Lost: final season (starts on 5th Feb at 21:00 on SKY1)

[Gavin_Leahy_Block]

I'm fighting with the Professah Byah block. I'm a little torn though, it was a fantastic episode except for what the flash sides ways turned out to be, but I'll get to that. On several occasions I did well up and that end with Jack and Vincent was masterful, but I wanted answer. I believe the moer i think about it the more pissed off I will get. Where were [spoiler]Walt[/spoiler] and [spoiler]Michael[/spoiler], not even an explanation given?

The result that the flash sideways or should that be [spoiler]upwards, was in fact some sort of after life pissed me off no end, that's not what I wanted from an ending. They all, except for a few, lived happily ever after in heaven. Give us some more answers instead of this. A bit of a cope out if you ask me. Still undecided if it was all worth while, might have to think about it a bit. [/spoiler]

[Van Dom]

Okay this is going to be a long post where I just throw out some ideas as I think of them, as a way of resolving stuff. And I'm not blacking stuff out. If you havent watched the final episode and are reading this...you obviously dont care!

I personally think the sideways stuff WAS an afterlife situation, more so than just Jack's life flashing before his eyes.

When Juliette was dying at the start of the season, she said "it worked". Why? Because she was clearly getting a glimpse into this other "world" as she faded away, the same way Desmond did when he was being assaulted by the electro-magnetic energy. The mistake both Juliette and Desmond made was they thought they were seeing another world in which the plane didn't crash and they survived and lived happy lives. What they were actually seeing was a glimpse into their life after death, they just didn't realise it. Hence Juliette thinking setting off the nuke worked and created a divergent timeline. It didn't. And hence Desmond becoming all happy-go-lucky about everything and thinking that once he went into the light it was going to zap him over into the other universe where he could hang out with Penny. That didn't happen and he was shocked. But the fact is both he and Juliette "saw" into the afterlife, therefore, it can't just be in Jack's head.

As for the island - who knows. It is a source of power. A source of godly power, or creation perhaps, or maybe the source from which humans came...it doesnt really matter that we don't know exactly what it is. It's important, and its important that that plug stays in that hole for some reason. Maybe it is holding "Evil" at bay, sealing a gate to "Hell", or just simply plugging off a massive source of energy, a blackhole of some kind, which, if left unplugged, would eventually devour the world,eat it up from the inside out and consume it. Hence the guardian, to stop anybody pulling the plug, a guardian who has been there since time began.

I'm taking it that when MIB was washed down into the hole, his body fell into the pit where the plug was and the energy wave ripped his soul from his body, turning it into that Smoke thing and casting his real - now deceased - body away. Why did that happen? I don't know. Because by murdering his "mother", MIB's soul had turned black?

So what did MIB want to do. Leave the island. Why couldn't he? Because somehow he was prevented from doing so by the island itself. It seems to me that what he wanted to do was destroy the cavern/the plug that was generating the light. It seems, only when the light was gone out could he leave the island. But Jacob was guarding it, and after him, there were all these candidates, any one of whom would also have hindered him and stopped him doing this. His plan, I guess, was to kill them all, and when there was nobody left, he would fuck a big lump of C4 down into the well and detonate it, destroying the plug, and setting himself free. That's all that makes sense.

Why did Jacob want to stop him leaving? Because he was "evil" now and a danger to humanity, and also, if he did leave, it would mean the plug would be destroyed and that was obviously a threat to the whole world. So it wasn't so much Jacob wanted to stop MIB from leaving the island, but rather he wanted to stop him doing what he needed to do in order to be able to leave (remove the plug).

Jacob did indeed pull a "long con" on MIB by getting Widmore to bring Desmond back to the island. At first glance it seems stupid, like Jacob only did it as a last resort, so if all the candidates were killed, Desmond could be used to destroy the island before MIB could get off of it, taking him out with it. This was just a con, there was no way he could do this. I figure he planned all along that MIB would get his hands on Desmond and figure out, here's an easy out, rather than throwing down a bomb or something, just get Desmond to go down and pull the plug, as he can resist the energy flow. Plug out, leash off, damage done, end of story. He leaves the island and whatever happens when the plug is out begins to happen. But as we know now, Jacob planned this so that when the plug was out, MIB would become "mortal" (released by the island, his smoke power gone), Jack could then kill him and go back down into the hole to put the plug back in place and die.

The statue? The lighthouse? All of that...well, we have no idea how long Jacob was there. 500 years? A thousand? Two? The egyptian statues and stuff suggest a long, long time. Lots of people would have come to the island over those centuries. Lots of communities may have lived there. Maybe tribes landed there and came to worship Jacob as a god, built his temple for him, and the statue in his honour. Then later, more scientific people may have lived there, worked with him to build the lighthouse. We really dont know! But it has been going on for thousands of years I would say. Remember when MIB tried to get Ricardos to kill Jacob. The plan failed and Richard went to the "good" side. Jacob comes along and give MIB a white stone, symbollic of the chess-like game they used to play as kids, as a way of saying - I win that round! Fast forward to when MIB brings Sawyer down to the cave -there is a weighing scales on a table, on one side a massive pile of white stones, on the other nothing. Each stone represents an attempt by MIB to get somebody to kill Jacob for him. There was at least a hundred!!!!!! This has been going on and on and on.....

