LOST: I Don't Care What You Believe, Just Believe It

It all began with an eye opening. Anyway, let me say this right now so you aren't trying to figure it out for yourself based on what I write: I LOVED "The End." I certainly have questions that I wish had been answered (I'll get to them in a bit) but I think that LOST ended in a very emotionally satisfying way, and I feel like the six years I spent watching it (at 24, that's a quarter of my life) were enriched because of it.

The show has always been a science fiction show (you can't watch the pilot, learn about monsters and tropical polar bears and not think something is up), but it has also always been a science fiction show that is about human relationships. Over the past six years (three for the characters), we've watched the characters confront larger-than-life situations, but it has always been about how they collectively react to these situations. They are stronger as a group, but they couldn't help but fracture themselves. Sawyer was bound by feelings of ownership, which kept him an outcast in the group. Kate couldn't let herself get close to anyone due to fear of a past that didn't matter on an Island. And Jack and Locke, who could have been best friends in another life, were always at odds because they couldn't just listen to the other (or take the time to explain themselves). Even though the series pretty definitively came down on the side of faith, Locke still wasn't just "right" because he, like the Man in Black, tried to force his views and beliefs on others, especially those who didn't believe his ideas when he couldn't give a reason for them. Maybe Jack should have had faith, but Jack had to realize it himself.

So what was left for everyone to do in these final two and a half hours? Band together. Every single character worked together to defeat the Man in Black. Ben tricked the Man in Black into trusting him, and relayed information back to Miles, Richard, and an alive-and-well Lapidus, who went to Hydra Island to repair Ajira 316. Rose and Bernard saved Desmond, and Jack, Hurley, Kate, and Sawyer went to meet and destroy the Man in Black. When their group converged with the Man in Black, Ben, and Desmond, Jack and Desmond decided to "help" the Man in Black in his plans in order to turn them on him and destroy him. I think the only other time the entire cast was working for a common goal was the Season 1 finale (though here, Locke was against them and Claire wasn't doing much of anything, but still). Watching everyone work together was amazing, because they finally learned that they had to live together, otherwise they would be dying side by side very quickly. Oh, and it turns out that my "Ben and Hurley: The Series" wouldn't have been such a bad idea after all.

While the Island storyline was very action-packed, the alternaverse story was all about slowly getting everyone together, both physically and mentally. Desmond and Hurley slowly caused everyone to "wake up" and remember their on-Island lives... and their entire lives. Each time someone woke up, we got a quick flash of moments from the show featuring the character, reminding us of some of their greatest hits (to steal from the series). I think it would have been cool to see the lives of those who survived the series, but that would have revealed the truth of the alternaverse too quickly. It's funny, you see. I think that, after seeing 2 episodes all the way back in Season 1, my dad announced that all the characters were dead and that the Island was purgatory. I disagreed, stating that such a twist is now a cliche and the writers were smart enough to know not to do something like "they were dead all along" or "it was just a dream." For something like that to work, it has to mean something (for example, in Neil Gaiman's Sandman, even if something was a dream, it wasn't just a dream, it had real-world consequences). And I was right, the Island was real. They all survived the crash of Oceanic 815. It was the alternaverse that was death. And somehow, the writers made it work. The characters were all lost souls before they came to the Island, and they helped save each other. The alternaverse was a kind of waystation for the souls of the castaways to find each other again in the afterlife. Lovers were reunited, friends got to see each other again, and people were able to apologize to those whom they had wronged. The last 10 minutes or so, featuring about 75% of everyone who has ever been a regular on the show in the church, interspersed with Jack's final moments on the Island, was absolutely incredible.

As for the message of the show, as I said, faith clearly won out over reason. Had I known that would happen at the beginning of the season, I would have been slightly upset. I am a man of reason, and I have always favored Jack over Locke, even though both have made some very poor decisions over the course of the show. But I ended up enjoying the way the show dealt with faith. It didn't tell us what to believe, just to believe something (the church has a stained glass window with symbols relating to various major religions; by the way, does the wheel represent Hinduism because of the cycle of reincarnation, or was it supposed to be the frozen wheel that Ben turned?). Jacob had his way of running things that still caused people to follow him, but that doesn't mean that Hurley couldn't do things differently. And there will always be things beyond our comprehension, and although I think that we should always try to understand as much as possible, sometimes it's better to take a chance.

