And what bugs me a lot is that they tried to fool people by catering to their emotions in the finale, giving a "happy ending" replete with lines like the one you quoted (Christian to Jack). Plus romantic string cues.

But to me that was the series - the emotions that the characters went though and the emotions that I went through. The ending was fitting because they were together in the end which, to me, is the ultimate conclusion. The idea of them needing each other in the after life is pretty awesome. I love stuff like that.

New York Times: "The ending felt contrived and disappointing, which was probably inevitable."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/arts/television/25lost.html

But to me that was the series - the emotions that the characters went though and the emotions that I went through. The ending was fitting because they were together in the end which, to me, is the ultimate conclusion. The idea of them needing each other in the after life is pretty awesome. I love stuff like that.

For me, I guess, it was one half of the series. The characters. The other half is everything else.

http://www.deadline.com/2010/05/ratings-rate-race-big-exit-for-lost/

ABC dominated Sunday night with its Lost extravaganza: two-hour retrospective Lost: The Final Journey and two-and-a-half hour finale, which were followed by a special edition of Jimmy Kimmel Live. The series finale drew a 5.8 rating/15 share, marking the best Lost ratings since Feb. 14 2008. The two-hour special that preceded it averaged a 4.0/13 and 9.8 million viewers. Celebrity Apprentice also had its finale on Sunday, averaging a respectable 3.4/9 in 18-49 for the crowing of ailing Bret Michaels as the winner. That was the highest 18-49 rating for the series since the premiere of last year's cycle. The only other program to crack a 3 rating in 18-49 was Fox's hour-long season finale of Family Guy, which averaged a 3.1/8. CBS stayed largely out of the fray with AMC's Brooks & Dunn tribute, which averaged a 1.8/5 in 18-49. From 15:05-1:05 AM, ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live: Aloha To Lost (4.9 million viewers, 2.7 million of them in the 18-49 demographic) drew its third largest 18-49 audience behind its two post-Super Bowl airings.

The show was pretty clear in explaining a lot of stuff last night if you thought about what they were saying. The alternate timeline now in hindsight was always the future because we have known since season 2 or 3 that Desmond sees the future. So it had to take place after the events on the island so he could see it. I am sort of annoyed I didn't put that together earlier this year.

There were so many that died on the island, and people had different roles, so how can the alternate/sideways be the future? You're the first person I've heard say this. Can you explain your speculation?

I like it how you think, quartermainefan, I do. (The finale still sucks, though, bringing down the whole show together with it to the depths of hell.) The goddess didn't help me though, apparently.

So if flash-sideways are the future, that is flash-forwards, flash-forwards are then...?

The flash forwards are the future too. Those with the Oceanic 6 happened during the three years they were off the island and before they returned. Then they returned and everyone got thrown around the timestream a little and landed in the 70s, the nuke brought them back to today, and then eventually Jack died. When Jack dies the alt timeline begins and gets backdated.

There were so many that died on the island, and people had different roles, so how can the alternate/sideways be the future? You're the first person I've heard say this. Can you explain your speculation?

Because I am the only one who knows what Earth 2 is, X-Men Days Of Future Past is, and what Franklin Richards' pocket universe is. I tell you it helps if you read comic books.

The timeline is not a linear straight line, it is sort of a circle where everyone enters into it at their moment of death be it they die last year or 50 years from now. But in the timeline they enter "now" and at the age Jack thinks of them as. Further, the timeline got extended retroactively so all these people got to think they were living their lives in it. It was a parallel universe that got created after Jack died either by Jack, Jacob or maybe even Hurley with their island powers. No one enters it until they die in the real world so none of it happened yet because Jack was still alive. But before the day he died Desmond who sees the future sees it.

I really think if you plot not Jack's timeline, but Desmond's, it sort of all comes together. Desmond sees the future and what did Desmond see and when did he see it?

So basically you're saying:

1. Stuff from the flashbacks happens.
2. The Oceanic 815 crashes on the Island.
3. They get off the Island and stuff from the flash-forwards happen.
4. They return to the Island.
5. Jack dies on the Island, others leave on the plane.
6. Everybody dies at some point in time. In all that time, Jack kept imagining the sideways.
7. The sideways end when everyone dies and Jack is able to digest it all.
8. The all go into the Light.

Is Hurley immortal as the Guardian of the Island?

Because I am the only one who knows what Earth 2 is, X-Men Days Of Future Past is, and what Franklin Richards' pocket universe is. I tell you it helps if you read comic books.

Some others did too.

The timeline is not a linear straight line, it is sort of a circle where everyone enters into it at their moment of death be it they die last year or 50 years from now. But in the timeline they enter "now" and at the age Jack thinks of them as. Further, the timeline got extended retroactively so all these people got to think they were living their lives in it. It was a parallel universe that got created after Jack died either by Jack, Jacob or maybe even Hurley with their island powers. No one enters it until they die in the real world so none of it happened yet because Jack was still alive. But before the day he died Desmond who sees the future sees it.

