Lost's End

So, between last night and today, one of the most talked-about things in the world of those of us who care a lot is the finale of Lost. Everyone has an opinion: loved it, hated it, didn’t get it, want more answers, whatever.
I loved it.
Whatever you want to believe about the focus of this wonderful show, the writers and creators (and hell, the show itself, did you even watch?) state that it is a character-driven show. We are supposed to care about these fully-fledged, realistic, deeply flawed, loveable and hateable characters. And we do, right? I do. I don’t know why you’d still be watching by sixth season if you don’t. I have opinions on each one of them. More accurately, I have emotions attached to each one of them. For some it’s love, for some it’s back and forth, for some it’s straight out loathing. And in the finale, I felt satisfied for each and every one of them. The point of all of them, as Jacob and Christian both stated in recent episodes (in case you didn’t get it yourself) is that they were going along in miserable lives alone. They didn’t have strong attachments to anyone. Sure, some had parents or siblings or something, but not one of them had real friendships, real trust with a single person. They crashed on an island and suddenly had to be a community, all of these people who didn’t trust others. And they had hundreds of trials, plenty of enemies infringing to try to tear them all apart. And, in the end, they found trust and purpose in one another. Yes, there were Others. Yes, the island emitted golden light. Yes, there was a smoke monster. Yes, there was electromagnetic energy. Yes, there was a group of hippie scientists that camped out there years ago. But those things were all just part of the journey that our characters had together.
You have questions, mysteries that weren’t answered. Of course you do. That was part of the show, and in large part what made it so brilliant. What was up with the electromagnetic energy? How did that statue get there, and what is up with the Egyptian stuff all over the place? How did Dharma find that island?
Maybe, while you’re asking yourself all of these questions, you should ask yourself one more. No, it’s not how would they tell you the answers? Or even do they have answers for these questions? It’s simple: Who, of the characters, would know these answers? Think about the show. Every episode we followed around one or more characters, in their island lives, in their past lives, in their future lives, in their sideways “lives.” So, who would we follow around to get the answers to your big questions? We had to make Jacob and the Man in Black, AKA Smoke Monster, into characters in order to get some questions to the island’s mythology. And guess what? In doing that, we got to learn that they were just people, too. They didn’t get all the answers. They don’t know why the island is full of electromagnetism. They don’t know the answers to questions about infertility. Sure, Jacob knows who built the statue and the temple and put Egyptian symbols everywhere, but he doesn’t think it’s that important to the island. So that’s your answer to that: the one person who knows wouldn’t tell you. So he shouldn’t. Not to mention how polarizing most people found the episode “Across the Sea.” When we delved into those lives, most people were confused or turned off. After I’ve had time to think about it, the setup of that episode was the only way to tell what we got to know. How did the boys’ “mother” get to the island? They didn’t know, so how would we? Did you really want an Allison Janney-centric episode? I didn’t think so. Because she didn’t earn it. We had to let characters like Juliet and Ben earn their character-centric episodes. We even had to let Richard and Jacob really earn their character-centric episodes. We had to care before we’d sit down and follow them around for an hour. And that is what we mean by character-driven television.
So, now, to actually address what happened in the finale. We learned what sideways time was. Is that the big issue for most people? I accept that it might be, based on the faith of individual people. But Lost is a show about 1) Characters and 2) Faith. Locke was always desperately seeking it. Jack was running away from it. Kate and Sawyer had to learn to have faith in themselves, and Sawyer had to learn to have faith in others. Hell, they all had to learn that they were worth trusting and that others were worth trusting. Hence, the conclusion. By the end of their lives, they had opened up. They remembered their lives as they found those strong connections in sideways life. Jin and Sun connected with each other and their baby. Kate connected with Claire. Charlie connected with Claire. Sawyer and Juliet connected with one another. Sayid and Shannon connected with one another. So did Hurley and Libby. Desmond, of course, connected with Penny. Locke connected with Jack. Ben had to get beat up, which sounds silly but points to the idea that in his island life he did things worth getting beat up for. Jack got bits from Locke and Kate, but had to find closure with his father in order to remember everything. And, in the end, they all had to come together. They connected with each other, and when they were hugging and gathering in the church, those connections were all that mattered, and they were beautiful. Some characters weren’t quite there yet, and were allowed not to be because they weren’t the core of the show. There were Miles, Charlotte, and Daniel. Ben got to choose to spend more time with Alex and redeem himself completely with her and Danielle. He remembered, as did Daniel, but they weren’t ready to move on. They had to fix their other connections. No one required Lost to line up with what you believe happens after you die. Well, maybe you did, but you were silly to hold that requirement of something you knew was written and created by other people. You were silly to hold that requirement if you watched the show, because, as I have said already, it was about characters, connections, and faith. What brings those things together better than the conclusion we got?
In order to describe how I feel about the characters a bit further and to describe what happened on the island, I am going to single each character out.

