LOST Forum

 
 

 A quick survey of opinions around the internet towards the series finale of Lost shows some very polarized reactions among long-time fans of the show. For the most part the complaints are the same that they have been for many years now. There are a lot of people very frustrated by the way the creators constantly introduced new mysteries, rarely giving satisfactory explanations for those already in play. Many, it seems, held out hope that the finale would, it has to be said, miraculously solve ever riddle in a profound and satisfactory fashion. Unfortunately, those people were not watching the show they thought they were.

Serialized mystery shows have a fairly long history on television. Both the X-Files and are good examples of this form where a central mystery is introduced in the pilot that drives the main characters actions across multiple episodes and seasons. Mulder is driven by his need to unravel the mystery of his sister’s abduction. Despite his stellar qualifications, he has torpedoed his own career so that he might pursue supernatural cases he hopes will eventually reveal his sister’s fate. , similarly, follows and FBI Agent, one who in this case is trying to solve the murder of Laura Palmer in a strange, small town. Mysteries are the foundation of these shows and investigation, in broad terms, is how the plot is advanced. I don’t want to take the time to analyze how successfully they ended, but in each case a satisfactory conclusion demands that the central mystery is addressed. So why doesn’t Lost succeed in giving us the answers people expect?

Lost is not a mystery show.

That is the crux of the disconnect. Lost has never been about a central mystery. The characters were not united by their need to uncover the mysteries of the island. The pilot does not begin with an expedition setting out to study a weird island in the South Pacific. These are people who crash landed in the middle of nowhere and are simply trying to survive and escape. They are caught up in plots they don’t understand; don’t want to understand, and only engage with the mysteries in the service of their ultimate goal to stay alive and get home.

So, what purpose to these mysteries even serve? Why introduce all these supernatural and sci-fi elements to a show if it’s just supposed to be a character drama about a group of flawed people trying to survive? To put it bluntly, the mysteries of the island are literally there to be mysterious. Their purpose is to confront and challenge the characters with the unknown; the inexplicable. They inject a level of uncertainty into the already perilous situations these characters are faced with, forcing them to act with imperfect knowledge of what the effect might be.

It is a show about not knowing what is going on.

This major theme was not really made explicit until late in the last season. With the episode “Across the Sea” that examines the origins for Jacob and the Man in Black/Smoke Monster the most stunning revelation of all is that these demigods are just as clueless about what is really going on as everyone else. Not even their mother seems to know more than what she’s been told, that protecting the light at the heart of the island is important.

Once this is revealed the major theme of Faith is brought into focus. For a long time characters, primarily Locke, have spoken of their faith in the island. It was never exactly clear what the nature of this faith was. Is it spiritual? Faith in one’s self? But with the series finally complete we can finally draw some conclusions.

Lost is in large part a rumination on Epistemology and Skepticism.

For those of you who did not major in Philosophy, Epistemology is the study of knowledge, specifically, what it means to “know” something. Skepticism is a position which suggests that is not possible to know anything about the external world. The Matrix is a famous dramatization of the Cartesian Skeptical Hypothesis. Descartes wanted to know how anyone could be sure they weren’t the victim of a mad scientist who is manipulating their senses to create a complete simulation of a false existence.

Philosopher David Hume, after whom the character Desmond is named, has some very particular ideas about how little we can know about the world with any certainty. Ultimately he concludes that we can only really function as human beings through many small leaps of faith we make every day in our lives. There is no guarantee from one moment to another that the universe will continue to operate in the fashion we are accustom to, nor that the objects we perceive even have referents, we are only conditioned to believe it will.

What Lost presents with its many mysterious elements are actually exaggerated representations of this philosophical problem. The characters are confronted by the strange and fantastic, phenomena that resist their attempts to investigate and comprehend. Even those who came to the island to make a study cannot explain the nature of the power they’ve witnessed.

In the face of these significant X-factors, Locke, Jack, Sawyer, Kate, Hurley, Desmond, Sun & Jin, Charlie, Claire, Ben, Richard and everyone else must constantly take leaps of fate, that their decisions are right, that their actions will not end in ruin, always without the benefit of a complete knowledge of the circumstances they are in. Often the results are tragic, in other cases a character’s faith is rewarded. It is more than a problem of not knowing, it is a problem of being unable to have the answers you seek.

Whatever your philosophical position, the uncertainty they face should be very relatable. We all have to make snap decisions in the heat of the moment. Even when we have the chance to deliberate carefully, there is always some piece of information we might like to have, but don’t. Should I take that job offer? Could I negotiate for a higher wage? What if there is another, better offer just around the corner? Is it worth the risk to accept?