This I did not get at all. Or maybe I did, but I think I didn't. LOL.

Edited May 24, 201015 yr by Sylph

Because I am the only one who knows what Earth 2 is, X-Men Days Of Future Past is, and what Franklin Richards' pocket universe is. I tell you it helps if you read comic books.

The timeline is not a linear straight line, it is sort of a circle where everyone enters into it at their moment of death be it they die last year or 50 years from now. But in the timeline they enter "now" and at the age Jack thinks of them as. Further, the timeline got extended retroactively so all these people got to think they were living their lives in it. It was a parallel universe that got created after Jack died either by Jack, Jacob or maybe even Hurley with their island powers. No one enters it until they die in the real world so none of it happened yet because Jack was still alive. But before the day he died Desmond who sees the future sees it.

Hmm....that's pretty interesting. Still confusing but interesting. LOL I never thought of it like that. I'm not sure I get that the sideways was created after Jack died. I think once you die in the real world, that's where all the characters went. When Jack dies, the moment he crosses over to the sideways was when he was on plane, beside Rose, and she tells him that it was okay to "let go now." The sideways was a place that their souls went to. I don't think any one person created the sideways.

Do you watch Fringe? The show deals with alternate universes too.

I really think if you plot not Jack's timeline, but Desmond's, it sort of all comes together. Desmond sees the future and what did Desmond see and when did he see it?

You could be right. Whenever I decide to rewatch the series, I'll keep all of this in mind.

Everybody dies at some point in time. In all that times, Jack kept imagining the sideways.

That's the thing, I don't think the sideways was just Jack's POV. All the stuff involving Jack in the sideways was Jack's POV, but everyone else "lived" their own sideways. That's why Jack created his son, I guess because he had father issues of his own - Locke tells Jack he has no son.

Is Hurley immortal as the Guardian of the Island?

Hurley and Ben eventually died, I assume on the island.

Here I am :yes:

I'm with you, though I'm not quite as upset about it all as you, for some reason. I actually, despite myself, did find the ending emotionally satisfying on *some* level--I admit I was moved even while the whole time I was cursing the show and the direction it had taken. But NOTHING makes sense and it certainly taints the past seasons simply because now we know they didn't even know how to answer half their questions. Lazy, lazy, LAZY. It's the kinda ending that I think can make a fan look back at all their time watching the show with resentment.

That's pretty much how I feel too. But I will always love the first two seasons.

That's the thing, I don't think the sideways was just Jack's POV. All the stuff involving Jack in the sideways was Jack's POV, but everyone else "lived" their own sideways. That's why Jack created his son, I guess because he had father issues of his own - Locke tells Jack he has no son.

Right. I think so too.

I have absolutely no idea what happened when. I mean, did Jack's sideways begin the moment he died? I guess that really doesn't negate anything in particular, but I find it strange. It's just weird and dumb in a way for his sideways to have lasted 50 years or whatever. Dunno.

That's why I had to re-read this:

The timeline is not a linear straight line, it is sort of a circle where everyone enters into it at their moment of death be it they die last year or 50 years from now. But in the timeline they enter "now" and at the age Jack thinks of them as. Further, the timeline got extended retroactively so all these people got to think they were living their lives in it. It was a parallel universe that got created after Jack died either by Jack, Jacob or maybe even Hurley with their island powers. No one enters it until they die in the real world so none of it happened yet because Jack was still alive. But before the day he died Desmond who sees the future sees it.

I can't see it as a circle. It's more like an infinite line (though Stephen Hawking did prove that time has a beginning and an ending, apparently so in real life it's not really infinite).

They can't "enter" the timeline when they die, now and at the age Jack thinks of them. Or they can, but if that means what I wrote above (the numbered list). They can't enter it when they die because then the Island and its mysteries never happened. They can't enter now, because now doesn't exist without the past. So they enter it at their earliest respective flashback. Then they all board Oceanic and so on. It can't also be retroactively extended because past has to come before the present.

Hurley and Ben eventually died, I assume on the island.

Oh, I see.

He became the Guardian without that incantation and potion?

So basically you're saying:

1. Stuff from the flashbacks happens.
2. The Oceanic 815 crashes on the Island.
3. They get off the Island and stuff from the flash-forwards happen.
4. They return to the Island.
5. Jack dies on the Island, others leave on the plane.
6. Everybody dies at some point in time. In all that times, Jack kept imagining the sideways.
7. The sideways end when everyone dies and Jack is able to digest it all.
8. The all go into the Light.