We don't need to know everything that Jacob and MIB got up through down through the centuries. It is there where all the answers lie. Its just not relevant to the story of the characters of flight 815 who ended up there.

[Mike Gloady]

"It was ALL a dream" - Mike Gloady, creative writing exercise book, aged 7.

Let me guess, that's what happened, right?  Should I contact my lawyer?

[the shutdown man]

It gave us the Jack Superman Punch, and for that I am grateful.

[Professor Bear]

FALCON PUUUUUNNNNNNCH!!!!
The best part was that it was taking place during the final fight from Search for Spock.

If it was all [spoiler]Jack/Desmond's hallucination, how come Hurley and Ben spoke about their time on the island after Jack and Desmond were no longer present to know what they got up to?  How was Hurley in the afterlife if he was the immortal bloke now?  Was Jack's imaginary son just an act of cruelty upon himself?[/spoiler]
Also, non-spoiler from way back - at the very start of the season, Jack is on the plane and looking out at the island submerged beneath the sea as they experience the turbulence that originally crashed the plane, and Rose tells him "You can let go now."

Nope, I'm afraid I'm fighting with "They made most of it up as they went and decided to go with the least challenging resolution so the crossover audience who wavered at the idea of sci-fi instead of a glossy castaway drama could wrap their heads around it" block.

[dyl]

Great explanation Van Dom, works for me!

[the shutdown man]

Agreed Dom, I like it. Here's another good one I found on Reddit which I think answers it quite well too:

http://www.reddit.com/r/lost/comments/c7ov2/i_think_the_most_important_question_was_in_fact/

[Albion]

[spoiler]How was Hurley in the afterlife if he was the immortal bloke now?[/spoiler]

[spoiler] I think Hurley somehow died later on or decided to leave the island and quit as guardian and the reason Ben didn't go in the church was because he took over and is still there guarding the island. [spoiler]

[worldshown]

Another take on the finale, claiming to be the point of view of someone from Bad Robot.

http://lostmediamentions.blogspot.com/2010/05/someone-from-bad-robots-take-on-finale.html

[Van Dom]

Thats cool. It confirms what I'd already decided myself as to the reasons why Michael wasnt in the sideways world and why Ben didnt move on.

[HOO-HAA]

Bobby Ewing. In the shower. Kinda. On acid.

[Jim_Campbell]

Seen it. I'm OK with that, actually.

Before I get wrapped up in everyone else's theories, [spoiler]it seems obvious to me that the main 'Island' timeline was the 'real' one, and that the 'side-flashes' were a kind of bubble reality outside our conventional idea of time-space; a waiting room before the afterlife, in this case focussed on Jack ... a focal point through which the characters pass, seen here from the point of view of Jack as he inexorably approaches the moment of his death.[/spoiler]

To Prof Byah: Yes, there was an extended period in first few series of Lost where they threw stuff at the wall to see what stuck. It was strongly hinted at that a lot of stuff was being conjured from Walt's mind at one stage, for example. I would have liked to see a lot of that stuff, like the Claire's baby stuff you mentioned, brought back in and resolved, too.

Cheers

Jim

[Radbacker]

well that was ok, i agree with Von Dom on his assesment seems very similar to what i took away.  [spoiler]My mate just couldn't understand how they were all in the Deathdream if they weren't all dead yet but it is simple, Jacks father wa there to explain it to those that just couldn't wrap their  heads around the idea.[/spoiler]
Nice wrap up for the story of the survivors of the plane but not very satisfying in anwering alot of the island questions.  I suppose that might be intentional and we might get a movie or mini-series down the line that explains a bit more regarding the Islands origin etc.

CU Radbacker

[CrazyFoxMachine]

It made me crave for a storyline.

I've been watching the bastard since it started way back on Channel 4 and I haven't learned a single thing. It all takes place in an alternate reality where people don't need to shave or brush their teeth and talk in cliches and where things vaguely happening is a substitute for character development and actually explaining things.

This left me even colder than the Ashes to Ashes ending - this kind of series gives fantasy a bad name. BACK TO DR WHO.

[Van Dom]

It all takes place in an alternate reality

Mate, I really don't know what show you were watching. There was no alternate reality. It was the real world. It all really happened.

??

And "substitute for character development"...? Man..the whole THING was character development....the "storyline" (the stuff that happened on the island) was the superfluous thing.....In the end the whole, entire show boiled down to the characters and how they developed, formed friendships and built relationships with each other through the trauma of the event. I'm not with you at all...