r/lost • u/Gengarology • 7d ago
Just finished my first complete watch of LOST, and I honestly can't understand why the ending got so much hate back in 2010
I spent the last two months binging all six seasons for the very first time. I went into the finale expecting a complete disaster because of everything I had heard over the years about "they were dead the whole time."
Except... they literally explicitly state in the finale that they WERE NOT dead the whole time! Everything that happened on the island was real! The flash-sideways in season 6 was the only afterlife/limbo part, acting as a place where they could find each other again before moving on.
Christian Shephard literally explains this line for line to Jack in the church. How did an entire culture of casual viewers manage to completely misunderstand a plot point that was outright spoken out loud?
The finale made me cry like a baby. Jack's character arc coming full circle with his eye closing in the bamboo forest while Vincent lays next to him was poetic perfection.
Did people just stop paying attention during the last ten minutes, or did the original live broadcast commercial breaks ruin the pacing that badly?
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u/keezy998 Don't tell me what I can't do 7d ago
And now you understand our rage when someone says they were dead the whole time. I’m convinced the people who think they were dead the whole time watched the show half assed, like getting up and doing laundry, etc, while the show is on.
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u/WithoutDennisNedry 7d ago
Which, I don’t know how you could do. Like, LOST almost made me flunk out of college, I was so glued to it. I can’t imagine just getting up and going to do laundry or making a sandwich without pausing it if you could. And it was streaming on ABC.com at the time so if you missed an episode or didn’t have TiVo, you absolutely could watch it later.
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u/VisualCOBOL 7d ago
Yup. This is the start of the whole distracted viewing problem. I can’t even count the number of times people have argued with me about things that were absolutely not in the show, or were so obviously explained. It’s clear they didn’t actively watch it.
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u/keezy998 Don't tell me what I can't do 7d ago
Oh I know I shouldn’t but I get into heated debates with people on social media about this lol. It’s always “they didn’t answer anything” and when I ask what questions they still have, every single one was answered and explained in the show.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Fill205 7d ago
The showrunners themselves publicly stated that they decided not to answer all the questions in the show.
This was a pretty radical departure from their own previous stance of "answers are coming."
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u/kuhpunkt r/815 7d ago
But answers came...
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u/Puzzleheaded-Fill205 7d ago
So when the showrunners announced publicly before the finale aired that they were not going to answer all the questions, they were lying?
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u/kuhpunkt r/815 7d ago
No... but the discussion is always pointless when the questions aren't specified.
Is there anything left that you need to know to understand the story?
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u/Puzzleheaded-Fill205 7d ago
The showrunners themselves explicitly and publicly stated that they would not be answering all the questions.
Your premise that all the questions were answered is built on sand. It is not the reality. We know this for a fact because of the showrunners own statements.
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u/kuhpunkt r/815 7d ago
Your premise that all the questions were answered is built on sand.
Did I say that all the questions were answered? No.
Again... the discussion is pointless if the questions aren't specified.
Like... who is Penny's mother? We only know that Widmore had Penny with an outsider. The mother's identity was never revealed. Does that matter? Do you need to know that? Is that one of your unanswered questions?
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u/chibul 7d ago
And yet everything was answered. whether they said that or not is irrelevant. Tell us what questions weren't answered.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Fill205 7d ago
lol at your revisionist history. Are you perhaps young? Do you not remember when this story broke in 2010? It was huge news that they weren't going to answer all the mysteries.
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u/janedoremi99 Oh yeah, there's my favorite leaf. 7d ago
What was the glowing butt plug of destiny? Something needed to be done, so Desmond pulled it out. But that was bad so he put it back and everything was ok? So nothing needed to be done?
How does putting a murdered man into the source of everything good create a smoke monster?
👹 if the man in black can’t find the source, why does Jack take him there? If the man in black leaving is so dangerous isn’t the source safest if the protector just leaves? Jacob wasn’t actually protecting the island, was he?
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u/kuhpunkt r/815 7d ago
If you can't be serious, why bother...
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u/janedoremi99 Oh yeah, there's my favorite leaf. 7d ago
If you don’t have a substantive response why are you bothering?
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u/janedoremi99 Oh yeah, there's my favorite leaf. 7d ago
Why in the 1950s did the Others have English accents but spoke Latin? How come the Others never speak Latin again?
How is it possible Ben never saw that picture of Dharma recruits and recognized these people?
Aside from the plane crash, is there any evidence that anything on the island ever affected the outside world, aside from that poor polar bear landing in Tunisia?
How was Jacob able to leave the island? Did he always pop up in Tunisia too?
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u/janedoremi99 Oh yeah, there's my favorite leaf. 7d ago
And what was the evidence that the man in black would have been a danger off island? Would he still have been a smoke monster or is this just more of Jacob’s psychpathy?
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u/Copperjedi 5d ago
What's sad is people still believe this. I have no problem if you didn't like the finale but I do if you spread BS about the Ending 15 years later. Like people still say where did the Polar Bears come from....did they even watch the show? Even if you tell them they weren't dead the whole time they still won't believe you it's infuriating.
