L A S T L O S T REACTION

L O S T is over. I'll spare you an eloquent intro on the significance of it's passing; the finale left people puzzled and we need to fix that. There will be plenty of time for Herb to eulogize the show later, but right now it's up to me to help guide you through the sea of bullshit that's being written about the finale. I spent a lot (a lot) of time at work today reading the reactions from different media outlets ranging from prestigious publications like Time magazine, New York Times, this website, LA Times, Boston Globe, etc, to the many amateur blogs who had to throw in their two cents on what we all saw last night . To say that reactions were polarized is a big understatement. Obviously The End was never going to satisfy everybody. It all comes down to what kind of L O S T fan you are (and there are only two types): Those who fell in love with the characters (like me), and those who fell in love with the mythology/mysteries. Yes, most everybody is a fan of both, but when push comes to shove you're either a Man of Character or a Man of Mystery...

This finale appealed to the Men of Character out there. The Mystery Men wanted answers!answers!answers! Nothing short of a complete explanation of every major unsolved mystery would satisfy them. Polar bears (which was solved by the way), Dharma food drops, Walt's powers, the Source of the Island, Eloise's crazy genius, it all needed answers to these people. People like me, on the other hand, wanted proper, emotional, meaningful resolutions to the major characters of L O S T. That's it. A fond farewell. And the show delivered in a big way. If you haven't figured it out by now, I loved this finale.

I didn't care if it was predictable in more than a few places. It brought things full circle, and it gave one of my biggest pet peeves (the flash sideways universe) a perfect resolution. Let's be honest, there's was only way good way to explain Sidewaysland. It wasn't "a world where they never crashed on the Island," which many speculated about when the season first started. It also wasn't "a world where Smokey destroyed the source and succeeded in leaving the Island," which is what people speculated towards the end. Both versions would have diminished the actions and the impact of on-Island events. For all their craziness, Cuse and Lindelof were well aware of the one big pitfall with a Sideways universe: It could not diminish everything we've seen in the seasons before. Both timelines needed equal significance, and so the perfect solution easily had to be: life and afterlife. For the record, I don't believe Juliet's detonation of Jughead caused the alternate universe. Considering what we've seen, Cuse and Lindelof used that ending to make fans think that's where the show was going, so no one would see this final twist coming. Jughead's detonation is simply the Incident referred to by the Dharma Initiative later on. It's use in the grand scheme was not to create an alternate reality, but simply to access the energy needed to send the Losties from 1977 to 2007, a time when Jacob's days were numbered, where the candidates needed to be to bring about the destruction of the Man In Black.

Okay, I got off track, the main reason I'm writing this, the thing that constantly drove me nuts today as I read fan reactions, had to do with people's bitching about the ending. I love how L O S T can be interpreted a million different ways, but some aspects of that ending just should not be up for debate. People are out there writing articles criticizing the entire series (Huffington Post, you bastards) because they totally missed the point of the ending. And it wasn't just them, a handful of websites who lampooned the ending did so using sound and logical arguments, but the majority of the whiny piss pants out there denounced the whole series because they thought all of the castaways died in the 2004 plane crash. I was amazed at how many people believed this. In fact, I'm gonna need to number the Top FIVE Reasons Why People Hated THE END (reasons that are absolute shit. You're talkin shit, mate!)

1. Everyone being dead at the end meant they've been dead all along (killed in the 815 crash), making everything you've seen for the last 6 seasons the dreams of the Losties, or the dreams of Jack. (People can be such retards, I thought L O S T fans had brains (Huffington Post eat my poop).

2. Everyone being dead at the end meant that right after Jack succumbed to his wounds in the bamboo forest, Ajira crashed on the beach trying to leave, killing Kate, Sawyer, etc. (There's no way to prove this wrong, but come on, if they're gonna give characters like Sayid, Jin, Sun, Charlie, Michael, Shannon, Boone, Locke, and Jack time to die on camera with some resonance and emotion, they aren't gonna kill heavyweights like Sawyer and Kate off camera. I don't care about the wreckage during the credits, that was 815 wreckage you idiots. Someone hit the nail on the head when they said Kate's first line to Jack at the concert, post-awakening, "I missed you" or something had to do with with the long life she lead after the leaving the island while Jack was dead. This was the first time she got to see him in decades. The awakenings weren't just realizations of the lives they had on the island, or the people they loved, it was also the realization that they were dead. In Kate and Sawyer's case, they died long after Jack and Juliet, but still had to figure it out when the other Losties were figuring it out too. Remember, as Christian put it, "there's no here, now."

3. Since everyone was dead at the end, it didn't matter at all what they did on or off the island in the previous 6 seasons, rendering previous seasons pointless and the writers way lazy. If you believed this then you totally missed the point of the ending. They were all gathered together because everything they did on the island, every experience they had, conversation they had, every person they connected with, is what made them the people they are. It's how they all achieved redemption. Everything they did brought them to that moment, up to and including Jack's final moments with Kate, Sawyer, and Hurley. Live together, die alone people. Or in the case of Sidewaysland, die together.

4. If the sideways world was created by the Losties from 815, why were people not on 815 (like Penny, Juliet Desmond, etc) even at the church going on to Heaven with them. They didn't belong. Honestly, I'm not even gonna touch this one. Some people are just ornery.

5. Everyone being dead at the end is a lazy finale technique to begin with. This one really pisses me off, because these idiots totally disregard the fact you still have Kate, Sawyer, Lapidus, Miles, Alpert, Hurley, Claire, and Ben still being alive years into the future. They survived. In the case of Ben and Hurley assuming the roles of Alpert and Jacob, they probably lived hundreds of years into the future, maybe longer. The people in the church all didn't die when Jack died. Christian comes right out and says "some died before you, others long after." What part of that is hard to understand??? If the show were about Kate, more significance would be placed on her successfully getting off the island in the end, but it ultimately was about Jack's arc, and therefore the significance was on his death.

Stay tuned for further analysis from Herb. We'll probably break down the best moments of the Finale and Season 6...