Jack: oh, Jack. I’m putting him first because the series began and ended with him. To be honest, Jack was one of the characters I loathed. This isn’t a bad thing in reference to the writers; in fact, only the best of shows have characters worth loathing. And only the very best of shows have heroes worth loathing. He reacted too quickly, pretended he had more authority than he did, evaded faith even when it cost the lives of others and his relationships and made him grow a terrible beard and take oxycodone. But in the end, he stood up and told Jacob he’d take the job. He embraced this completely faith-driven task. And that was Jack’s redemption. He died saving the island from something completely intangible. He tangibly defeated the enemy of the island, ironically by killing the smoke monster in the form of the one person who placed faith above all else. And, to further redeem himself, he handed responsibility and leadership over to Hurley. Throughout the show Jack was always reminding everyone that he was the leader. That they chose him, so now they had to listen to him all the time. Hurley was one person who was always being told what to do and what he wasn’t allowed to do. So, in the end, giving up leadership to Hurley was perhaps even more redeeming than dying for the island. In sideways time, Jack was still avoiding faith, but he connected with his son and (gasp) displayed some good bedside manner with Locke. But Jack’s story couldn’t end without closure with his father. That lack of closure and honesty had haunted him throughout the whole series, which is why the smoke monster chose to appear as Christian. And, okay, Jack got Kate. In the end, it was Kate and Jack. How do I know this finale was good? I wanted them to be together. I wanted Jack to have a happy ending. I wanted him to be absolved and resolved. And he was.

Sawyer: Sawyer was always my number one guy. I felt for him and his big puppy eyes. I loved that he joked in bad situations and gave everyone nicknames and was incredibly rude. Sawyer redeemed himself back when he was head of security for Dharma. I loved his speech to Jack in “Namaste” when he describes how he runs things, and how Jack’s reactionary ways were not the best. Sawyer is so in control then, and he believes in himself and the team he runs. And, of course, he has Juliet. Although we don’t see a whole lot of their relationship, we believe it. They lived together. They trusted each other. And, on the whole, it was the most functional relationship in the entire series. Sawyer, the con man, the anti-authority, the guy who refused responsibility and couldn’t do right by the women he loved, played by the rules of Dharma, was in charge, saved people, and fell in love. That was the redemption he needed. The island was more of a tool for him. His faith wasn’t connected to the mythology, but rather to himself and his relationships with others. In sideways time, he got to be on the right side of the law, had Miles as a partner, and, in the end, found Juliet and remembered everything. Their scene made me really believe in their relationship.

Locke: Locke was always searching desperately for faith. He seemed like he had faith, but he was never sure, never confident. That’s why, when he becomes the smoke monster and is confident, Sawyer knows that he is not Locke. It’s also why Locke believes that Christian is Jacob, causing him to follow orders from the wrong side. In sideways time, Locke remembers when he lets Jack fix him. It seems that this is sort of Locke’s redemption. One of the few things that Locke could really be sure about in his faith was that the island fixed him. That is why he believed in its powers so forcefully. But this belief, which made him the guy who sat in the rain with his hands spread and a smile on his face in the pilot episode, ended up keeping him away from real relationships with people. He and Jack clashed constantly, not because Locke was really a man of faith and Jack was really a man of science, but because Locke was running after faith and Jack was running away from faith. In sideways time, Jack had faith in his science and fixed Locke, who simply had faith in Jack.

Kate: so many people hate Kate. I never did. I think perhaps because I always tried to identify with her. I didn’t always, and I often yelled at her for listening to the men too much or being a little bit annoying. But she was who she was. She had this amazing faith in other people, but none in herself. Which is funny, because she thought she could do everything by herself, and didn’t want the help of others. But she loved people. She was nice to Charlie when everyone was ignoring him in the pilot. She was Sun’s friend, who helped her with the pregnancy test. She was Claire’s friend, who delivered Aaron in both timelines. And therein lies Kate’s redemption. She took care of Aaron. For him, she stopped running. In her trial, Jack saved her. And when her relationship with Jack fell apart, she stayed put and stable, taking care of Aaron as Jack spiraled out of control. And then she realized that, for Aaron’s sake, she needed to go back and get Claire off the island. And she does. Her redemption is in that connection. Her love with Jack is nice, and is obviously important to her, but he does not save her. She saves herself by being stable and responsible.