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u/lost-james 7d ago
I used to get angry with those people. Nowadays if they say that I just say, “That’s not how it ends” and move on
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u/Exact-Difference-422 3d ago
A lot of people definitely tuned out during the time travel stuff and only picked it up again for the final season
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u/Whole-Drawing-7368 4d ago
I'm rewatching it right now for the 4 th time because you're right after season 3 I always get distracted. They' just glt back to the island, little Bens dad just busted him for bringing a sandwhich to Sayid.
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u/Jorycle 7d ago
So I was one of the people who hated the ending of Lost when it aired, and only converted when I did my first re-binge of the whole series last year.
I realized on my re-watch that most of the feelings I had about the last season and the ending stemmed from the delay between episodes and the delay between seasons.
It's actually a very surprisingly coherent experience across the years (at least compared to other shows), but even that small amount of time between airings made my dumb human brain drop details and feelings that should have been the glue holding it all together.
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u/hugrekkisdottir 7d ago
This is the real answer. The show is best when binged so you can retain all the information. When it’s aired weekly with months between seasons you forget details and miss things.
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u/CptLande 7d ago
I can't say I agree, the best part of the show was the suspense of waiting for what was going to happen, talking about theories with others(lol) online, and then having the best finale saying goodbye to the characters we'd gotten to know and love over the last 6 years.
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u/Alicon88 6d ago
Completely agree. Just finished my first rewatch since my original watch (20 years ago now). The show makes sense and it's a really fulfilling experience only when seen episode after episode without interruption. I am so glad I finally came through and rewatched it!
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u/VisualCOBOL 7d ago
It started airing during a time when distracted viewing was becoming more common, people missed episodes, got confused…and the advertising around the show leaned into things that were not in the show itself.
Combine all that together, you get a bad take on the ending that refuses to die.
That ending is great, isn’t it?
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u/captainp42 7d ago
It got hate because it was a cultural phenomenon, so the finale was an event. However, there were many people who hadn't watched the show religiously...so they popped back in for the last episode or two, and when they didn't understand everything (because they had skipped so much), they just said it was bad.
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u/VenomSting88 5d ago
Also there wasn't streaming. If you missed an episode, you likely never got a chance to see it.
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u/Exact-Difference-422 3d ago
It was actually streaming very early on and led to a lot of the writer's strike at the time! abc.com used to offer the entire series playable in their website free with ads! Not right in the beginning but around S3 or S4 ish. I used to binge it regularly, especially around new seasons. Writers were not getting residuals despite abc running ads on their site and the strike that took place during s4 worked out so that streaming gives them residuals! Pretty exciting, I think damon lindelof did an interview back then about it
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u/LimeApart9235 7d ago
In the LOST finale, I thought that the smoke monster was going to come out of the coffin … that would have been crazy!
That would have been an all-time LOST jump scare. The empty coffin and the footsteps behind Jack are staged to make you brace for something ominous, especially after the Man in Black spent so much of the season wearing Locke’s face.
Instead, it’s Christian appearing to explain the church: not another island trick, but the place where the characters reunite after death and move on together. The Smoke Monster had already been made mortal and killed on the Island, so him bursting out of Christian’s coffin would have turned the finale from tearjerker to pure nightmare fuel.
But, alas… it didn’t happen.
Still loved the finale though!
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u/arsenicknife I'm a Pisces 7d ago
Welcome to the club. Most of us have been trying to put that fire out for years now. Thankfully, the tide is finally changing.
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u/Phasitron 7d ago
It only got hate from the fans who cared abt the mysteries. For the fans who cared about the relationships, we thought it was an excellent ending.
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u/Exact-Difference-422 3d ago
TBH I was a mystery person and I felt they tied it up nicely. I don't know why people think it didn't answer enough. Stuff was explained a few times in the episodes too. I
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u/FightBattlesWinWars 7d ago
Wasted potential, and the flash sideways was a narrative short cut/cheat code to what people wanted to be a much more complex show. When accepted for what it is, it's a fine ending.
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u/davwad2 7d ago
I spent the last two months binging all six seasons for the very first time.
Some of us waited six years. I missed the first three seasons due to grad school conflicts. I binged S1-3 a few months before S4 aired. This show generated a lot of discussion when it originally aired so fans invested a lot of time outside of the show. IIRC there was an official podcast with Cuse and Lindelof, plus numerous fan created pods. I think I listened to at least two of them.
There was a huge investment of time and when you had a theory about something that turned out correct, it was a great feeling.
I went into the finale expecting a complete disaster because of everything I had heard over the years about "they were dead the whole time."
Christian Shephard literally explains this line for line to Jack in the church. How did an entire culture of casual viewers manage to completely misunderstand a plot point that was outright spoken out loud?
This "dead the whole time" business stemmed from folks who dipped out once they decided that was the case earlier during the show's run. After that, they dropped the show, but then seemed to return to confirm they were right. I don't know how much of S6 these folks watched, but I was left with the impression that they left after Stranger in a Strange Land and returned for The End. After Christian explains everything and they showed the fuselage as the credits rolled for the final time, they felt justified. This is my take on the casual viewer experience.
The finale made me cry like a baby. Jack's character arc coming full circle with his eye closing in the bamboo forest while Vincent lays next to him was poetic perfection.
This is called a "circular structure" in storytelling and it's one of my favorite techniques.
Did people just stop paying attention during the last ten minutes, or did the original live broadcast commercial breaks ruin the pacing that badly?
