The bomb didn’t work. This was the most underplayed revelation of the finale, according to Matlin. I agree, and I believe it was underplayed on purpose. For all of Lost’s insistence in the scripts that “whatever happened, happened,” the ultimate moral of the story is “whatever happened, happened—and it doesn’t matter.”
This disappoints me. Don’t get me wrong; I liked the finale as I was watching it. I’m always going to love Lost as a whole, as incoherent and sentimental as it turned out to be. I’m never going to wring my hands and say, “One-hundred and twenty-two hours of my life—wasted!” We all know that simply isn’t true.
Nevertheless, I’m disappointed with the last ten minutes of the show, particularly the new religion it created. Not only is this religion annoyingly conservative for my tastes, but it is so couched in fantasy that it is of no use to us, the viewers living in the real world.
The Life and Afterlife of Jeremy Bentham
I think the best way to approach the failures of the finale and the last few seasons of Lost is to focus first on one character: John Locke. Just as we never got the chance to fully understand and mourn the fact that the reset never worked—in fact, because we were never given the chance to understand and mourn the fact that the reset never worked—we were never given the opportunity to properly mourn John Locke, the original Man of Faith. We first learned that Locke had died at the end of season four, in “There’s No Place Like Home, Parts 2 and 3.” We didn’t mourn him then, because the identity of Jeremy Bentham was presented to us in a flashforward; John Locke was still alive and well in the “now” of the Island world. In other words, for all intents and purposes, John Locke was still “alive” to us at that moment. There was no need to mourn for him—yet.
We then saw Locke’s death occur on-screen in the middle of season 5 in “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham.” Again, we were not given the opportunity to mourn him, because it seemed that Locke had somehow been resurrected on the Island. How can you mourn someone when they won’t go away?
The last ten minutes of the finale, then, do not represent a final funeral for Locke and his dead buddies but actually a kind of awards ceremony for Locke. According to this finale, Locke, the Man of Faith, was actually right all along. In this final scene, the entire cast, including Jack, the one who had the hardest time letting go, happily acknowledged that John Locke was always right. This bothers me not only because I’m a Woman of Science, but because John Locke was evidently not right. His whole life was wrong, wrong, wrong. His misplaced faith got him killed, allowed the Smoke Monster to grab power, and almost destroyed the entire world. The show doesn’t linger on these pesky facts, just as it doesn’t linger on the fact that the bomb didn’t work (and in fact killed loads of people), because they might undermine the major themes of faith and “letting go.”
On “Letting Go.”
Murder and torture dozens of people and you, too, will get a whiny blonde girl in Heaven.
According to the final ten minutes, the entire show was about “letting go” (and hanging out with your friends). To get into Heaven or whatever that white light is, you need to do two things: let go of your psychological hang-ups and come in physical contact with a loved one/constant. Notice what you don’t need to do to get into Heaven: be a good person. Killed more than 40 people and stole a baby? Whatever, as long as you learn to forgive yourself. Did your insatiable ego lead to the deaths of dozens of your friends? Fine, as long as you get over your daddy issues. Blew up your dad? Strangled your friend’s dad? Buried an axe into the chest of an innocent Other? Spent so much of your life torturing people that you actually introduce yourself as “Sayid, torturer”? All meaningless, as long as you eventually “let go” of the fact that you used to be a terrible person.
So, why doesn’t Lost allow us to mourn John Locke’s tragic, epic f***-up of a life? Because, according to Lost, it doesn’t matter that Locke screwed up. It doesn’t matter that Locke’s actions got himself and many others killed. Ultimately, actions on Earth don’t matter. All that matters is faith and that happy white light and true love and puppies and babies. In short, Lost presents us with the nicey-nice wish-fulfillment parts of a bunch of different religions and ignores a major fact of life for non-scripted human beings: that, in real life, whatever happened, happened. Actions have consequences. Dead is dead.
I’m not a big fan of the Christian conceptions of heaven and hell, but at least they somewhat focus on the consequences of your actions. If you do wrong, you suffer in hell for eternity. If you’re good and faithful, you get to chill with Jesus for eternity. I don’t believe it, but at least it allows for some kind of real-world morality. The new pseudo-multicultural religion Lost’s finale provides is particularly crazy, because it not only allows for death-bed conversions; it allows for POST-death-bed conversions. (At least, it does for everyone except Michael. Don’t ask me why he’s the only one who doesn’t get a second chance in Sideways Limbo.)
Of what use is a finale like this, when it doesn’t mirror anything we actually experience in real life? Do we just want a happy ending because we like these characters? Yet, in most art, as in life, simply being likable does not necessary earn you a happy ending.