And so we come to the point of the matter.

Certainly, there are reams of unanswered questions remaining. But by now it should be clear that not giving any answers was not only intentional, but an integral component of the show’s overarching theme. Even in death these characters are lost, without a map, acting only on instinct and with trust. If anyone feels betrayed by how the series concluded, it’s difficult to blame the writers, when all they’ve done is tried to be true to the thematic groundwork they’ve been laying for six years.

I have to admire the commitment that took, and the balls it takes to place so much uncertainty at the core of a mainstream entertainment property. Granted, the series wasn’t perfect and for a time the writers had gotten a little too far up their own asses, allowing the mythology to take over from what the show does best, but in the end they righted the ship and capped the series as best as could have been hoped for.

I can understand not being happy with how little was explained, but remember, that’s more of a problem with you than it was with the show.

*slow clap* well worded, good sire! I applaud your analysis, as I agree.

Totally agree with you. It still baffles me how people dont get that it's a character show first, mystery second. Look at what the show's most prominent narrative technique is: Flashbacks/forwards/sideways. Having a third of every single episode dedicated to a characters off-island story should give you a hint what's the most important part of the show.

@The_Patriarch said:

" Totally agree with you. It still baffles me how people dont get that it's a character show first, mystery second. Look at what the show's most prominent narrative technique is: Flashbacks/forwards/sideways. Having a third of every single episode dedicated to a characters off-island story should give you a hint what's the most important part of the show. "

Is this the only rebut deluded Lost fans have. It is growing irksome and in essence, it is a mute point. 

Interesting thoughts.  
 
My thinking after watching the entire series mimics some of these, but adds others.  Lost's biggest mysteries were for the character's themselves.  Since season 1 with Jack and Locke.  It was the Man of Science/ Man of Faith debate that was always debated.  We find out that everyone has multiple facades that they show everyone through the flashbacks/forwards/sideways.  But their own identity seems to be the biggest mystery to themselves.  
 
All the Island mysteries I don't think were ever planned to be explained.  And I'm happy that they are left to my own judgement on what they are.
 
JJ Abrams did a speech at TED's a couple years ago which I found explained the unanswered mysteries as a better story, than one that answered every question at the end.  It's worth a watch.

I don't feel betrayed by how the series ended, but I took a good, long, angry hiatus after season three when it became apparent to me that the show had been hijacked by the network due to its success. While your analysis is detailed and well thought out, I just don't have enough faith in the writers to have thought it through to that extent. Just my gut feeling.

While you have a good and well informed point my only problem is the inconsistencies in the plot more than the actual mystery behind it.  I do like things open for interpretation, but there are way too many inconsistent elements in the show that were mysterious just for the sake of it.  It would have been much better, in my opinion, if the creators actually took the time to flesh out the mystery aspect of it a little more so that you can go back through the series and tie things together.   What we have now is a crazy amount of "WTF does this have to do with anything!" moments scattered throughout the whole series.
 
I feel like the creators were a little deceitful with the mystery because of how the questions were handled.  You can say that LOST is a character driven show and that's fine, but they really teased the audience with the notion that it would all make sense and that answers were on the way.  I guess that was just there way to keep people watching. 
 
Anyway, it was a great show and will be missed.

@Matt: I'll readily agree the series lost itself for a while, but I also think people have a lot of funny ideas about writers having, or even needing, a plan. Writing is an organic process, and often you discover the themes as you go. I thought the writers of LOST did a good job of recognizing where they had gone astray, identifying what was most wanted to say, and crafting an appropriate conclusion. I could care less what they thought they were doing 6 years ago. The text is the text. 
 
@AvD: I'm convinced a lot of the problem was the way fans have clung to throwaway statements made by writers in interviews going back to the very beginning. LOST had dozens of writers over the years and plans change and evolve for anyone. I sure don't want people holding me to an offhand statement I make today six years down the line. The way ABC promoted the show, promising answers didn't help, but the OCD nature of the fandom was just as unhealthy.

A counter post.

I think showrunners Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof were pretty clear that it wasn't; the fact that Mr. Eko left the show and that Ben ended up being a major player and that they were willing to discuss both those things is proof of that.  It seems to me you're just a passionate reactionary fan who wants to pick a fight, because that isn't what I said.   

