Found

Okay, so. It happened. LOST ended. Spoiler alert no freaking duh so please do not read on OR BE ON THE INTERNET if you are a few episodes behind.

So like, okay. Right? Wait, but. And what? Immediately after last night's finale, my friends and I basically sat around talking like Stefon from SNL ("You know it's like that thing where...and huhhh?") It's taken me until this morning, but I am definitely understanding a little bit better what quite happened in the last episode. Mostly because last night I thought dying Jack was seeing the Sideways Universe version of Oceanic 815 overhead, so I kept being like, "wait what?! with the time loops?" But this morning an associate assured me that he was seeing Lapidus' Ajira plane taking off. Okay, one mystery solved.

So in general, yes I am happy with the ending. It was a cheezy cop-out of them to create an alternate reality where all the people who died are alive, and they can all reunite with the people they loved, but at least they spent a season and a half creating said reality, and hell yes did it work. When people were touching each other and feeling it left and right, I was definitely on board. Yes, absolutely I cried when Jin and Sun remembered everything, and when Charlie and Claire kissed, and when Sawyer and Juliet knew, oh my goodness I was all shook up. I did not care when Sayid and Shannon hooked up because lol (and forget about Nadia, I guess, apparently).

Other awesome things about the episode were Lapidus, the chillest dude ever, floating out in the water like "hey bros," and Hurley becoming Ben's boss of the magic island filled with trapped souls. Also Miles and Richard being like "middle age, am I right?"

So, look. I don't quite understand what happened last night. As far as I am concerned, everything that happened on the island was real, and the Sideways timeline is a subjective/collective reality/purgatory that does/does not exist, but that allows everyone to be reunited. And then Christian Shepherd is there for some reason? And he opens the doors to...heaven? But only for some of the castaways? And Penny? And I guess like, Jack's son is irrelevant? I mean, I don't know if when the main dudes go off to heaven, if Ben will still have a reality in which to marry Rousseau and be Alex's dad, or where Julie Bowen is in all of this or whatever, let alone Daniel "The Constant" Faraday/Widmore. But like, okay, if the main dudes are going off to Heaven then I guess that's okay? Right? What?

Ken Jennings blogged the following: "I’m not one of the people who’s going to tell you the finale sucked because I didn’t get ANSWERS to stupid five-year-old questions. The finale didn’t have to explain The Numbers or polar bears or that one Dharma food drop or who built that statue. I don’t care about any of that. But I think it needed to pretend it was wrapping up a single story told on a big canvas: it needed to tell you why it, for long stretches, seemed to be about things like dead babies, quantum physics, Walt, etc."

I think that last sentence nails it. I am willing to forfeit answers about the the statue, the hieroglyphics, the vaccine, the fertility woes, and whatever. But when they spent seasons trying to convince us that Walt had magic superpowers, or Aaron was the magic savior baby, or whatever, only to never return to or resolve those storylines, I can't help but think that 99% of the show was Darlton making stuff up as they went along. We're probably lucky more of the series wasn't about Nikki and Paolo.

So, yeah, I'm satisfied with the finale. Because Jin and Sun get to go off to fantasyland and raise Ji-yeon together. And Charlie gets to lay in bed and have the DT's while Claire nurses some dude's baby right next to him. Hurley and Libby get to have picnics together for eternity. And Juliet and Sawyer get to make out in a giant polar bear cage in the sky while Jack creepily watches on CCTV, holding hands with Kate and thinking about his imaginary son. Desmond and Penny will just be chilling the whole time, ignoring their kid as well. But also I am a little tepid on the series as a whole now, as it is no longer the game-changer it used to be. I mean, I put years into watching you, show. And you just haven't quite fulfilled me?

For an earlier blog about series finales, click here. Now I'm going to just mull it over some more and think about more of the crazy stuff I can't figure out.


ADDENDUM:
Okay, what was with that stinger shot played over the credits, of the original wreckage of Oceanic flight 815 on the beach with no one around? No bodies, no people, maybe some footprints in the sand (Jeebus?)... It's unclear to me if that's something that the show creators intended to air as the final visual of the show, or if it was added on by ABC, but what could it mean? I think we're all assuming the island life was real and the Sideways timeline was the "hallucination," but that last shot implies that everyone died in the crash? Maybe?