Lost in Thought

After reading some reviews and blog posts about Sunday's series finale of Lost, it almost seems blasphemous to admit finding it a satisfying conclusion. But I'm one of those folks who watched the show from episode one. The story of plane crash survivors stranded on a mysterious island filled with a smoke monster and the devious Others somehow captured my attention, and I was hooked. I followed their lives for six years, struggling to understand what the island was, why they were there, how they were going to return home.

Caesar and I watched not only the entire six seasons without missing a single episode, but also the 4-1/2 hours on Sunday. Once the final scene closed, I said, "What the hell? So they all died in the crash?" A little confused, a little angry -- I think quite a few other viewers saw the finale like that, too. We spent the next few minutes discussing what Jack's father meant, and then I remembered little bits and pieces that confirmed -- at least for me -- that what happened on the island, the hardships, the laughter, the battles, the love stories, were real life (for the characters) and that the "flash sideways" as the shows' creators called them were not a parallel universe but a kind of limbo for the survivors' spirits. A place for them to re-connect as the family they'd created on the island once they'd all passed on so they might move on together.

And yes, I found that a nice way to end the show.

Many questions created by the show remain unanswered, like what was a polar bear doing on a tropical island and just where the heck was the island to begin with? Some of these, looking back, seem unimportant to the story. Would knowing about the polar bear's origins affect the outcome of the tale? How about the island's locale, even though halfway through the series it disappears and pops up somewhere else?

Other questions do need some explanation: why couldn't children be conceived on the island? Where did the original Others -- the ones pre-Dharma -- come from? I want to know, but at the same time, I think as a viewer, not knowing puts me in the same situation as the characters. Those questions never do get answered for them, and even become secondary and tertiary to their survival on the island.

One of my favorite authors, Ambrose Bierce, wrote a few short stories in which a person simply vanishes while walking across a field or along a dirt road, in full view of others. He ends the stories at that point and offers no explanations. I like to think of Lost in that light, that perhaps the explanations aren't as important as the story told and the journey taken.

Now that the show's over and I know the ending, I want to re-watch the DVDs from the beginning, to spot the references and the clues and the in-jokes. Maybe the answers are already there.


Image from Wild Bluff Media.