Speaking of things beyond our comprehension, I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't slightly disappointed to not learn the answers to a few questions. I really liked that the writers gave us just enough information about certain things to draw our own conclusions and make our own interpretations for various aspects of the show, but there were a couple things I feel needed to be definitively answered (although I have theories on them). I came into the finale with four questions that I wanted answered. The first was really the only one that truly mattered: Why couldn't women give birth on the Island if the baby was conceived there? The whole crux of the Others' storyline in the first three seasons was that they were taking children and people like Juliet because they couldn't repopulate. The second and third didn't really matter in the grand scheme of things: Who shot at Locke, Juliet, Sawyer, Miles, Daniel, and Charlotte while they were on the outriggers in Season 5 and why didn't Sun go back in time to the 1970s in Season 5? Finally, my last question wouldn't have been answered because it was the product of factors beyond the writers' control: What would have happened with Mr. Eko if he hadn't died (read: if Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje hadn't wanted to leave the show)? There is a great video on College Humor in which Jeff Rubin lists every single lingering question. Some of them I would actually have liked to learn, some are trivial, and some are the results of the television-making process, similar to my Mr. Eko question. Like I said, I have some theories about some of the questions based on the evidence we are given, though more of the answers I've come up with than I'd like to admit are "Jacob is magic and did it" (the big one is I think that because Jacob didn't like Ben, he punished the Others for putting him in charge by making it so that women couldn't give birth; we know that Jacob can "make" things happen, such as immortality, so why not inability to give birth?).

So this is "The End." Like I always say, it wasn't perfect, but then again nothing is (except Mad Men). But we got to look into the hearts and minds of these characters, and what we saw was beautiful.

Up next: Hopefully starting Rome before moving on to The Wire, and then a twin series on Band of Brothers and The Pacific...

LOST: The Final Countdown to 108

"The End" is nigh. Jack is the new Jacob. Not-Locke wants to blow up the Island. Ben is an asshole again. And in the alternaverse, there characters are going to converge at Jack's son's concert.

I have no idea how this is all going to end, but I'm excited as hell.

Up next: The end of an era...

LOST: How We Met Their Mother

If there was ever an episode of LOST to argue for being upfront rather than cryptic, this is it. The lies and not-quite-answers of one person led to immeasurable suffering not only by the two people she raised as her sons, but by nearly everyone to come to the Island since their birth. "Across the Sea" was the origin story of Jacob and, as we definitively learned (though many guessed this), his brother, the Man in Black (I guess I should just start calling him that instead of Titus). Their mother, who looked like she came from ancient Rome, washed ashore on the Island, and was "rescued" by a Woman, played by Allison Janney. After helping deliver Jacob and his brother, the Woman killed the twins' mother and raised them as her own.

As the boys grew up, she treated them differently, nurturing different aspects in each of them. She taught them that there was nothing outside the Island and that there are no people aside from the 3 of them. Of course, the boys learned the truth when they came across their real mother's people (I want to go back through the series and count how many times groups are referred to as someone's "people"). The Woman informs Jacob and the Man in Black that she wanted to protect them from the others (not to be confused with the Others, unless they are the precursors to the Others) because humans are corrupt and she is keeping them safe from such corruption (and yet one of the first things we saw her do was commit murder). She then showed the twins (and the audience) why the Island is so special: It contains the essence of life, death, and time, as represented by a glowing light. But she doesn't exactly tell this to the twins right away. She just gives them a cryptic answer. Soon after, the Man in Black (at this point the Boy in Black) learned that he has powers similar to Hurley and saw the ghost of his mother, who told him the truth about his origins. He decided to live with his people, but Jacob stayed with the Woman.

Decades passed. Jacob and the Man in Black remained in contact, and we learned that the Man in Black's goal was to leave the Island and see his home and other things that were across the sea. He confirms that the people are corrupt (greedy, violent, dishonest), but he stays with them because he needs them to get home. The create a plan that involves digging a well to get to the light and installing a wheel, which will eventually become the wheel used by Ben and Locke to get off the Island. When the Woman learned of this, she brought Jacob back to the light source, explained a little bit more of its importance, and asked him to become its new protector. She also told him never to enter the cavern that housed the light, because horrible things would happen. But she doesn't explain the horrible things that would happen.