Or is it that we enjoy the theme of “even sinners get second chances”? I would be fine with that theme if it seemed like most of the Losties actually made good use of their second chances and earned their way into Heaven by doing good deeds. But most of them didn’t. Only Jack, Sayid, Desmond, Michael (!), Charlie and, arguably, Sawyer (when he jumped out of the helicopter) sacrificed themselves for the greater good. I’ll let Hurley come to my version of Heaven, too, because he was always a good person. The rest of them? I’m not sure if they’ll be allowed past my pearly gates.
If the ultimate moral of the story is, “If you live together, you get to die together, too, in Happy Shiny Sideways Purgatory,” then Lost still is kind of a failure, because these characters didn’t live together throughout most of the show. If we look back at seasons 2-6, we’ll see that these “best of friends” spent most of their time engaged in-fighting as their groups fractured into smaller and smaller rival tribes. Even at the very end of the show, Lapidus, Miles, and Richard decided to leave the Island without Kate, Sawyer, Ben, Jack, Desmond, and Hurley, in a “Screw them! We’re looking out for ourselves” moment. And it’s not like Kate, Sawyer, and Ben did anything to help Jack re-plug the Island. No, let Jack do it himself. If Jack doesn’t do this alone, they’d all die together. Live alone, die together? Wait a second. That’s not how the saying went.
Live together, die with a dog.
So, yeah, in the end, I think Lost pulled a happy ending out of its ass. If I had written it, the Sideways Limbo World wouldn’t have existed, and the show would have ended with the bittersweet ending of Jack dying for his friends. Jack still would have gotten over his daddy issues, he still would have “let go,” and he’d still have faith. The themes would remain the same, but they’d go down a lot smoother for some of us. Better still would be an ending in which all of the living characters actually worked together to save the day instead of just letting the White Male Chosen One do it on his lonesome. Then the “live together, die alone” theory would have actually panned out, because Jack would have died with his friends around him, happy that they could save the world as a team.
On the next page: an Overthinking Lost Bonus Feature! Let’s look back and see if any of my predictions for this show ended up being correct.
Throughout the Overthinking Lost series, I made a bunch of predictions. Some were justifiable and some were…not. Overall, how good were our predictions? Let’s find out:
Lost will be an inverted Lord of the Flies: YES
In this retelling Lord of the Flies, Locke will be the “Simon” character: YES
Lost will end with Jack killing Locke: SORT OF
The Island is METAPHORICALLY Purgatory: ARGUABLY YES
The show is Total Redemption Island, not Total Karma Island: YES
After every character gets redeemed, everyone will end up either going to a metaphorical heaven or the real heaven up in the clouds: VERY YES
The moral of the story will be “there are no answers”: ARGUABLY YES
And it will be a letdown: FOR SOME, INCLUDING ME, YES
The political system of the Island will ultimately become a democracy: NO, NOT REALLY
“Henry Gale” will turn out to be the Man Behind the Curtain: FIRST YES, THEN NO
In keeping with the Wizard of Oz theme, the Losties will learn they had all the answers inside them all along: KIND OF
In the battle between fate and free will, the answer will be free will masquerading as fate (perpetuated by people pretending to be gods): EH, KINDA. THIS QUESTION IS HARD TO ANSWER!
Sawyer, Sayid, and Jin are the hottest guys on Lost: DON’T FORGET ABOUT DESMOND, FARADAY, RICHARD, AND APPARENTLY JACK IN THE FINAL EPISODE
No fate but what we make! The hatch counter isn’t real: I WAS WRONG.
Jack is going to “go all John Connor” and try to alter the space-time continuum to get his free will back: YEP
Time travel’s gonna be big: YEP
The Island is important because it gave human beings consciousness: NO, BUT HOW COOL WOULD THAT HAVE BEEN SERIOUSLY!
The Incident/Dharma Initiative freed the Monster: NOPE
Walt and Michael will return home with no memories of the Island: HALF RIGHT
The Island needs a balance between good and evil: NOPE
Maybe the show will stop with the flashbacks already: YES
The 9 big unanswered questions will be answered to my satisfaction: 7/9 ANSWERED
At the end of season 5, I came up with five different endings that would resolve the show’s plot as well as the theme of science vs. fate
Option #1: The “Jack Self-Actualizes” Ending
Jack is the Man of Faith, Locke the Man of Science, and They Kung Fu Fight: YES
Jack will kill his father: WRONG
Jack and Kate will get married: WRONG, BUT THEY DO GET TOGETHER
Jack will gain faith in himself, his friends, and the universe: VERY YES
Option #2: The Childhood’s End Ending
Real Locke isn’t dead: WRONG
Jack will join up with Ilana, Richard, and Ben to fight Smokey: YEP
Science wins: NOPE
The Losties evolve to a higher level of existence: THEY GO TO HEAVEN, SO YES?
