The TV show LOST is known for having one of the most controversial endings of all time. Many people would go so far as to say it was the worst ending ever.
Those people are wrong, and I’m going to prove it.
If you hated the ending, it’s because you didn’t pay attention. And I’m going to explain it for all the peoples to understand, and we will be better off as humans when I’m done. Or maybe not. I’m no futurist.
Here we go with a comprehensive review (based on a full rewatching) of all six seasons. And, your LOST ending explained, obviously.
(If you only care about my analysis of the show’s ending, click here to skip to that part)
HERE’S WHY YOU’RE WRONG: The Intro
I’ve seen the series multiple times. Probably each episode five or six times, because I used to watch them live, then I had a roommate who used to watch them too and we’d debate the conspiracies over joint viewings. Yeah, we were nerdy. I ain’t ashamed.
I know the show, inside and out.
There will be spoilers below, obviously.
SEASON ONE
Many view this as the best season of the show, but I disagree (see below.) The first season is the most JJ Abrams-ish, for sure, but he was only involved with the show’s first 12 episodes. He stayed on as “executive producer,” but had little to do with the content after that. He was too busy Star Trekking and Star Warring.
The first season feels like a fictionalized version of Survivor, the most popular show in the world in the early 2000s. There are alliances and betrayals, just like on that show. LOST definitely seems like (at least, initially) an attempt to cash in on the success of that reality show.
Don’t get me wrong, the first season of LOST is great. From a storytelling perspective, it’s so clever, because you’re thrown into the middle of a situation (plane crash) knowing nothing about these people, and they nothing about each other. Just as it would be if you were suddenly forced to live with 47 strangers.
Then, you get the slow reveals about each person’s backstory, and a lot of it takes you completely by surprise… prepper and wilderness expert John Locke was in a wheelchair and worked at a box company? Sweet and super-hot Kate is a murderer? Schlubby Hurley is a multi-millionaire?
Opening these mystery boxes is sooo much fun. Much more fun than closing them (see below).
Season 1 establishes an important formula for the show. There’s a minimum Face Punches Per Episode (FPPE) quota, and if LOST falls below that, the quality suffers. It’s basic math. Season 1 has the highest FPPE, no doubt about it. It makes you want to click to the next episode as fast as you can click.
It’s interesting to see how this show–which started and ended in the pre-binge era–could be so binge-worthy. How they created something that had never happened before, and hasn’t really happened since (except maybe Game of Thrones)… 120 episodes to build toward a single answer… what is the island?
And in the first season, we only get a taste of that whole mystery. We meet Ethan and Danielle, the only two people we know of (so far) not on the plane. There are hints of The Others, the smoke monster, the Black Rock, the hatch, the polar bear. But all of it is vague and non-specific. Leaving the answers TBD for the future, and spawning endless discussions by nerds cool people like me.
It’s a wild ride, and one that’s hard to stop, once you start. Also, there should be a drinking game where you chug every time someone puts on or takes off a backpack. You’d get so hammered, bro.
Some other ideas for LOST drinking games. Take a drink when:
- Two people are talking in the jungle and someone suddenly bursts through nearby foliage and surprises them
- Someone gets handcuffed to something
- Sayid interacts with a battery
- Someone casually holds a gun with their finger on the trigger
- Sawyer takes off his shirt, showing off his disproportionately-large trapezius muscles
Seriously! Put those things away!!
Side note: it’s funny how all the people on the plane were wearing slacks, dress shirts, dresses, ties. If you’ve ever been on a Sydney-Los Angeles flight, you know everyone is in sweatpants and hoodies. Ain’t nobody sitting through a fourteen hour flight in a suit.
SEASON TWO
This is where it gets good. And when “Henry Gale” shows up mid-season, it gets really good. It’s my favorite season, i think (see below).
While season 2 lacks some of the immediacy and intensity of season 1 (fewer Face Punches Per Episode), the larger island story becomes intensely engrossing.