Sun and Jin: Part of me hates to lump these two together, but the show really does. Even though they are apart for two whole seasons. They once loved each other, but let the world tear them down. Their redemption was simply in putting their love above the expectations of others. Sun gets to tell off her father for both of them when she is rescued. And then she gets to go back to find Jin. And Jin gets to choose Sun. Yes, I (and others) are a bit cranky about both of them dying when they have a baby daughter in the world, living with Sun’s parents, who obviously are not the most responsible people. But we can hope they changed as Sun showed her figurative balls and helped run the company. They have to have a different opinion about females in society from that. But I digress. Jin and Sun were always about each other. They had to fix themselves (with the help of others) and love one another for who they really were again, forgiving their pasts and pledging to be devoted and honest for love and not for society’s rules of their being together. And they do that throughout their time on the island. They are redeemed before they are split up, and their being together for a short while and into their deaths just shows that the love they crafted was strong enough to last through years apart. And their lives were not worth living without one another. In sideways time, their love also included their unborn child, giving their whole family a sort of conclusion that they didn’t have even in their redemption on the island.

Ben Linus: I really, really love Ben Linus. He is so wonderfully complex, with this mixture of vulnerability and strength, of insecurity and pure manipulation. His story is also complex, with his father and the island and being cured by the sketchy pool of water and wanting to be important and having a daughter and letting her die. But, in the end, Ben is a good guy. He does a lot of crappy stuff. But he does love, and he does want to have faith, and he does want to have connections with people. His redemption comes through Hurley as the new Jacob. He tells Hurley the truth about what he should do, which is huge coming from a guy whose motto is “I lied.” I love him when he’s the leader of the Others, being ruthless and pulling out all the best psychological manipulations. I love him when the death of Alex makes him into a man with a different focus. I love him when killing Jacob changes him once again. He gets to be the new Richard, and that is all he needed. He didn’t need to be Jacob, he just wanted to be chosen by Jacob. And he was. In sideways life, he doesn’t go with the group into the afterlife. Although he redeems himself for Jacob and for killing Locke (by being forgiven by Locke), he hasn’t quite redeemed himself for Danielle and Alex. But he has started to build a relationship with each of them, and is on his way to where he needs to be.

Sayid: Sayid also does a fair amount of crappy stuff. He shoots young Ben, he tortures Sawyer, he kills lots of people. He is generally confused. He also gets two love stories: Shannon and Nadia. Sideways time reveals that he gave up Nadia and got to be with Shannon, showing that Shannon was his real love. Which is interesting, but not really his redemption. His redemption is largely just getting himself blown up to save other people. He was always willing to harm others to save everyone, but he sacrificed himself over a mistake that Sawyer made. And Sayid and Sawyer had that shady past. So, Sayid redeemed himself by doing that and by not killing Desmond. And by letting Jack know he had faith in him. We got closure in his choice of Shannon over Nadia, whether we liked it or not.

Hurley: who doesn’t love Hurley? He’s the loveable guy of the show. He is afraid to be disliked. He doesn’t want that responsibility for a long time. But then he learns to take action, and is often told no. I love that he gets to be a hero in “Through the Looking Glass.” I think that is the beginning of his journey into becoming the island’s new protector. The great thing about Hurley is that although he is unsure of himself and believes he is both crazy and bad luck, he cares about people. He sees things through a different lens from someone like Jack, in that he realizes that they can’t just be worried about survival all the time. They have to live on the island like they live in life, and that means having fun and doing things that aren’t out of necessity sometimes. He shows that with the golf course. In “Tricia Tanaka is Dead,” he begins to shed his fear of bad luck by trusting that the van will work as he drives it down the hill. His faith is different from the faith of other characters because it centers on the bad luck of the numbers and on his ability to see and communicate with dead people. His redemption comes in that he is absolutely the best candidate for protecting the island once the “bad guy,” or the smoke monster, is defeated. Jack needed to be the big hero to defeat the smoke monster, but Hurley was the best for caring for the island and the people on it. He needed Ben’s expertise and faith in him, but his faith in Ben, who had been such a bad guy, showed how perfect Hurley was for the job. And in sideways time, Hurley got the one thing he was denied throughout the show: the girl.

