at a quiet moment when none of the survivors were around.
I think emotionally it was a great ending. As someone else said, the "re-connecting" scenes were very dramatic. But as a cohesive storyline, it's even worse than the ending of The X Files. Like others, I took Christian's explanation to mean everyone died in the crash, so while the idea of "moving on" makes sense to me, what happened on the island doesn't.
I think that by making the entire series storyline so convoluted and mysterious, they backed themselves into a corner. There was no way they could have tied up all the loose ends. Even if they wanted to, they have a strong incentive to leave a lot of questions. Now people will buy the DVD to watch it over and over. If they had tried to wrap it up neatly, a lot of people would have been disappointed in that too.
Maybe the writers think that's brilliant. I think its cheap and something to say after the fact, when you just can't admit you had no idea where you were going with this. We should have known when Ben was originally contracted to be on for 3 episodes, and subsequently became what 'seemed' to be a integral part of the show. Flying by the seat of their pants....
They were always flying by the seat of their pants. I think there were always indications that no one knew if the pilot would lead to a full season, much less a series. There were too many redirections and false leads to convince me that they planned out the entire series from start to finish before Season 4, much less Season 6. Maybe they planned out where all the characters would end up a few seasons ago, but not all the details.
I forget where I heard it, but I remember finding out that Jack's character was originally intended to be killed off early on. When the character became too popular, they decided to run with it instead. Since the ending revolved heavily on Jack finally finding redemption and purpose, that would support the theory that the series wasn't planned out. So does Michael Emerson's statement that his character was originally supposed to be short-lived.
I have a few questions....So the FST was purgatory/heaven, and they all went there when the nuc went off? But they also jumped forward to normal time on the island, where some of them escaped on the plane (to go back to the 'real world'?), others died (namely Jack), and some stayed behind (Hurely, Ben etc)? Just to get my head round it.
I think the flash sideways timeline was always purgatory, meaning it didn't happen in any time, it just looked to the characters like 2004 Los Angeles. If all of the island events really happened, then the alternate LA timeline was just how the lost souls reconvened after ALL of them died for real (whether on the island or after escaping it).
Now...Why did Hurely say to Ben in the FST "You were a great no.2"? I realise Hurely asked Ben to help him, after Hurely was made 'defender' of the island....but why would he say it in the FST, and use past tense? I thought they all died and entered the FST way before Hurley said this to Ben.
Also...random but I'm curious. What was with the shoe tied to the tree, as Jack stumbled through the bamboo at the end? The camera focused on it so I'm assuming it was important?
Hurley used the past tense because he only arrived in alternate 2004 Los Angeles after he actually died, sometime following his tenure as protector of the island. All of the characters arrived in alternate 2004 LA after they died, but it was shown to us in parallel during season 6 as if they were happening concurrently.
The shoe on the bamboo was to remind us that this was where Jack originally crashed on the island. It's a visual cue to the audience that Jack is about to finally come full circle, that he's going to where he's supposed to be.
This is a great post.
*****
From the very beginning, Lost presented itself as a puzzle. Hidden and double meanings all over the place, connections between places and characters, all that good stuff. And all along (as I mentioned in an earlier post) the mantra was "All Will Be Revealed" for those that stuck around. Yet as the episodes piled up and we the viewers found ourselves deeper and deeper in the quicksand (too invested to stop watching, but not getting the answers we were looking for) all sorts of new people and places and questions were thrown at us with little regard for the stuff that came before.
In a way, Season 6 - with a whole new world made up as a lame attempt to tie things up - is the accumulation of all the teasing the writers did to the viewers.
Agreed. The people that are disappointed now seemed to have forgotten how many of the events of the show made no sense even in the context of the mysterious nature of the show. Once it became clear that they were going to merge science AND supernatural events, then all bets were off and we just wanted to see how everyone ended up.
One thing that I've been thinking about that I haven't heard many others mention. I think that their reunion in the afterlife is a reward for preventing evil from escaping the island and into the rest of the world. There is a lot of symbolism about the struggle between good and evil and the sacrifices to be made in that struggle. There was a very specific scene a few episodes ago in which Jacob seemed to say that the island is a cork that's keeping evil in, that if the cork isn't kept on and plugging up the opening, then evil will get out.
The Man in Black/Smoke Monster/the Locke imposter was the personification of that evil. The Locke imposter said repeatedly that all he wanted was to get off the island and that Jacob was preventing him from doing so. That's why he needed Desmond to pull the "cork" off inside the lighted cave. And that's why afterward he was mortal in Locke's body. When the Locke imposter died and the cave was re-corked, then the danger had passed, until the next time evil tried to find a way off the island, which was why Hurley had to stay there to protect it. For a while during the finale I imagined that it would end with Jack being the only survivor left on the island, with Jacob's brother and Jack playing the board game. And the Man in Black would have a "you just wait, I'll get my chance again someday" kind of a vibe.
I also wonder if all the Whidmore, Dharma Initiative, and nuclear bomb stuff was merely human beings mistaking something supernatural (the devil's potential portal into the world) for something scientific, like they were mistaking all the electromagnetism and such for some power source they could exploit; when it was really a magical gateway with a larger purpose. Ben understood that the island was special when he was with the others, and that letting Whidmore get his hands on it would be a disaster, but he didn't know exactly who Jacob or the Smoke Monster were. And Ben didn't seem to know what the island was for. At the end he seemed at peace with how things had turned out and that he'd found some redemption after spending his whole life trying to find some answers.
So I think that their peace in the afterlife was a reward, both for each of them finding their personal redemption and for thwarting evil's intentions against humanity. The Lost creators have mentioned before that they are big fans of Stephen King, especially "The Stand". There are a number of parallels between that book and Lost, including evil taking human form and a band of humans trying to stop him.
Anyway, that's what I've come up with so far. And I'm probably wrong.