No longer are there vague mysteries and the possibility of other people on the island. Here, we don’t get any answers, but we get a real sense of the depth of the island mythology, as soon as we open the hatch and see inside.
The questions become exponential at this point. Deeper and more open-ended. Case in point: In the first season, the “previously on” segments are about thirty seconds long. In the second season, they’re ninety seconds long. That’s how much thicker the story becomes.
The hatch. The “question mark” station The Pearl. The orientation videos starring the guy who gives a different name each time. The four-toed foot statue. The others and their fake beards. The food drop. The lists of names.
Season two dives into a self-contained mystery of: what happens if we don’t push the button? The deep rift between Jack’s science and Locke’s faith begins to take shape. Also, Sawyer gets a haircut.
The cast grows in season two when we meet the tail section people. Which is good, because the continued flashbacks with the old cast are getting boring. Not as many reveals, just sad stories about their pasts. But, ultimately, none of the Tailies are very interesting, except for Mr. Eko (which is probably why everyone except Eko and Bernard are killed off by the end of the season)
But, any time The Dharma Initiative comes up, I can’t help but wish I was experiencing it all again for the first time. The mysteries piling on top of each other. So much fun to open all these boxes and ponder where these mysteries will end up. By now, you have to be the kind of person who can delay gratification to hang on, because it’s clear they’re not going to answer everything anytime soon.
SEASON THREE
As a LOST junkie during its live run, I consumed all the peripheral media about the show (back in those innocent internet days of the mid 2000s, before it turned into the cesspool it is today). One of those things was the LOST podcast featuring show runners Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof. So, I know that they had certain feelings about season 3. And that feeling was that they were treading water, because they didn’t know when the show would end, so they didn’t know how many more mystery boxes they could open, or when they could start to close them and bring the show to a conclusion.
So, did season three “tread water?” Let’s discuss its merits.
The cast in season 3 grows much larger as we see the whole of the Others for the first time. They’ve ditched the ratty clothes and fake beards and we see them having book clubs and dinner parties. Ben is a chilling villain who you can never trust anything that comes out of his mouth. Juliette is also interesting, because you can’t tell exactly whose side she’s on. I’ll bet the scripts for any scenes involving Juliette say “Juliette purses her lips” at least once per page. Don’t turn that into a drinking game. You’ll get alcohol poisoning.
They’re still using the “flashback” sequences that many shows have since copied (an episode mostly follows the POV of a single character, with interspersed and connected vignettes once every few minutes… think about it. You’ve seen it on a ton of shows since LOST). But these flashbacks are mostly not interesting. Jack’s tattoos? Kate gets married? Locke joins a hippie commune?
The answer to why Locke is in the wheelchair is great, or the reveal of Claire’s father, but the others, I could do without. Anytime any random person shows up in a flashback, my first thought is, “I wonder whose brother/sister/next-door-neighbor that person will turn out to be?”
Same thing with the island plots in this season. It’s a mixed bag. Starting the VW bus they find is dumb, but the reveal of the connection between Locke’s dad and Sawyer is awesome. The whole Ben surgery arc is incredibly exciting. The ping pong match and campaign to make Sawyer likable are just time wasters. Learning that the Others and Dharma Initiative aren’t the same people is a great revelation, and that they don’t want to leave the island? Having no answers is torture, and I love it.
Desmond becoming “unstuck in time” (like Billy Pilgrim) with his premonitions is nice foreshadowing for future seasons.
Speaking of Desmond, he’s great. So far, we’ve been treated to several romantic subplots on the show. Jack and Kate, Kate and Sawyer, Charlie and Claire, Sayid and Shannon, Hurley and Libby, Rose and Bernard, Locke and his knives. Many of them are sweet and sad and make this reviewer occasionally get a bit misty-eyed. But in season 3, we meet the best one, hands down: Desmond and Penny, the lovers a world apart.
Real talk: Nikki and Paulo can eat a bag of dicks. Sorry for my language, but I feel that strongly about it. It’s fine for a side character to pop up briefly (like the guy in season 1 who was concerned about a rash he had on his back), but introducing new characters as if they’ve been there the whole time is cheap.