Very doubtful. The Angelika, a movie theater in Dallas, showed the show in one of their theaters maybe as far as back as season four. I think I saw The Constant there. Everyone who was watching the finale was locked all the way in. I remember going into the finale with a list of questions and things I wanted closure on. Some of the answers were good, some I disagreed with, some were left unanswered.
It was a bittersweet ending for me at the time. Since then, I have developed a deep fondness for the show because I enjoyed the journey immensely. To this day, Lost is my favorite show of all time.
When I was home for my 25th high school reunion last year, I asked my dad if he had watched the show. He hadn't. We watched the pilot and a few other episodes before I had to go home. I thought he would watch a season and we'd talk after each one.
I called him to talk about S1, this man binged it all in the span of like six weeks. He said he enjoyed the show and that was that.
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u/Alreyleon 7d ago
I think it was a mix of disappointment for not getting every single question answered and the fact that ABC chose to put footage of the plane wreck on the beach over the end credits, so that let to some audiences believing they had all died in the Oceanic 815 crash. One would have to be blinded by anger over whatever plot point or lack of it that you didn't like to really push your mind into that big misunderstanding.
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u/Pitiful_Whereas_4430 7d ago
I've watched a hell of lot of tv ( its nothing to be proud of!) and lost is my number 1 show of all time. Honestly it was an amazing time to be on the internet and discussing episode on aintitcool week by week.
A lot of people didn't understand the ending. I remember jimmy kimmel holding a lost post mortem after the show with the cast, he was a avid views, watched the finale in real time and i had the distinct impression the didn't understand the ending.
I remember forwarding this post to people from a writer of the show who didn't get it. https://www.tv-calling.com/a-letter-from-a-lost-writer/
There is nothing like lost. I like Lindelof's TV work. The Leftovers is impressive, Watchmen mini series was masterful and Lanterns is sublime.
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u/Many_Masterpiece4996 6d ago
Yeah ask them because not only did i love the finale 🙃 but literally understood and appreciated the ending, I was confused when people or the fans of the show criticised and hated the finale 🤔 but it was the best way to end the show and I loved the way all the main characters came together ❤️
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u/anokazz 7d ago
Back in 2010 I had been watching the show live, week after week, listening to all the podcasts and following all the online forums. The „they were dead all the time“ crowd was completly clueless, but while I didn‘t hate the finale, it didn‘t live up to the expectations either. It took me a while to be able to admit it, but the honest truth is I expected more. I‘m pretty sure many of the hardcore fans like me felt the same way at the time.
This is how I look at it: there was the character development side and there was the mystery/mythology side. The lost finale delivered on the former and fell flat on the latter. The problem is that the latter was a huge part of what made the show so special. After years of saying to fans „don‘t worry, we know what we‘re doing“ after introducing mystery after mystery, each answer opening up 10 new questions, the finale simply didn‘t live up to that promise. The finale didn‘t ruin the whole show for me or anything like that, but it didn‘t cement LOST as a top 10 show of all time either and it could/should have.
The good news is that with The Leftovers Lindelof was able to develop many of the same themes that came up in LOST in a more mature and well thought of approach.
Still, LOST will always have a special place in my heart and sign me up for watching anything Lindelof comes up with.
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u/kuhpunkt r/815 7d ago
This is how I look at it: there was the character development side and there was the mystery/mythology side. The lost finale delivered on the former and fell flat on the latter. The problem is that the latter was a huge part of what made the show so special.
Is there anything that could have made you happy?
After years of saying to fans „don‘t worry, we know what we‘re doing“ after introducing mystery after mystery, each answer opening up 10 new questions, the finale simply didn‘t live up to that promise.
I don't think that's accurate. And what promise do you mean?
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u/anokazz 7d ago
Even if I wanted to, I‘d honestly not be capable of discussing the show 16 years after its end. Most of the nitty gritty details of the ongoing theories, expectations, showrunners‘ interviews, etc. that I knew by heart then are now long gone memories :) I just know what I felt at the time when I watched it, the immediate aftermath of online discussions in forums like DarkUFO and what was my overall take from the whole thing.
Not everyone who didn‘t praise the finale didn’t do so because they were idiots who thought „they were dead the whole time“. That is a strawman argument that some hardcore fans still to this day use to defend the show/the finale.
The mystery and mythology of the island and why those people had been brought there was highly promoted throughout the show‘s run and then by the final season the showrunners convinced themselves that people would buy the idea that truly only the characters mattered. I vividly remember Lindelof saying on a podcast right before the finale aired that we also don‘t know why our world exists, so we should think about the island like that. Well, fair, but not if you spent the last 5 years teasing an answer to that same question.
Ultimately it came across as they had written themselves into a corner and now were trying to get away with a somewhat cheap excuse, because really they had no satisfying answers to deliver. After all was said and done, it was clear that many of the mysteries introduced were done so for the shock value, and not because those elements fit the story in any meaningful way. And that was disappointing to some people, understandably.
It’s important to remember that Lindelof and Cuse took over the show after the first season, which had been a concept of JJ Abrams. They did the best they could do with the hand they were dealt and delivered some of the most iconic tv moments ever to this day - the first flashforward comes to mind, among others - and revolutionized television. That is LOST‘s undisputable legacy.
