[Warning: some serious spoilers ahead.]
I loved the first two hours and fifteen minutes of the finale. Then the show apparently went off the rails. Wait, was everyone was dead all along? Lame, lame, lame! However, the more I think about the finale, and read what other people have to say, the more I’m convinced that my initial reaction was wrong. Here’s my current interpretation of what went down in the season finale, starting with a little background on how we got here:
The first three seasons of Lost followed the characters in the present and flashed back to their pasts. Then, in Season 4, we followed the characters and flashed forward to their future off of the island. Season 5, of course, treated us to some actual time traveling. So what the heck happens in Season 6? The nuclear explosion at the end of Season 5 led us to believe that we were following the characters in two separate timelines. Wrong! Season 6 follows the characters in the present and flashes to what happens to the characters after they die.
I did not realize this at first. The finale stunned me because I initially thought that the island was purgatory. Maybe even just Jack’s personal Purgatory. That would have been terribly disappointing. If the island was Purgatory, then why did we follow anyone but the main characters? What was the point of all the island mysteries? Why did the relationships between the characters matter, if they weren’t real?
However, the show as a whole makes much more sense if we realize that the sideways world is Purgatory. That means that the island storyline from Season 6 was simply a completion of the island storyline from season 1-5. And the sideways world stands on its own, as the place where all the characters go when they die. (I can’t say it’s the future because it’s the afterlife and it doesn’t matter when they died; time is meaningless there.)
This interpretation is much more satisfying. So the island world was real? Then the island storyline was a terrific capstone to the first five seasons of Lost. So many great moments: the epic mano a mano confrontation between Jack and Locke (with an awesome cut to a commercial break), the escape of most of the main characters, Hurley serving as the guardian of the island with Ben by his side, and of course Jack’s death with Vincent lying by his side, bringing the show full circle. I give this storyline in Season 6 an A.
Sure, they left a few mysteries unsolved, and we never got a physics lesson on the time travel and how the island worked. But who cares? As someone else pointed out, nothing was lamer in Star Wars: Episode I than the fact that the Force was actually caused by something called “midichlorians.” Did we really want the season finale of Lost to end with a lot of expository quasi-scientific dialogue? Not me. I was happy with the focus on the characters, the end of the epic struggle with the Man in Black, and of course Jack.
That brings us to Purgatory. Unlike the real-world storyline, which was terrific, this one leaves me slightly dissatisfied. I can’t quite put my finger on why, though. Was it the fact that everyone was dead? Maybe, but that’s less of a problem now that I realize that the character were alive for the first five seasons and half of six. Was it the fact that it brought a religious aspect to the show? It’s hard to make that complaint when a major theme of the show since Season 1 has been science vs. faith. Nor was the religious aspect of the show sectarian. As the episode made clear with its symbolism (the windows in the church, etc.) it wasn’t endorsing any religion in particular. I say Purgatory, but really the afterlife storyline could have been any way station on the way to the next life. Heaven? Reincarnation? Merging with the universe? Who knows. Maybe the problem with the Purgatory storyline is that the details of what happened earlier in the season don’t particularly matter. (Does anyone care about the Kate episode?) On the other hand, this storyline had some great moments, and all the awakenings and reunions in the finale certainly delivered some emotional satisfaction.
I need to think some more about this. For now, I’m going to give the finale a split grade: A for the real-world storyline, B for the purgatory storyline.
No comments:
Post a Comment