So, is season 3 treading water? Kinda, yeah. People do spend a little too much time handcuffed to things, and there are too many episode plots that don’t contribute to the overall story. Blame this (in part) in the antiquated TV rule that shows had to have 22-26 episodes per season so they could run from November sweeps week to May sweeps week. If they could have limited this season to 16 episodes, they could have trimmed a lot of the fat.
Let’s talk about the finale. It’s rare that a book/movie/show can pull off a twist that turns everything on its head, yet still maintains credibility. The final flashback is revealed to be a flashforward. THEY GOT OFF THE ISLAND BUT THE SHOW ISN’T OVER? WTF? AND SAD JACK WANTS TO GO BAAAACK??? It’s genius, playing with time again, (because understanding the liquidity of time is one key to understanding the ending of the show.)
And the Season 3 finale makes up for all the slow moments in season 3.
But, then again, Season 3 only feels slow when compared to the breakneck pace of season 4…
SEASON FOUR
Season 4 is great. Action-packed and a high-octane pace. It rivals season 2 for my favorite. One argument would be that Face Punches Per Episode dips well below 1.0 in this season, but the story still holds your attention throughout.
Season 4’s flash forwards open up a whole new narrative structure. Instead of the “who are these people and how did they get here?” path the show runners took with the flashbacks, now it’s “how are they going to get where they will be?”
It gives the show a shot in the arm, a much needed new dimension of intrigue. Kate has a son? Sayid is a contract killer? Jack has a beard? Why claim all but eight died in the crash? Who is Jeremy Bentham and why do they care that he’s dead? What’s up with the fake Flight 815 wreckage on the bottom of the ocean?
The extra-island cast grows bigger, with Sideways Glancer Matthew Abbadon, Scotch Snob Charles Widmore, On-the-Spectrum Daniel Farraday, Ghost Whisperer Miles, Khaki Shorts Charlotte, and Margaritaville Pilot Frank Lapidus. We’re starting to learn how the island interacts with the rest of the world.
Back in season 1, everything felt high stakes all the time. A constant sense of danger. Seasons 2 and 3 strayed from that path in favor of a more contemplative and mythological tone. In 4, the high stakes are back, big time. This season was shortened to 14 episodes by the writers strike, which was probably the best thing that could have happened to it. No time for lollygagging.
Part of the renewed vigor also has to do with each character’s purpose. In season 3, it was as if they didn’t know what to do with Hurley, Sawyer, Charlie and others most of the time. In season 4, they don’t have that problem. Everyone has a job to do in the overall plot. People who don’t serve an immediate purpose (like Claire) vanish from the story.
Time becomes a big theme again (like the clever dual flash-back and -forward in the Jin and Sun episode), as does the rift between Jack and Locke. Two big things that will play in heavily as we race to the end, and an indication the show runners now could see the end in sight. This is what we want; no treading water. We want it to all tie together and for everything to have purpose.
And that reunion of Penny and Desmond? I’ve seen it a half-dozen times, but I still had to wipe tears from my cheeks.
SEASON FIVE
Legend has it that when the show runners negotiated the show’s exit after season 3, they wanted two more seasons. The network instead gave them three more. I’ve often wondered what they would have done with two instead. I think the first half of season 5 would have been appended onto season 4, and that conjoined season would have told the story of how the Oceanic Six both left from and returned to the island. Instead, we get that spread across two seasons, along with an extended deep dive into the Dharma Initiative and “the incident” referred to back in season 2.
So, the island has moved. Not distance, as you might expect, but moved in time. Clever. Up until now, the show has been a mix of logical action (people on a boat coming to kill us, weird island natives with secrets) and mystical stuff (the dead come to life, smoke monsters). But now, the show ventures into real science-fiction territory. Time travel.