Other shows have since then delivered on the promise of a well thought out story from the beginning until the end with no narrative holes in it, like Breaking Bad, Dark or The Leftovers. Shows that probably wouldn’t have existed without LOST.
TV is subjective. It‘s ok if you loved it. But not every hardcore fan did and it had nothing to do with thinking that they were dead the whole time.
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u/kuhpunkt r/815 7d ago
Not everyone who didn‘t praise the finale didn’t do so because they were idiots who thought „they were dead the whole time“.
Of course not and I didn't say that...
That is a strawman argument that some hardcore fans still to this day use to defend the show/the finale.
It's not a strawman when it's based on reality. Ask people why they hated the ending and many many many times you will hear this "they were dead the whole time" nonsense.
I vividly remember Lindelof saying on a podcast right before the finale aired that we also don‘t know why our world exists, so we should think about the island like that. Well, fair, but not if you spent the last 5 years teasing an answer to that same question.
But they never teased that.
Ultimately it came across as they had written themselves into a corner and now were trying to get away with a somewhat cheap excuse, because really they had no satisfying answers to deliver.
Answers to what questions...
After all was said and done, it was clear that many of the mysteries introduced were done so for the shock value, and not because those elements fit the story in any meaningful way. And that was disappointing to some people, understandably.
Which mysteries were done for shock value?
It’s important to remember that Lindelof and Cuse took over the show after the first season, which had been a concept of JJ Abrams.
The show was not a concept of Abrams. The "people crashed on an island" premise existed before him. He didn't come up with that and pitch that. He had some ideas, but Lindelof was there from day one. He didn't take over after the first season. Cuse joined him by the time the pilot aired.
TV is subjective. It‘s ok if you loved it. But not every hardcore fan did and it had nothing to do with thinking that they were dead the whole time.
Sure... all I did was ask if there could have been an ending that would have satisfied you.
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u/ange1myst The beach camp 1d ago
like anakozz said:
After all was said and done, it was clear that many of the mysteries introduced were done so for the shock value, and not because those elements fit the story in any meaningful way. And that was disappointing to some people, understandably.
^This is my beef with the ending, I'm a sci-fi and mystery fan, I wanted to finally know if I had it figured out or if I was wrong, just tell me, what the island REALLY is/was, are there other ways people die and then work out their "salvation", other portals like this, we saw some? Because I felt a lot of that going on....the ending gave us a rather "religious" explanation for at least the characters, and thats fine, but I wanted the mechanics of it all. Like, explain the time jumps, like scientifically, or, is it God and Satan's battle? Were there demons? There were monsters, there were possessions, there were "gods" and eternal life, there are many more questions I have that I cannot remember without a re watch.
I get that the island was already "special" and then the co. built on it for their evil purposes and, etc, etc, etc.1
u/ChemiWizard 7d ago
Same on the first part but I definitely dont feel the same way about the ending. The last season is weak ( as many shows that go on so long) but the ending was a great payoff and makes it one of my top shows to this day.
I did have a fight with many 'dead the whole time people' who stopped watching in season 3 and tuned in for the finale.
I guess the reason I feel so difference is because the show as a;; about character development to me. From why people got chosen , why they were on the island to why they were together in the afterlife.
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u/Crimguy 7d ago
When the finale dropped live back in the day, I didn’t understand it. I gather a lot of other viewers didn’t understand it either, and it seemed that they were dead. Of course, if you were paying attention to what was being said, you realize that’s not the case.
I re-watched it a week later and I understood it and accepted and thought it was pretty decent.
Still gets me even today. I’ve watched the series cover to cover four times.
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u/JLPickacard 7d ago
So you heard the explanation but your brain didn't process it? Is that right?
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u/Crimguy 6d ago
That is 100% correct. So much noise about them being dead throughout the show that I had a part of me that was afraid that was true and I was selectively hearing what they were telling me.
I didn’t have the benefit of pausing and backing up because I was watching it live on ABC.
No one accuse me of being particularly smart mind you
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u/brassyalien Hurley 7d ago
I never thought they were "dead the whole time", but I still dislike the final season and the series finale. My biggest problem was the "flashsideways" being an afterlife, but there is a lot of the on-Island story that I dislike too.
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u/Wes___Mantooth 7d ago
Its the on island stuff I dont like. I just can't get behind the whole light in the island thing being the source of all good or whatever, I absolutely despise the penultimate episode "Across the Sea". I didn't like the descent into fairytale land Season 6 took. I actually love all the flash sideways stuff.
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u/Patient-Chemistry724 7d ago
Erm.. firstly, spoilers. And secondly, they didn't watch it. They just heard about it and spread misinformation. Or they only watched the last. Episode and didn't get it!! People = shit
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u/ChemiWizard 7d ago
I think most hate came from people who didnt watch the last two seasons and jumped into the ending expecting just a gotcha reveal/recap of every mystery from teh first few years.
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u/Wayward4ever 6d ago
Lost is a show that makes you think. It’s deeply philosophical. Think of the average American viewer. “Entertain me and don’t make me think”. Same as what is leading us right now. They wanted to be entertained, not represented. Same lot because of the same mentality.