The Woman also massacred the people to keep the Man in Black on the Island (yeah, she's totally not corrupt). In response, he killed her. But in response to THAT, Jacob knocked him out (she did something to prevent them from killing each other) and tossed him into the stream leading to the cavern so that the "horrible things" can happen to his brother. And that impulsive act of vengeance created the Smoke Monster. If the Woman had told Jacob what would happen, he would never have sent his brother in to be smokified. If she had been honest to her "sons," the Man in Black might never have rebelled. If only...

Up next: The penultimate peril...

LOST: Race to the Finish

Well damn. The final season of LOST has had its missteps and pacing problems, but I think it's safe to assume that we've entered the final countdown. "The Candidate" proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Titus is an evil, evil being, and must be stopped. There is very little room for moral ambiguity left, and the rest of the characters (I'll explain why I used "rest" soon) need to find a way to contain him.

At long last, Sawyer's plan to hijack Widmore's submarine was executed. After the group (minus Ben, Richard, and Miles, who are off trying to find a way to keep Titus on the Island) reached the Ajira 316 plane, Titus informed them that it was no longer an option because Widmore had placed explosives on it. So they go to the docks and take the sub by force. Jack, whose new zen outlook on life has convinced him to stay on the Island, awesomely knocked Titus into the ocean, allowing Sawyer, Jin, Sun, Sayid, Hurley, Lapidus, and Kate to get on the sub. However, Kate got shot, so Jack had to get on as well to treat her. And poor Claire got left behind, again, with Titus. Though she actually got lucky because of this.

When Jack reached into his backpack to get his med kit for Kate, he made the horrifying discovery that Titus planted a bomb to get rid of the Candidates once and for all. But Jack, although scared, thinks that they are safe. He believes that Titus cannot directly kill them, and that, if they do nothing, the bomb won't go off, similar to how Titus couldn't kill Jacob and how the dynamite in the Black Rock didn't ignite when Jack and Richard were inside. But Sawyer, who has very good reason not to listen to Jack's crazy theories anymore, didn't listen to Jack's crazy theory and tried to diffuse the bomb, only to make the countdown clock tick faster. Sayid, likely ashamed of having helped Titus for the last 8 episodes, sacrificed himself to try and save the rest of the group by taking the bomb and running as far away from his friends as possible. Still, an explosion on a sub is never a good thing, and the group needed to get off the sub as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, Lapidus was knocked out by a hatch blown off its hinges by the water pressure outside, and his current fate remains unknown (I really hope he made it out, but it's unlikely). Jack ordered Hurley to help the injured Kate off the sub, while he, Sawyer, and Jin tried to save Sun, who was trapped behind some debris. Unfortunately, she was also entangled in some metal beams, and no amount of effort by the rest of the group could free her. After Sawyer got knocked out by some falling metal, Jack brought him to shore, leaving Jin struggling to save his wife. Knowing that her death was imminent, I'm surprised that she didn't try to persuade Jin to leave her by telling him that Ji Yeon, their daughter, needed him, especially because the writers reminded us of her earlier in the episode. But now, both Kwons drowned, leaving the world holding hands.

In the course of one episode, three lead characters died for sure, and one most likely did as well. All that remain of the Candidates are Jack, Hurley, and Sawyer. Kate is with them, while Ben, Richard, and Miles are elsewhere on the Island. And Claire is stuck with Titus, who is plotting the deaths of his final three nemeses. Hope for the 815 survivors and their friends is nearly gone. And so we come to the last 4 episodes of LOST. It's going to be an interesting couple of weeks.

EDIT
Wow, I totally forgot to talk about the sideways universe, which surprises me because I had something that I really wanted to point out. The alternaverse plot was good, but what really got to me was how "sideways" the relationship between Locke and his father is in that universe. In both the Island world and the sideways world, Anthony Cooper was present when Locke lost the use of his legs, but his role couldn't be more different. In the Island universe, their mutual disdain for each other led to Cooper pushing Locke out an 8th story window. But in the altneraverse, it was their love for each other that brought them to the same place where Locke lost his legs and Cooper lost everything but his physical life. In this world, Locke got his pilot's license, and he wanted his father, possibly the most important person in his life aside from Helen, to be his first passenger, despite Cooper's fear of flying. Unfortunately, soon after takeoff, the plane crashed (Locke can't seem to avoid those, I guess), taking Locke's legs away and leaving Cooper in a vegetative state.

Up next: Origins...