Off island, everyone has changed. Bitter Sun is now cold and calculating, Oxy Jack is a stumbling pill-head, Slacks Kate is a mommy, Sad Sayid is John Wick, Hot Pocket Hurley is Haley Joel Osment (he sees dead people, get it?). And somehow, Goth Ben is still pulling the strings. All of these intense character changes, coupled with time-traveling stuff means season 5 takes a slower pace than season 4. It’s back to contemplative and mythological, which isn’t necessarily bad.
But there are still mysteries abound, and they’re still creating new ones. Locke is back to life? Why did Kate suddenly agree to return to the island, but refuses to talk about Aaron? What is Charles Widmore up to? Where is Freaky Faraday?
Season 5 is similar to season 2, even though the Face Punches Per Episode (FPPE) is dramatically below 1.0. But, like season 2’s constant tension about pushing the button, it’s the espionage and constant tension of the Losties living in the Dharma Initiative undercover, and wondering what happens if they get caught. And, Living Dead Locke, Sun, and Ben being thirty years displaced that makes it so intriguing. How will they unite the timelines?
Also, season 5 delivers one thing the show has sorely been missing for all these years: Hurley and Miles banter. Their time travel discussion is the best.
In the finale, we meet Jacob and the Man in Black, for the first time for realsies. Now, we’re getting an idea of what this show is all about.
And it ends with a bomb, and–in another tie to season 2–a big white flash. The bomb is another key to understanding the ending of the show.
SEASON SIX
In storytelling, a coincidence is often bad. The unarmed hero just happens to find a gun on the floor at the exact moment the villain is closing in. That sort of thing. There are a lot of “coincidences” in LOST, like Desmond showing up on the island years after he and Jack just happened to be running stairs at the same sports stadium in Los Angeles. Accepting this sort of coincidence–and the larger plot arc of the whole show–tends to hinge on whether or not you believe “because the island is magical” as an explanation for the unexplainable. If you do accept that, I think you love LOST. If you don’t, you probably gave up on the show long before the finale.
AND SO, HERE’S WHY YOU’RE WRONG
Note: I’m mostly going to skip the plot analysis and specific episode commentary for this season. Let’s get to the meat.
Because now we come to the end. What we’ve all been waiting for, after six long years. There are two main questions:
- what is the island?
- what happened to our Losties when the bomb went off at the end of Season 5?
The answer to the first question is mostly a misdirection. And, it began way back in the second half of the pilot episode of season 1. Locke, when playing a game with Walt, said, “it’s two sides… light and dark.” We’re supposed to believe this is a simplistic battle of good vs. evil.
It’s not a battle of good versus evil?
When we met Jacob and the Man in Black, Jacob was in white, MIB in black (obviously). You’re supposed to think Jacob is light and goodness, and MIB is evil. But this is an oversimplification.
Jacob is not the benevolent being people think. This is the person who could have stopped Sayid’s soul mate’s death. He almost drowned Richard. He’s been the architect of a lot of suffering.
Jacob says the island is a cork, and its main purpose is to keep MIB there so he can’t spread his evil on the world. I think this isn’t the real reason the island exists. Everyone talks about how dangerous and wicked the MIB is, but we’ve seen Jacob do bad stuff, too. They’re both petty and manipulative and willing to hurt people in service of their own needs.
Living Dead Locke says, “They think they’re protecting the island from me, when, in fact, all I want to do is leave.” Is Locke/MIB telling the truth? I think he is.
My theory is that it’s all about MIB killing the schizophrenic magical mother they share (which, she attacked him first, by the way). According to her, going into the heart of the island is a fate worse than death. So, “good guy” Jacob throws MIB down into the cave, and into the island’s heart, in a fit of rage. Kind of a dick move, Jacob. If I were MIB, I’d be pretty pissed off, too.
But now, Jacob wants to punish MIB until the end of time for killing their mother by keeping him trapped on the island, just as their mother trapped them both there and lied to them about nothing existing beyond the island.
Jacob’s purpose is not about saving the world, but a sibling rivalry.