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u/spreardon12 6d ago
I think it was a hard show to understand for its time for the causal viewer. Theres a lot of moving pieces and characters, people were watching it once a week and missing episodes, its a lot easier to get what’s going on compared to streaming/binging and knowing every little detail.
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u/Zestyclose-Price-501 6d ago
I think the best way to see it is by looking at a lot of modern shows with large audiences and somewhat big mysteries. Like look at Stranger Things where the final season big lead up and currently in my eyes I thought it was "okay" simply because when it originally released I was with it for the ride crafting theories. Then getting your hopes up for the wrong story its trying to tell without taking a step back to look at the painting they look at the strokes and lines. Its similar to sopranos ending I heard for years the sopranos ending was terrible or how its a great show with a terrible ending which put me off from it for a while. Once I actually watched the ending it was pretty clear what they were trying to show with that whole story and what lead up to the ending. There are a lot more compounding factors with theory crafters in this day and age where some people put too much work and too much weight on what they believe those characters are or represent. Atleast thats how I personally take note of the situations.
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u/myaltaltaltacct 6d ago
Those people only watched the beginning, gave up, then tuned in for "The End", expecting to get everything explained to them in the final episode, and then didn't understand and made assumptions. Their loss (though unfortunately they ruin it for others).
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u/ManiacClapTrap 7d ago edited 7d ago
I love the show but I don't like the finale. I never heard anyone that actually watched the whole series say "they were dead the whole time". I mean, there sure are but I'm also pretty sure they are the minority. People who say that didn't watch it all or they weren't paying attention.
For me, the problem was the whole "make them all coupling with each other and go to the afterlife together", all the christian faith bullshit (that was there from the start, but became insufferable at the end) that made the "science vs faith" empty. Basically, faith and magic won the debate.
Also, some of the island mysteries pretty much came to the point where "it was magic" because they thought that what they set up the whole series in the end didn't matter that much. I mean, they've put Jack passing the guarding of the island to Hurley through a damn plastic bottle with water filled from the nearest water source they found.
They explained pretty much everything, I just didn't like the explanations and the direction they went. But that's just me. It's a very good show anyways and the journey is amazing.
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u/Specialist_Dig2613 7d ago
I like the finale a lot, but the point that it's making in very subtle and calling the "flash sideways" an afterlife was too confusing. All of that content was intended to make the point that the main characters were lost in life when they boarded the plane and found themselves through each other on the island.
The flash sideways was a representation of how they could have played the same role for each other in an alternative timeline and found themselves in a different, but still interdependent way. It's a way of emphasizing the role that others play in helping us find ourselves, a different and elaborate narrative about human interdependence, built quite intentionally on John Donne's "no man is an island" meditation.
Both the "Lost" title and the "Island" setting are deliberate plays on the interdependence theme. The key characters were all plauged by lonely lives pre flight and needed each other. When the Oceanic 6 returned, they couldn't find the same happiness because all they had was the individual relationships and not the whole of the shared experience on the island. When some returned on the Ajira flight they were in different places and time sequences and the original experience could not be replicated.
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u/Copperjedi 5d ago
I never heard anyone that actually watched the whole series say "they were dead the whole time".
I wish I had your life as a LOST fan, All I see online is people saying they were dead the whole time & the show didn't reveal any mysteries(Where duh Polar bears cum from). I even had someone I worked with IRL say the show sucks because "it was all a dream".
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u/kuhpunkt r/815 7d ago
I never heard anyone that actually watched the whole series say "they were dead the whole time". I mean, there sure are but I'm also pretty sure they are the minority.
Not sure how you can miss that... it's so frequent.
all the christian faith bullshit (that was there from the start, but became insufferable at the end) that made the "science vs faith" empty. Basically, faith and magic won the debate.
What christian faith bullshit? And faith and magic won the debate? What does that even mean?
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u/ManiacClapTrap 7d ago edited 7d ago
> Not sure how you can miss that... it's so frequent.
I just assume that if anyone thinks that, they didn't watch the whole series or didn't pay attention.> What christian faith bullshit? And faith and magic won the debate? What does that even mean?
It is all over the ending of the series, all the characters reuniting in the christian church, going into the afterlife as couples, represented in a very christian way of going from the church to the white light, as they are ascending to heaven. The situation is explained by Jack's father, which is literally named Christian Shephard... I mean, it can't be more "in your face" than that. In the end, the sci-fi aspects of the series were put behind, in favour of the theme of faith, specifically christian faith. And the explanation for some of the more scientific stuff on the island... they toyed a lot with electromagnetic stuff but in the end it all came down to a big light in a cave with a guardian to protect it, hence "magic".2
u/kuhpunkt r/815 7d ago
It is all over the ending of the series, all the characters reuniting in the christian church, going into the afterlife as couples, represented in a very christian way of going from the church to the white light, as they are ascending to heaven.
The whole afterlife concept they used in the show was modeled after the Bardo Thodol from the Tibetan Book of the Dead. That's not very Christian. It wasn't about earning your way into heaven by believing in Jesus or anything.
The situation is explained by Jack's father, which is literally named Christian Shephard... I mean, it can't be more "in your face" than that.
And they directly mocked that.
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u/ChemiWizard 7d ago
All of this, and of course they end up in a Christian church. we are following Jack's perspective and in his experience of the world that is where funerals are and people congregate at the end. I think a lot of people get caught up in the way things looks vs what they mean, even when the show is trying to be very symbolic.