Option #3: The “John Locke Was Right” Ending
The plan to blow up the Swan works, creating an alternate timeline: NOPE
Jack will die to save humanity: YES
The power of love saves the day: YES
Jack hugs his dad in heaven: BLERGH YES
Sun and Jin are reunited with Ji-Yeon: NO (And isn’t that crazy?!)
Claire is reunited with Aaron: YES
Kate and Sawyer get together after Jack dies: DON’T KNOW
After the show’s over, Hurley and Miles work together as Ghost Whisperers: NO
Option #4: The Power of Love Ending
Real Locke is dead, dead, dead: YES
Jack remains a Man of Faith despite his failure in resetting the timeline: YES
Faith and the power of love win: BLERGH YES
Everyone not in a couple will die: NO, EVERYONE DIES (although most of the people in Happy Limbo are in couples)
Option #5: The “This is What I Hope Happens” Ending
Real Locke comes back: NOT IN THE ISLAND WORLD
Smokey takes over Ben Linus’s body: NO
Science and faith reconcile: NO, FAITH WINS
Jack and Locke reconcile: YES
Whatever happened, happened: YES
Jacob chose these people for a reason: MORE OR LESS
Ben Linus will save the universe: NO (I’m very distraught over this, by the way)
Sayid will make peace with himself: YES, BUT ONLY IN THE AFTERLIFE WHILE SNOGGING SHANNON (?!)
Philosophically-speaking, Locke wins and Hobbes loses: YEP
The Good/Evil List
Jacob is good and the Man of Black is kinda-sorta evil: BASICALLY
Ben is not good or evil but doing whatever’s best for him at any given time: LOOKS LIKE IT
Eloise Hawking, ultimately, is good: IT’S UNCLEAR
Widmore thinks he’s good but is being manipulated by the Man in Black: NO
The Others are working for Jacob and are neither good nor evil: YEP
The Dharma Initiative did evil in the name of science: NOT REALLY
The Losties are flawed but ultimately on the side of good: YES
Christian Shephard is a good guy: YES
The Monster is either the Man in Black or some mysterious spirit whose origin is never explained: FIRST ONE
The Island is neither good nor evil. It’s just an Island.: YES
The Death Predictions (On-Screen, Island Universe only)
Ben dies: NOPE
Jack dies, and it’s the end of the show: YES
Widmore gets a redemptive death: NO
Christian Shephard will move onto the next world: AND SO WILL EVERYONE ELSE
The Man in Black dies: YES
Ilana and Bram die: YES
We’ll see how Pierre Chang died: NO (disappointing)
The Monster will not die but disappear: NO, SEE ABOVE
All of the Others will die at once in a “flaming arrow attack” moment: YES (by Smokey)
Juliet lives: NO
Sawyer and Kate live: YES
Sawyer and Kate end up together: NO
Hurley lives: YES
Hurley goes out with Libby: YES, BUT ONLY IN THE AFTERLIFE
Walt will be ignored by the show: YES (curses!)
Locke will live: NO
Locke will make peace with the fact that he’s not special: YES
Richard will live but become mortal somehow: YES
Sayid lives and does something meaningful with his life: NO
Lapidus is too cool to die: YES
Other Predictions
We’ll get a Richard-centric: YES
We’ll get an episode all about the Island: KIND OF
We’ll get an episode that reveals the origins of all the Egyptian stuff on the Island: NO
The “rules” have to do with time travel: NO, THEY’RE JUST MADE UP BULLCRAP
Free will beats fate: HARD QUESTION — I GUESS THEY’RE BOTH REAL?
Science and faith both win: NOT REALLY; FAITH WINS PRETTY HARD
The title “Lost” is both literal and figurative (my dad’s prediction): YES
Season 6 starts with Oceanic 815 not crashing: YES
The Man in Black will be on Oceanic 815: NO, BUT HOW COOL WOULD THAT HAVE BEEN?
The show says it’s black and white, but it’s really gray: HARD QUESTION
Jacob’s Smokey’s Dad: NO, THEY’RE BROTHERS
The Sideways Universe was not created by the Swan explosion: TRUE
The Sideways Universe is not an epilogue: FALSE
The Sideways Universe is an illusion: YES
The Sideways Universe was created by Smokey: NO
Lost is closer to myth than realism: YES, I THINK SO
FINAL TALLY: 56/97 correct (58% — Much better than my Harry Potter predictions!)
Epilogue.
I’m no longer a Lost virgin. In fact, quite the opposite. I’ve been in a nearly monogamous relationship with Lost for the past year. Sometimes things were bad, but, mostly, things were good. Still, I’m ready to move on and start seeing other TV shows.
I want to thank you all for reading and commenting here over the past year. This series was loads of fun, and it wouldn’t have been half as fun if our commentariat was not as smart, funny, and friendly as you all are. Be sure to keep visiting OTI in the future. Until we see each other again, thank you, namaste, and good luck.