As a teen, Jacob even asks his mother, “Why do you love him more than me?”
That’s what the whole show boils down to, and the great mystery of the island’s purpose. It’s a magical energy well, and Jacob uses its power to torment his brother because he’s jealous their mother loved MIB more.
And what about our Losties? Were they dead the whole time?
If you watched the finale and thought, “They were dead the whole time? WTF?” then you didn’t get it. They weren’t dead the whole time. When Juliette detonates the bomb at the end of season 5, it makes it seem as if time splits into two paths.
- Path 1: the island after the bomb, with everyone back together again in one timeline, merging 1977 and 2007.
- Path 2: the real world as if the incident had never happened, meaning 815 never crashed and it flew safely from Sydney to LA.
But, the trick is, path #2 isn’t real. It’s a figment of the Losties’ collective imaginations (see below).
Season 5 found our Losties living in two places: 1977 and 2007. Jack wanted to detonate a nuclear bomb, because he believed it would reset time, and prevent the “incident” that caused 815 to crash. He wanted to give everyone a do-over.
Detonating the bomb did not undo the incident. Because, as Faraday kept saying in season 5, you can’t change the past. Whatever happened, happened. The incident happened, 815 crashed. The Losties lived and (many of them) died on the island.
So, what is happening in fake Path #2, the season 6 side-flashes where it appears 815 landed safely?
In this sideways world, it looks like real life, but it’s not real life. All these flashes are about the Losties wallowing in this dream world before coming to realize they’re not supposed to be there, starting with Desmond seeing the flash of Charlie’s “not Penny’s boat” hand from season 3. He sees a flash of the real life he actually led on the island, not this altered and imaginary copy he’s in.
It’s a false life, and they need to escape it. To let go.
So, Desmond drives around LA as the Ghost of Reality Past, and he shows everyone they actually once lived in the real world, not this fake copy; the island world where Oceanic 815 crashed. That’s real life. This path #2 version they think they’re in is The Matrix. It’s a Star Trek holodeck simulation.
Or, as another way to look at it, this version they’re in is later. Much later. Maybe thousands of years, after they’ve all died in the real (island) world. They’ve all lived normal lives and have now died, and they need to find each other in this afterlife waiting room so they can remember their real lives, because they’ve somehow forgotten.
So, at the end of the last episode, at the church, when Jack meets his father and Jack’s dad tells him he’s dead, he means he died on the island, possibly a long time ago. Jack died saving the island.
He’s not saying they were dead the whole time, which is what some viewers thought it meant.
The stuff on the island all happened. And they were alive when it happened.
Jack’s dad says everyone lived and then died, and there is no “now.” This side flash copy exists outside of normal time. If it makes it easier to understand, think of the season 6 sideways copy world as Purgatory, and it takes place a hundred or a thousand years after the events on the island.
Frank, Miles, Richard, Kate, Sawyer, and Claire all escaped in the Ajira plane. They went on to have normal lives, then they died, and ended up in the copy world (purgatory) together.
The copy of life where 815 didn’t crash is a world they “built” so they could “all find each other.” A holding pen for lost souls.
Now they need to move on now and accept that whatever happened happened, and they’re supposed to be together before they move on to whatever is next. The afterlife.
Still don’t believe me? How about the show creators tell you in their own words.
This article also gets it.
And, if you disliked the ending of the show because they didn’t answer every single question raised and solve every mystery, then I can tell you this: you wouldn’t have liked the answers given if they had, anyway. Most of the mysteries were flavoring, not the point of the show. Think about it. If your complaint is, “but they never explained why Walt is special!” would it have better if they’d shown a flashback of Walt being bitten by a radioactive mosquito that gave him powers? No, it wouldn’t have been better than the default answer of, “because some people are just special.”
Finally, I don’t allow comments on this site, so if you want to agree/disagree, share it on the socials and tag me. I’ll be happy to nod my head or spar with you over various points.
And now I’m done. I’ll see ya in another life, brother.