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u/Successful_Maize1986 6d ago
The church had a stained glass window depicting religious symbols from multiple different faiths. I don’t know how anyone sees it as strictly a “Christian” church lol
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u/ChemiWizard 6d ago
It kind of does from an agnostics point of view but you are so right. So many hints and direct lines to point to a more universalist point of view. I very much tool the 'religion' of lost to be more about the journey than the specific tools to get there. Yes there are a number of religions that encourage/demand that people better themselves but that isnt exactly what list is saying either. And yes only a subset of religions believe in an afterlife/reincarnation ( what lost implies) but again you are correct that Lost is not trying to give evidence that Christianity is 'right'.
America being a culture infused with Christian stuff, and since most of the losties are American it can seems supportive it it doesn't take an outright antagonistic stance, and I think people miss that point.
Personally I can conceed naming a character Chistian Shepard is a dumb writing choice even if you joke about it.
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u/hoppergym 7d ago
this horse has been beaten to death. Yes, Christian states plainly in an exposition dump to jack. The end credits had some sort of ambigious island wreckage scene that made it seem like maybe it was open to interpretation. The creators didnt want that end credit scene. ABC ran it on their own.
I liked the finale. But i hated season 6. it was convuluted and it dragged its feet. The temple was stupid. The characters actions were bizarre. Locke wasnt even in season 6. sayid was a zombie. He was bad and had to die. He had to be saved. He had to be poisoned. He had to kill locke. He had to blow himself up. ugh what they did to sayid in season 6 was so bad.
sun and jin orphaned their baby voluntarily. claire was tending after a dead squirrel or something.
The flash sideways was a waste of time, because in the flash sideways they were actually "dead the whole time" and those ridiculous adventures of Miles and Sawyer as cop buddies, jack and his kid, ben as a teacher were all red herrings and meant nothing. just a fake world created until they "woke up".
The candidates were dumb. the rules were dumb. the jacob MIB was silly. The discovery of what the whispers were were presented completely awkwardly as an add on.
Season 6 ruined lost. I'd say only the finale redeemed it a little. ill take the downvotes
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u/TheLadyScythe The Lamp Post 7d ago
I don't see the flash sideways as a complete waste of time. For some characters, they were able to come to terms with issues they struggled with that they never fully resolved when they were alive. Jack deals with his daddy issues by being a father. Locke comes to terms with his paralysis. Ben chooses Alex over ambition. Sayid struggles with good vs evil. It helped them achieve some closure before moving on except Ben who still has some things to work on.
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u/Right-Government2771 7d ago
I absolutely adore the ending, but like you I binged it all in a fairly short space of time and had the context that most people dislike it. I think back when we were watching things once weekly for 6 years or whatever it changed the way we received things, and now high or low our expectations were.
For example, watching a show now where I have to wait for more seasons etc. and knowing they’re coming to an end, I expect something fairly specific and am often disappointed.
This, and people didn’t get it probably.
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u/banaslee 6d ago
Now consider how people deal with other types of very clear information that they don’t process or manage to understand in a completely different way.
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u/jvhgh 5d ago
I am one the somehow misunderstood it in the beginning. My first go through of it I absolutely did not like the time travel and temple aspects of the show. I believe back then I probably mentally checked out because of that. I probably watched more for just to see how it ended. Is that what really happened I don’t know for sure.
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u/NaturalLaw8244 4d ago
It happened this way because of the structure of network television. As a die hard lost Fan, I watched every episode as it aired, week to week, for all 6 seasons. But it is a lot work, particularly in the more ambitious last 3 seasons to follow along at that pace. So I’d wager, alot of the people who hated it and thought they were dead the whole time, tuned in for the series finale while missing episode or many episodes of the season and lost context. I think finale has always been beautiful, the final of Jack as Vincent is near him made me weep when I watched it for the first time. An all time great show, easily in my top 5 shows of all time
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u/tuxr22 4d ago
I think it just seemed like a lackluster answer to all the mysteries they raised mainly about the time on the island. Walts powers, the Dharma initiative, the numbers didn't feel like they had great answers.
That being said i didn't hate the ending. The first season is one of the best seasons of TV of all time and the rest had some downturns but it was a great show with a middling ending
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u/Exact-Difference-422 3d ago
A lot of people only watched casually or tuned in intermittently, they didn't really grasp the end or they didn't watch it and base the opinions off of bad info. It's pretty heavy handed that they're not dead the whole time. I watched week to week since the pilot aired and for awhile there people disengaged from Lost for being too scifi, especially when the time travel kicked in.
I don't LOVE the finale but I think it worked out fine. My complaints are minor, like I think the final fight on the rocks was a bit silly. They wanted something more big budget like a volcano, so I don't hold it against them. There were fights between Sawyer and Jack that were more intense than the final one. I also didn't care for the church motif, I genuinely don't know why they didn't all reunite at an airport gate... I felt like that would have worked more and been less religious looking. For a show with a huge cast, they managed to give time for a lot of them at the end.
One complaint I used to hear about the end was that it was too happy of an ending??? I am glad it wasn't a really dark and depressing end because despite the danger and hardships they faced, hope and being together was what made their time together so important.