Pretty much. Jack was a doctor, Kate was a fugitive, Desmond was on the island pushing the button.

Desmond doesn't push the button and 815 crashes on the island

The Oceanic Six escape and Jack starts to crack up while Kate raises Aaron, etc

Meanwhile, those on the island are hopping around time until Locke fixes it and is sent back to the mainland to retrieve the Six

The Oceanic Six is convinced to return and they too are sent back in time to the 1970s

They set off the nuke and they all are returned to 2007 or whatever year we are up to as the present

Widmore brings Desmond to the island and Desmond sees this future with Penny, Charlie and everyone else living a better life

Jack saves the island and dies

the alternate timeline now kicks in for Jack the moment the final episode goes off the air

all the people who died earlier (Boone, Shannon, Libby, etc) are folded into the timeline but they too do not know they are dead

as the years go by everyone starts to die naturally and as they die they enter the timeline

Desmond dies naturally maybe 40 years after the show ends, he starts living the alternate life he saw wakes them all up

They all are dead happily ever after

The only thing with time is there is no time in the alternate timeline really, it is always "now" so it makes no difference when everybody dies, they all are where they are supposed to be at the right age

The one thing that muddies everything up for me is the last shot of the show with the wreckage of the plane. I am not sure which plane that was but it does make a case for they just were all dead at the moment of impact. That I need to watch again. The Rose/Jack moment may very well be the moment of death with that theory.

What I also find infuriating, and I know you who liked the ending might not see it that way, is the suggested purpose of the Island. I commented on it just a few posts back. It's the cork theory. I have to add to what I said that the Island existed for many, many centuries, millennia... before The Man in Black was born. So how exactly it got created, who did it, when did it became the home of the Source (probably the moment it got created), who were its inhabitants during its history... is something I find intriguing. How is it that it's able to change its location and sink under the ocean surface is also a mystery I'd like to see solved.

I also just find it plain implausible that The Man in Black would cause so much evil if he were to escape the Island. Who was his real mother and who was the Mother? Why did the Mother pick the real mother and killed it? Was the real mother also someone with special abilities? If not, how did Jacob and The Man in Black receive their powers? Spell & incantation? Are they "human"? Or higher-level beings?

The Island just must have had a purpose long before The Man in Black came along.

Edited May 24, 201015 yr by Sylph

What I also find infuriating, and I know you who liked the ending might not see it that way, is the suggested purpose of the Island. I commented on it just a few posts back. It's the cork theory. I have to add to what I said that the Island existed for many, many centuries, millennia... before The Man in Black was born. So how exactly it got created, who did it, when did it became the home of the Source (probably the moment it got created), who were its inhabitants during its history... is something I find intriguing. How is it that it's able to change its location and sink under the ocean surface is also a mystery I'd like to see solved.

I also just find it plain implausible that The Man in Black would cause so much evil if he were to escape the Island. Who was his real mother and who was the Mother? Why did the Mother pick the real mother and killed it? Was the real mother also someone with special abilities? If not, how did Jacob and The Man in Black receive their powers? Spell & incantation? Are they "human"? Or higher-level beings?

The Island just must have had a purpose long before The Man in Black came along.

Here's how Doc Jensen explains the island:

Making sense of Island magic

Let's pause and do some math and come to a conclusion about a mystery/question that was not explicitly spelled out in the finale. We've been told for many episodes that if the Monster left The Island, the castaways and their loved ones would cease to exist. I took this to mean that if Fake Locke got away, reality would go POOF! Instead, this is how I add it up:

1. In the Lost world, people are an inextricable blend of matter and spirit.

2. Fake Locke was all spirit — an unnatural state of being. But it made him invulnerable, because spirit is indestructible.

3. To kill Fake Locke, you had to either restore him to his natural state of matter and spirit... or convert him from all spirit to all matter, which is to say, a completely mechanical animal, and thus killable.

4. The rub is that to the procedure renders everyone into mechanical animals, which is to say, devoid of a soul.

5.Without the soul, we cannot pass into the next life or into the afterlife without our community of redemption partners — the people we love.

6. Fake Locke wanted to leave The Island.

7. Fake Locke was bonded to The Island by Island magic.

8. The same procedure required to break that spell (i.e., destroying The Island) is the same procedure that would convert Fake Locke and everyone into soulless zombies incapable of having a happily ever after with our loved ones (i.e., your community of redemption partners) because we need our souls to move into the afterlife.

9. Hence: Fake Locke leaving The Island = Annihilation (when you die) for you and everyone you love.

This makes total sense, yes?