Claire: Claire was left by the man who convinced her to not abort her baby, convinced to get on the plane by a psychic, and was responsible for her mother being in a coma for years. She was carrying a baby that she planned to give away. She was as detached as anyone else. When she was in labor, she hid in the woods and told Kate to go away. But Kate stayed and delivered the baby. That, and Kate’s care for Aaron when Claire disappeared, anchored the two women together. Claire and Charlie is an interesting couple. Their relationship had really great moments but had trouble getting to the point of a comfortable relationship. They jumped from strangers to being dragged off together by Ethan to playing mom and dad to a newborn. They finally had reached a comfortable level of trust and happiness before Charlie died. But then, of course, Claire went a bit crazy. She left her baby with Sawyer and Miles and followed Christian the Smoke Monster into the woods; when we finally see her again, she has a skull baby, crazy hair, and puts hatchets in people’s abdomens. And just when we believe that a person who has been claimed cannot be redeemed, Claire wants to get on the submarine with her former friends. And after Sayid dies to save everyone, we begin to believe that Claire can be okay. Claire’s redemption comes in the finale, when she believes that together she and Kate can take care of Aaron. That she can be a mother with a little help, and that having help is okay. Then, wonderfully, in sideways time she gets to reconnect with Charlie and understand his death before she moves on.

Charlie: Charlie has a tough time on this show. He makes some bad choices and is not always given a fair chance. But he wants people to love him. And he learns not to be a druggie. And he will do anything to save Claire, including die. His death scene is perhaps one of the most touching scenes ever to appear on Lost. He gets the job done (and it uses his musical talent!), saves Desmond, and gets the message about the boat out before he dies. He goes knowingly into his death, which is looming for the better part of season 3. That is his redemption. No matter how many bad choices he’s made, he sacrifices himself for the people he loves. And he proves that he was the one meant to do the job, as he was the only one on the island who could play Good Vibrations on a keypad. In sideways time, Claire is the one constant for Charlie. He gets to see her after he died for her, and that is the biggest reward. The Charlie and Claire scenes of the finale made me cry more than any others.

Desmond: the man who brings it all together. Why does Desmond have a strange relationship with electromagnetism? I think it’s because he turned the failsafe key, but I understand that that is not completely spelled out. What matters is that Desmond has epic love for Penny. Desmond was not on the plane, but he brings everyone together. His connection with Penny was the one constant in his life, so he needed to be the one to bring others to their constants. Charlie was the one to bring this up to Desmond in sideways life, because Desmond and Charlie were connected by Desmond’s ability to see Charlie’s death. It was Charlie, then, that allowed Desmond to find Penny and see through his own life and death. And, of course, it all came back to Penny.

There are other characters that you may think are super important. There’s Faraday, who has science and love. There’s Miles, who has a strange psychic ability and is snarky. There’s Juliet, who is torn from one life into island life, and learns to stand up for herself before falling in love with someone and forming the first and only real functional relationship of her life. She is redeemed by that love. There are Michael and Mr. Eko, who don’t get to be there at the end. There is Libby, who is there for Hurley, and Shannon, who is there for Sayid. There is Boone, who, despite being very pretty, doesn’t get a real love interest. There are Rose and Bernard, who are awesome in their rejection of island drama. There is Walt, who is special for unknown reasons. There is Vincent, who ensures that Jack doesn’t die alone. There is Alex (and Karl and Danielle), who all die kind of horrifically. There is Ana Lucia, who is sort of unredeemable. Sorry, Ana Lucia. There are Nikki and Paulo, of course.
I saw the ending of Lost as a culmination of the faith and relationships that the characters built with one another. That island was their redemption, and the sideways timeline showed that although many of them died on the island, it wasn’t their downfall. They died and were redeemed and got to live out lives that gave them a sense of peace and community with one another. Jack got closure with his father, Jin and Sun saw their baby together, Kate got away from the Marshal, Sayid gave up Nadia and also saved her, Locke was with Helen and had a relationship with his father, Juliet never married Edmund but rather had a failed relationship with Jack that seemed to have ended amicably, Claire found her brother and had her baby, Hurley was the luckiest man alive who got to help people with his money, Charlie’s band was still together, Daniel got to play music, Sawyer got to search for Mr. Sawyer and be on the right side of the law… everyone got to live out their lives in a way that connected them to more people and had them make better choices than they had previously done. They got closure, found each other, and got to be done with life. What better ending could you ask for? It ended with what mattered. I believe it was the best way to end characters. It was the happiest way to end characters. We got to redeem everyone. It sounds a little cheesy, but I am so glad the show ended on an optimistic note. So few shows do. And it did it without negating everything that had happened. It actually necessitated everything that had happened. They needed to do what they did in order to have the relationships they did. They needed to have something to fix, to be redeemed for. They needed to be so intertwined with one another that they were meant to find each other no matter their life patterns. They needed to be lost so that they could be found. That answers all the questions I need answered.
I love this show.