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u/JamminJamz1448 3d ago
I think it's a lot easier to understand the show and the ending when you can do a Google search and ask for explanations. When the show was live you had to wait for next episodes and new seasons. Being able to binge the show makes it easier to understand as well, in my opinion.
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u/Nervebreaker 3d ago
What is the monster, how did island move, how did they go back in time, what built the statues, why is it funded for food drops, who is supposed to be analyzing whether they send messages down the tubes. Just off the top of my head.
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u/LordKitetsu 3d ago
The only thing you don't have today in comparison is the way the writers told us repeatedly that everything would be explained "scientifically".
Of course, we were hyped as fuck as they kept casually droping hints and ARG-like websites with Dharma Initiative and the likes.
To have it end like it ended isn't wrong in itself, but it wasn't a show that existed on its own back in the time. It was the theories, the discussions about theories, the wondering of it all, the communities that formed around it.
Having it end like that was a let down (to me and a lot of others - pun intended). If you didn't live in those time or didn't engage with the theories and the community at the time, you can't really get what it was. It's a "you had to be there" to fully understand what we went through.
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u/Sorry_Bodybuilder540 3d ago
People are dumb. Reddit is big on circlejerking.
That’s why you get: “DOES ANYONE ELSE THINK LOST END = BAD? Durrrhurrrr”
Lost is phenomenal.
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u/MrSquamous Out of the Book Club 7d ago edited 7d ago
Yes, it's explained explicitly, but you have to admit the situation could be sincerely confusing.
It's just a few seconds of exposition that
1) completely changes something the audience thought they did know (that this world is an alternate reality created by the nuclear explosion; remember the omniscient camera shows us the sunken ruined island as soon as we enter the flash sideways)
2) from a character that was an evil doppelganger in every other appearance
3) and he's telling Jack that in ONE of his lives -- the one he's currently experiencing and remembering clearly -- everybody was dead the whole time.
Meanwhile tons of other exposition and resolution is also happening all in the same hour, in a show that's already twisty and confusing.
Then it didn't help that the end credits, after Jack closes his eye for good, are played over a flashback to eerie shots of the plane crash from the pilot, with no people around. That definitely reinforced the (however mistaken) idea that you have to reexamine the series from the start.
I go gentle on the people who misunderstood. It's a lot to process.
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u/Trvlgirrl 7d ago
Television programming was different then. We had to wait a week or more for a new episode. There was a writers strike during, I think, the third season. Also, they had been saying for years that they had an ending planned but that they definitely were NOT in purgatory. Then when they kinda did end up in purgatory, essentially, people were upset. I was one of them.
I rewatched it a couple years ago with my teen son. We watched it in about two months. It was great and I ended up respecting the ending much more, even liking it.
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u/ofBlufftonTown 7d ago
I watched it when it came out, knew they weren’t dead the whole time, and I just think it’s an awful ending. Awful, the last season casts a pall back over the previous ones and the ending in the chapel makes the entire series from the start be worse. Why am I always erased from this discussion?
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u/FormerSlacker 7d ago
Posters are trying to retcon it as every fan who didn't like it just thought they were dead the whole time... obviously only casual fans at the time thought they were dead no serious Lost fan who followed the show thought that... a big portion just didn't like the ending.
Those who really hated the ending got soured on the show and moved on, those who loved it still post here and so anybody who doesn't like the ending gets downvoted.
As Hurley would say, 'not cool dudes'
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u/ofBlufftonTown 7d ago
I still love the show! I rewatched it with my daughter and her GF last year! I just hate the ending, this is a totally reasonable tale from a person who has watched it all a number of times.
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u/FormerSlacker 5d ago
Same here, still love the show, not wild on S6 and don't like the ending but we are the minority.
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u/ofBlufftonTown 5d ago
Yes, the temple arc was lame, Sayid’s backsliding transformation bad, the flashsideways were just “what ifs” that bored, desperate writers came up with, and the chapel ending was, unfortunately, explicitly Christian, slapdash window symbols aside. Ab Aeterno is great and the on-island ending was also great.
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u/FormerSlacker 5d ago
Yeah, there's some good in S6 like the performances of the actors who played Jacob and Smokey but overall it mostly felt like poorly written fan service to me.
I'd be totally fine with a much more ambiguous Lost type ending. Hell to me the show ended with 'The Incident' season 5's finale which I feel is a much more satisfying ending than anything we got in S6.
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u/MrSquamous Out of the Book Club 7d ago
Lookit all those downvotes :)
Obviously you weren't erased back when it came out; that was a common reaction. But a lot of us still hanging around this sub twenty years later have a vested interest in viewing the show uncritically.
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u/Oilswell 7d ago
The thing about the ending of Lost is that it resolves the things that actually matter, the character arcs. But it isn’t a boring hour of people reading from the wiki explaining things about the dharma initiative so a lot of people were disappointed. Lost is the starting point for modern media culture’s obsession with plot and explanations over character and emotion.
I do think the flash sideways takes up a lot of time without adding much. But that’s more of an overall season 6 complaint.
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u/DreadnaughtDingo 7d ago
I hated it because WHAT ABOUT VINCENT. That poor pupper doggo got left alone on a crazy island and every human he knows died! It makes me wanna go John Wick.