Should the series be planned in detail from day 1?  The obvious answer is of course not. TV is a longform narrative medium, and it requires a certain amount of freedom. Actors come and go (sometimes even tragically), and storylines unexpectedly hit with the audience or shockingly sink. It's important that a TV show be loose enough to roll with the punches as well as to explore the sudden moments of genius - these two actors have amazing chemistry, so we need to get them together, for instance. To say that a TV show have a complete storyline utterly mapped out to the last detail is silly; even novelists rarely walk into their work with every moment mapped out. Art is about discovery, I never claim other wise. 
 
The cautionary tale of  Lost  is, in the end, the same as  The X-Files, but to the nth degree.  Lost  - and Cuse and Lindelof in particular - actively promoted fan speculation and investigation, getting people to pay lots of attention to the details and the way things fit together. But like  The X-Files, there was no big, mythic architecture. They literally made it up as they went along. They didn't know what the Smoke Monster was when they introduced it. It seems like they knew there was a hatch in the jungle from day one, but now what was in that hatch. That's a problem. A huge problem.    It's not a nit pick, and if you feel that way, you're wrong.  
 
Storytelling is about building a structure. The structure, in the end, has to be able to hold itself up. It should also, ideally, have a grace to it. There should be symmetry and there should be beauty in that structure. TV storytelling is different from movie storytelling; your movie structure should be tight and compact. Like a novel (or a good video game like  Red Dead Redemption), a TV show structure will be more sprawling. Some wings will more or less lead to dead ends, but they should feel worthy of exploration even though they're branching out from the main part of the structure. A good longform TV narrative will be slightly sloppier, but that's part of the beauty. It's why novels are almost always better than their film adaptations; like life itself, story feels better when it has some room to breathe and take tangents.     
 
But any structure has to include some planning. And the reality is that the  Lost  writers did almost none, and the planning they did seems to have not taken into consideration what they already built. It's almost mind-boggling that they would introduce major elements and not know what they meant. There was no need to have Smokey's final days planned out from episode one, but knowing what the Smoke Monster was - in a most basic way - from its first appearance would have made its actions over the six season run of the show seem less arbitrary. I mean, if Smokey is planning on manipulating the Losties to get off or destroy the island, why would it wantonly kill everybody it met? When Smokey finally showed up in human form, people reacted to him predictably - they hated him and wanted to get away from or destroy him.    

That was the essential problem with  The X-Files, that the mythology wasn't being thought out as it was introduced. The writers weren't looking beyond that week's episode, and sometimes weren't even looking into the past to see how the new revelation impacted previous knowledge, or if the new revelation was even compatible with what went before. There's a vocal subset of comic writers who hate the continuity of shared superhero universes, but readers know that half the fun  is  the continuity, and the same goes for longform TV. If you tell us this a show that has a storyline, we are going to pay attention to that storyline. 
 
 I don't think Damon Lindelof needed to know in season one that the Losties would end up in the 70s. It's like demanding a jazzman knows every note he's going to play all night long. Part of the joy is the improv, the chasing after a thought that catches the artist's fancy. You don't judge these things by how well they're planned, but by how well they're executed. That jazzman needs to bring everything together in a cohesive whole, to figure out how to get that riff back to the main structure of the piece and rejoin the other musicians. And within that riff he needs to understand how the notes work together so that he's not just playing random, cacophonous noise. It's partially a high wire act, but that's the fun, and that's why you go see live jazz. And it's why you watch a longform TV show - not because you're interested in a story so vast it needs 120 hours to tell, but because you like that feeling of fun and surprise  that comes when an artist has the room to improvise.      
 
And it's about trust. You trust that jazzman is going to understand each note he plays and how it relates to the next, even if you don't think he has the whole bit in his head in advance. And you trust that the writers understand the elements they're introducing, that they're not just sitting in the writer's room playing an elaborate game of Exquisite Corpse: "The main character walks into a room on the space station and sees his dad, who has been dead for 30 years! The end, it's your turn to figure out what happens next." That's a fun game to play, but not as much fun to watch.  

 It's not important that a TV show know where it's going from the start. I don't care whether or not the writers knew that Angel would one day run a Wolfram & Hart office when they introduced that evil lawfirm on  Angel, I just care that when they made that happen they had some idea of what they wanted to do with it and why the hero's antagonist suddenly wanted him on their side. Just as people get down on George Lucas for not having 14  Star Wars  movies planned out in advance, they'll continue being down on Lindelof and Cuse for not having all of  Lost  mapped out in advance. But those people are wrong on both counts - it's not that Lucas and Lindelof and Cuse didn't have it planned out, it's that they couldn't execute what they set out to do. If the Prequels had been made up on set but had turned out to be the most satisfying story ever told, nobody would give a shit that Lucas didn't have a magic ledger with all the details set down in 1975. And if the ending of  Lost   had worked, nobody would care that Lindelof had no plans for Walt back in 2004.