Desmond yanked The Island's chain. Spiritual lockout commenced. The Island suffered mightily during this cataclysm; slopes of this promised land slid into the ocean like tears down the face of that Native American guy in those old pick-up-your-litter-dammit! conservation commercials. Jack and Locke fought like beasts on the rumbling rocks near the ocean — like Nolte and De Niro in Cape Fear. Fake Locke reached for his knife and jammed it into Jack's side — a spear wound for the would-be Island Christ. Fake Locke straddled Jack. Fake Locke put the knife to Jack's throat and drew blood. (Now we know the origin of Sideways Jack's neck nick — and, I think, Sideways Jack's alleged appendix scar, which was actually a scar from Fake Locke's skewering. We now see that all season long, Jack's own body had been screaming at him: Soul Sleeper, Awaken!)

Doc Jensens full recap here

I loved his description of the final scene:

What do you think happened to Jack after that? His final scenes on The Island — the final moments of Lost ever — were puzzlingly poetic. I will try to describe them without crying. We saw him twitch back to life in the jungle, near a stream. I was reminded of Jacob finding the empty shell of his brother after the Holy Wormhole burped up the black smoke of MIB's corrupted soul. Jack got his feet. He pushed through the bamboo forest. He found the spot where he had fallen from the sky some three years earlier, next to the tennis shoe dangling from a tall green stalk. He laid down. He clutched his bleeding, wounded side. He prepared for The End. Once upon a time, Jack Shephard was a man who could not believe in anyone or anything else except himself, and he was lost. But this Doubting Thomas found faith and healing by humbling himself and committing himself to a community of fellow flawed and fallen souls also yearning for redemption incapable of doing it alone. As he lay dying, he saw the airplane carrying his friends home, and he rejoiced for them. And then he saw into another world, where he was welcomed with open arms and bear hugs, and he rejoiced — for himself. Earlier in the episode, Jack told Kate he took the job of guardian because he had made a ruin of his life and that The Island ''was all [he] had.'' He was wrong, as he had been wrong about so many things in his life, but this time, he couldn't have been happier. And then Vincent trotted up and snuggled against his side. Jack's eye closed. He let go, and he was gone.

Well, Toups, that made no sense to me whatsoever. This is where he lost me:

8. The same procedure required to break that spell (i.e., destroying The Island) is the same procedure that would convert Fake Locke and everyone into soulless zombies incapable of having a happily ever after with our loved ones (i.e., your community of redemption partners) because we need our souls to move into the afterlife.

9. Hence: Fake Locke leaving The Island = Annihilation (when you die) for you and everyone you love.

It's kind of a Christian view, modified by certain New Age things. I mean, if you got turned into a "soulless zombie", how the hell would you know you don't get to go to Paradise (or Hell)? No soul, no knowledge of such things = you can't care because the soul makes you care.

And I just plain fail to see how 8 leads to 9. I mean, if the same procedure that breaks the spell also destroys the Island... How exactly can the two happen at the same time? OK, they can, but that means that with the Island, the Man in Black goes away too. He can't escape before nor after.

Fake Locke leaving the Island means annihilation. OK. So does that mean 9 means annihilation = you die = you become a soulless zombie.

This is what I've feared: fans going into overdrive to "explain" it all and make other people realize that "it all makes sense". Nope, it doesn't. And also they try subconsciously to "justify", or whatever the verb, to themselves why they've been watching and to kill the inner voice that says: My God! It was all utter sh*t!

I knew it would happen.

Edited May 24, 201015 yr by Sylph

It's kind of a Christian view, modified by certain New Age things. I mean, if you got turned into a "soulless zombie", how the hell would you know you don't get to go to Paradise (or Hell)? No soul, no knowledge of such things = you can't care because the soul makes you care.

And I just plain fail to see how 8 leads to 9. I mean, if the same proceudre that breaks the spell also destroys the Island... How exactly can the two happen at the same time? OK, they can, but that means that with the Island, the Man in Black goes away too. He can't escape before nor after.

Fake Locke leaving the Island means annihilation. OK. So does that mean 9 means annihilation = you die = you become a soulless zombie.

This is what I've feared: fans going into overdrive to "explain" it all and make other people realize that "it all makes sense". Nope, it doesn't. And also they try subconsciously to "justify", or whatever the verb, to themselves why they've been watching and to kill the inner voice that says: My God! It was all utter sh*t!

I knew it would happen.

Trust me, I'm still confused too. I was merely posting his views. It's up to whether you agree, disagree, or it has no affect on you. LOL It's what made sense TO HIM.

It's interesting to see how other people interpret things, how they saw the show. Many people have different ideas and theories and I think that's another reason why I loved the show.

Also, I'm a person who believes in parallel universes and sometimes I do think about, "What happens to me after I die?", so that's why this is all intriguing for me. And no, I have no inner voice that says it was all crap. Because as I watched the series for the past 6 years, I was entertained and attached to the characters. Or else I would've stopped watching.