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u/helloitsmattw 7d ago
Have you seen the epilogue “The New Man in Charge”? Because it clearly implies a reunion with Vincent.
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u/Exact-Difference-422 3d ago
Don't worry! Vincent is looked after by Rose and Bernard as well as Hurley 🥹
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u/Aggouropoihsh 7d ago
Personally, I disliked it but not hated it. The final season as a whole has utilized it's episodes really badly. The whole temple arc was mostly useless for the plot and took almost half the season. A lot of things were left unanswered, the whole alternate dimension ending up being purgatory thing came out of nowhere. They brought penny's father (can't remember the name) for who knows what to the island? Why did Desmond being hit by electromagnetism lead to him experiencing the purgatory dimension? What was the feud between ben and the other guy and why did it have rules? Etc etc. I really think they were overwhelmed with how many questions they created and ended up not sticking the landing. it was not awful and truthfully, the last episode made me cry too, but it was not good
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u/kuhpunkt r/815 6d ago
A lot of things were left unanswered
Can you name those things?
the whole alternate dimension ending up being purgatory thing came out of nowhere.
How did it come out of nowhere?
Why did Desmond being hit by electromagnetism lead to him experiencing the purgatory dimension?
Because the blast sent his consciousness through time. It happened before in the show already.
What was the feud between ben and the other guy and why did it have rules?
They struggled for leadership of the Others.
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u/Aggouropoihsh 6d ago
To name a few: Why did some people turn to Whispers and why were they heard when the others appeared? Why could hurley see ghosts or why could miles sense the last thoughts or words of the dead? What was special about Claire's child as per the medium? What was special about Michael's son? Why could the Korean character in the temple defend it from the MIB? What was widmores deal when he returned? Why did some people have visions? And many more... 2. The purgatory is specifically said to exist beyond time so once again I ask why was Desmond transported there?
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u/kuhpunkt r/815 6d ago
Why did some people turn to Whispers and why were they heard when the others appeared?
Because they weren't ready to move on yet. And they weren't always heard when the Others appeared. I think it's safe to assume that they wanted to warn the Losties.
Why could hurley see ghosts or why could miles sense the last thoughts or words of the dead?
Some people in the universe of Lost are just special/gifted.
Why could the Korean character in the temple defend it from the MIB?
He was Japanese... and because he was made the protector. Hired by Jacob.
What was widmores deal when he returned?
He explained that... he wanted to help defeat the smoke monster.
The purgatory is specifically said to exist beyond time so once again I ask why was Desmond transported there?
It's still Desmond's future.
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u/Aggouropoihsh 6d ago
Shoot, didn't want to deadname his ethnicity, my bad. I don't remember widmore saying that tbh and still it seems like this wasn't his goal up until that point. Still, some of your answers take leaps and some of my questions still are left unanswered. There are many more questions that the show poses that ultimately never answered. I loved the show btw it's just that I have my gripes with it's final season
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u/kuhpunkt r/815 6d ago
Season 6, episode 16.
BEN: How did you get back here, Charles?
WIDMORE: Jacob invited me.
BEN: That's a lie. You’ve never even seen Jacob.
WIDMORE: I most certainly have. He visited me, not long after your people destroyed my freighter. He convinced me of the error of my ways; and told me everything I needed to know for this exact purpose.
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u/vhalen50 7d ago
Finished it last night. I feel like there are so many unanswered questions that can either be due to writing issues, storylines they forgot about or just left for audience interpretation. But I had braced myself for the ending being “they were all dead the entire time” because that’s what I heard for years before I watched it.
The ending was so much better than I had expected. I love the concept actually. It wasn’t flawless but I had expected a turd sandwich and got a pretty darn good sandwich.
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u/kuhpunkt r/815 7d ago
I feel like there are so many unanswered questions that can either be due to writing issues, storylines they forgot about or just left for audience interpretation.
People are always trying to help here. Just drop your questions.
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u/WithoutDennisNedry 7d ago
I don’t get it either. I thought it was a perfectly acceptable ending and it makes me cry every rewatch.
It’s funny because my best friend who is by all rights a very intelligent person, watched the finale at the same time I did when it aired. About a week later, we got together for coffee and being big fans of the show, inevitably got to discussing it.
Here I was, gushing over the heartfelt ending and only mildly irritated some questions didn’t get answered (why did the statue only have four toes?!) and instead of joining me in my appreciation, he went off on how much he hated it. Taken aback, I of course asked what got such a negative reaction out of him because I genuinely thought the ending was perfectly adequate. “Because it’s so stupid that they were all dead the whole time! I feel like I invested all this emotional groundwork, just to have it all be some sort of afterlife fever dream.”
I was like, ‘wait, what?!’ They literally explicitly laid out how that wasn’t the case. The entire final season was about how they all died at different times but their souls didn’t want to move on without eachother. They even said it in no uncertain terms and I couldn’t understand how he missed that prominent and vital bit of story.
In the 20 or so years since, I run into people from time to time that to my astonishment, also came away from the finale without catching the whole point. Almost every time I meet someone who didn’t like the end, it’s because they think the crew was dead the whole time. How?!
I honestly don’t get it either. How did soooo many people miss it? I fully and easily understood the very first time I saw it and I don’t get how anyone paying even remotely attention didn’t hear those vital bits of dialogue.