@Sarnecki said:

" A counter post.

I think showrunners Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof were pretty clear that it wasn't; the fact that Mr. Eko left the show and that Ben ended up being a major player and that they were willing to discuss both those things is proof of that.  It seems to me you're just a passionate reactionary fan who wants to pick a fight, because that isn't what I said.  

I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that I'm trying to pick a fight with anyone. If you think my blog here was a response to your own, I can assure you it is not. In fact, mine was published two days before yours. My goal was simply to explicate the way Cuse and Lindelof turned the perceived problem of unanswered mysteries within LOST's mythology into a thematic strength. Based on my reading of the show, described in the original blog post above, I think they were very successful in the end. I don't know why I should care that they took so many shots in the dark over the course of the show's run. On balance, I was very happy with the results, and that's just a question of interpretation and opinion. You can claim they didn't "execute", but that's a judgement you've made about the results. It's fine if you didn't like the ultimate message or thematic focus or direction of the show, but that doesn't mean they made it wrong or badly.

Nah sorry, I simply copied and pasted my reply from a similar discussion I had on Giant Bomb because I felt it applied.  Edit out the pick a fight stuff, it's unrelated.

@Sarnecki: Ah, OK. No Problem.

For some reason I agree with both of the large posts here. I see merits in both and I like to think they are right.

Which is FANTASTIC.  That really pleases me to hear.  Even though I have problems with Lost in the end, for it to inspire this kind of discussion is wonderful, and in my opinion, FUN. 
 
Since Brad seems like the optimist, I call MiB and his sweet pessimistic  smokey powers...  Plus I look good in black.

I think some of you would enjoy this speech that JJ Abrams gave in 2008.
 
 

i am sick and tired of people telling me "wahhh it wasnt really about the island and the mysteries, it was about the characters blah blah" 
 
well then how come the majority of the fans of the show thought otherwise...mainly because it was in fact that island and it's mysteries that were the most interesting and are the main reason we kept watching.  
 
clearly the writers either  
1. are really dumb and never realized that this was in fact the case with the fans and all along thought we were watching mainly because of the lame love triangles and shit 
or  
2. they were making shit up as they went along and had no fucking clue how they would ever explain any of it despite the fact that they realized how big of a hole they were digging themselves. 

I still want to know what the fck was with the island.....

Great blog post that puts my thoughts out there, but in a more elegant way than I ever could. All comes down to faith. I love it.

@TwoOneFive said:

" i am sick and tired of people telling me "wahhh it wasnt really about the island and the mysteries, it was about the characters blah blah"  well then how come the majority of the fans of the show thought otherwise...mainly because it was in fact that island and it's mysteries that were the most interesting and are the main reason we kept watching.   clearly the writers either  1. are really dumb and never realized that this was in fact the case with the fans and all along thought we were watching mainly because of the lame love triangles and shit or  2. they were making shit up as they went along and had no fucking clue how they would ever explain any of it despite the fact that they realized how big of a hole they were digging themselves.  "

I think it is 2.  I think they kept making shit up to provide entertaining television and didn't think far enough in advance as to how they would tie it together or didn't have enough guts to tie it together.  The entire it's up to the viewer argument is a load of crap.  Could you imagine if all of the great works of fiction worked that way where the last 50 pages of a novel were removed and it just left questions.  How about a great movie maybe in Shawshank the scene ends before we even know if Andy escaped or not and instead it just goes black.  I for one am tired of the leaving the ending up for interpretation.  If I could write compelling fiction I would do so but as it stands I can't so I rely on writers to do so and if the can't I will call them on it and they didn't finish the story.  Ooh, they go to a church and move on how creative.  This was a theory from like the second season.  Yeah they changed it a little but really it was really similar to the purgatory theory that they promised wasn't the case.   Plus, what about the 500 other mysteries they introduced to get us hooked?   Well they answered about 1/5th of them. 

This show was neve rabout holding your hand about answers. They provide enough to have us interpret what an answer could be to a reasonable question. Something like "Why does the frozen wheel send you to tunesia?" that is not a question? That is asking for an explanation for something the show never meant to be pondered on.