08 June 2010

The real ending of lost:


There was a fake rumor that turned into a running joke on the Lost podcasts: that the show would have a mysterious 7th season, known as the zombie season. No one took it really seriously, but, in retrospect, the idea is worth considering. Maybe they did make a zombie season: season 6. Think about it: all the main characters in 1977 were at ground zero when Jughead went off, and those in the present were all clustered around the statue with the Smoke Monster inside. Everyone died and went to the alternate timeline/afterlife, but before their souls left the Island, they had a shared hallucination about fighting the Man In Black.

It's not a real theory, and if you think about it, it falls apart very quickly. It's just my rational mind trying to make sense of how disappointing season 6 was. Sure, there was the temple massacre, and the Richard flashback, and Desmond's "Dr. Manhattan" moment, but it just sort of fell flat in the end. The alternate timeline was pretty cool, and I'm not against the idea that it was the afterlife, per se; they just spent WAY too much time on it. They could have introduced the alt about 6 episodes from the end and accomplished the same level of emotional resonance. In the original timeline, the whole cork thing at the end seemed way too easy, and it didn't even respect the rules about the Source established 2 episodes earlier. Mother said going into the light meant a fate worse than death, and we saw it was true when the cave gave birth to Smokey. Jack, however, and Desmond had no problem. I know, Desmond's special, but you never got the sense that there was something special about his destiny, something he was "supposed to do."

It would have been better if Lost had ended last year, when Juliet hit a bomb with a rock. There are parts of the mystery we would miss, but if we have to suffer an end with hardly any answers, it would have been better to go out on a high note. How many series end with a huge cliffhanger? It would have been risky, and edgy, and we'd be talking about it for years. Did they live happily ever after, or did they all die needlessly tragic deaths?

This is how I feel now. I think I probably owe Lost at least one more viewing of the entire series before I pass my final judgment, and I'll try not to write about it here much anymore.

That is all.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

well said.

i agree with your stance on season 6.

the writer's, to me, got a little sloppy at the end.

to say they only wanted to answer the character's questions.. i have to say the character's wanted to know the affect of juliet hitting the bomb.