THE END - A look back on the best show on Modern Television by WatchingPreacher

If you haven’t noticed, LOST ended on Sunday. Now, the whole internet is theorizing, discussing and wondering what the hell actually happened, and wheter it was good or bad. Now, I’m not saying I’ll give you an answer to the big mysteries, but I will theorize a little about some of the unanswered (and answered) questions and what was the meaning of the final scene and the alternate universe.

Needless to say, I’m a little emotional now. LOST is over, and it’s been a wild ride, from 2004 and the crash of Oceanic 815 on a mysterious island with strange inhabitants, time-travelling, donkey wheels, smoke monster, hydrogen bombs, alternate realities and a light at the heart of the Island that can’t go out, before everyone basically went into the afterlife together in a New-Agey, 70’s Dharma-way. But hey, I’m actually not complaining; when I watched the ending, with Jack’s eye closing and the LOST-logo on my screen for the last time, I felt… Whole. It was a fantastic wrap-up to the greatest show on Modern Television.

What actually happened on LOST in the final episode? Well, I’ve read some theories and I’ve theorized a bit myself, and this is what I’ve come up with;

When Desmond took out the big cork out of the cave-floor, all the rules of the Island didn’t matter anymore, something that made Locke/FLocke/Smokey killable
The Alternate Reality happened after all the characters died
Jack died & Hurley became the new Jacob, making Benjamin Linus his Richard Alpert

Then to the more pressing matters at hand - what the hell happened to the people that flew off the island? And what was the Alternate Reality really?

This is the most discussed questions at the moment, and I have an answer to both. The people that flew off the island lived till they died - the Island was done with them. Needless to say, they lived pretty bad lives; Kate without her «soulmate» Jack, Sawyer without his «soulmate» Juliet. But none of that really mattered. It wasn’t part of the story.

Now to the Alternate Reality, or Afterlife. After the series finale, many have been saying things like «So, nothing that happened on the Island mattered?», «It was purgatory all along?» and «If the Alternate Reality is really the Afterlife, what did the hydrogen bomb really do?». Well, once and for all - THE THINGS ON THE ISLAND MATTERED! It was the story of these characters, their destiny and their purpose, it was the story of how they sacrificed their lives and did things that they will forever be remembered for, to save the world from Jacob’s unnamed brother that wanted to destroy the Island, the World and Creation Itself (the light). So it mattered a great deal what happened on the Island. It was important, vital, for all of us living our normal life with no interference from the Island. And no, I don’t think that the Island is a real place that exists in the real world. But in this story, these characters saved all of the normal people from a great deal of pain. And that is, and will always be, important.

As for the «purgatory all along»-theory; it’s wrong. If anything was purgatory, it was the Alternate Reality. But that wasn’t really purgatory either. As Jack’s father said, «this is the place that you created together, to be able to move on». Or something along those lines. Anyway, what I think he meant, and what the Alternate Reality was, is exactly that - it was a place created by these characters, all the people that lived on the Island or ever interacted with it, was manipulated by it, interfered by/with it and suffered for it, a place where they could all live out their lives as they were «supposed» to without any interference from the Island at all. In the Season 6 premiere, we asked ourself what the significance of the fact that the Island was under water would play out, and this is the answer - it was a world where none of the characters would be manipulated by Jacob, Richard Alpert or the Island itself. It was a reality where the electromagnetism didn’t matter, where Oceanic 815 never crashed, where Richard Alpert’s wife (hopefully) didn’t die (or where his ship reached America or Australia or wherever it was headed); it was a world where they could live their life as they should have been, until they were ready to move on to whatever afterlife they deserved. It was a place outside of time and space, a temporary reality where they could rest and live without the interferance of electromagnetism, a button and a smoke monster, along with a strange light in a cave and a pair of foolish brothers.

As for the light in the cave, I believe that was creation itself, like Mother said in «Across the Sea» - it was «life, death, rebirth - everything». If the light ever went out, all of creation would stop and (as they did for a short time on the Island) all the rules of the universe (or our world) would end, till someone rebooted the light as Jack did before he died.

Then to the «What did the hydrogen bomb in THE INCIDENT do?»-question. Well, it produced the incident (as Daniel Faraday said, «Whatever happened, happened») and it sent all the characters back to their own time. That was its function. And, quite honestly, it made us understand how and what The Incident that produced the hatch was.

So Jack died, giving up his own life to save the world, Desmond, Hurley and Ben was left on the Island while Miles, Lapidus, Sawyer, Kate, Claire and a now-aging Richard Alpert left the Island on the Ajira-plane. The final shot of the series was of Jack, lying in the bamboo-field he first woke up in, with the dog Vincent on his side. It was a close-up of his eye, which then closed. The series was over, and Jack was dead.

What happened then? Well, my guess is that Hurley ran things on the Island quite different than what Jacob had done, especially with Ben as his Richard Alpert. I imagine that they created a new batch of Others, dedicated to protect the island. But who knows? What we do know is that, eventually, they all died. Hurley, Ben, Richard, Kate, Sawyer, Locke, Lapidus, Miles and everyone else. They died, and ended up in the Island-free temporary universe, till they were ready to move on, something that most of them did in the inter-cut scene with Jack’s father in the church, opening the door into the light on the island (Translation; the afterlife, life, death, rebirth, everything, creation itself)

As for the final confrontation between Jack and Locke, they were brilliant. It was the Man of Science vs. Man of Faith-discussion heavily blown up into saving the Island and protecting the light, as opposed to destroying the light, the Island and venture into a world that wouldn’t be there anymore. Now that the show’s over, we actually have to take this course of thought when discussing the finale - are you a man of science or a man of faith? Will you be able to look past the mysteries never answered and saying to yourself that «It’s over, it was great and they went into the afterlife»? Or will you keep looking for answers, sure that there must be something you’ve missed, something that will make sense of everything, right untill the light-inside-the-church-New-Age-ending? Myself, I’m a Man of Faith, at least when it comes to LOST. I believe that the light represented creation itself; life, death, rebirth, and every rule our universe needs to work. I believe that they created the temporary universe to meet each other in a world without the Island messing with them, to give them peace and see how it would all turn out to be. And I believe that, during the six seasons that is LOST, they managed to tell an epic and entertaining story about these characters and their experiences with this mysterious island.

Needless to say, I thought the ending was a fantastic, spiritual conclusion to one of television’s greatest mysteries. I have a feeling that some of my friends will absolutely hate it, but I think I’ll be able to convince them now, especially with some of these thoughts. As for the unanswered questions, really, did you think they were going to answer all of them? Of course they weren’t. And LOST, as life, never gives you all the answers - you have to figure some of them out yourself. And if you choose to search for answers, maybe you’ll find one that is of the utmost importance - Are you really a Man of Science…

Or a Man of Faith?