*CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR A TWELVE-YEAR-OLD SHOW*
I first watched the Lost finale when it aired in 2010. I had waited an entire week for the final episode, an entire summer for the final season to begin, and an entire six years for answers to the questions J.J. Abrams had been spinning since the series premiered in 2004.
And we all know how that went.
I was resentful for years. When Lost showed up on Netflix, I ignored it. When J.J. Abrams was set to direct the new Star Trek, I scoffed. I went to see it anyway, of course, but I sat with my arms crossed in protest of the stupid cave light and the stupid flash sideways and all the stupid stupidity of the stupid way my favorite show had to stupidly end.
I didn’t think I’d ever watch Lost again, but for some reason, time or a global pandemic softened my heart. Lost is off Netflix but back on Amazon Prime, and I have just finished a full series rewatch.
I am fresh off the final episode. The one I raged against with the rest of the internet in 2010, the one that so hoarded my precious answers. You can read a recap here, but basically, Jack died to save humanity, Hurley became protector of the island, and the flash-sideways lives we thought the island folks were living were just self-constructed purgatories in which they could reunite after death.
And I didn’t hate it.
Yes, J.J. still hedged in important places. We got answers to maybe three-quarters of the series’ mysteries, and the rest were left to dangle like participles in the wind. But even with the lack of answers, where my 26-year-old self was seething, I found my 38-year-old self nodding.
I think it’s because, since the original airdate, I’ve spent a decade or two spiritually wandering. And although I still haven’t found a comfortable home—or maybe because of it—I’ve come to the conclusion that most of the big spiritual questions aren’t even meant to be answered. To me the point seems to be the experience of asking, not the satisfaction of knowing.
That can be a narrative cop-out (one I may or may not be employing in my novel at this very moment), but it’s also one of the few themes that feels universally true.
We’re not supposed to know everything. We can’t wrap our heads around death and the afterlife because we’re not meant to. Time travel movies never make sense because time travel isn’t for us. Ditto parallel universes, string theory, and all the other good metaphysical quagmires authors get stuck in.
Since I last watched Lost, I’ve moved into what Richard Rohr calls the second half of life mentality, in which anyone claiming to have tidy spiritual answers to anything makes me very squinty. Very squinty indeed.
And that’s a good place to be for a Lost finale.
One of the stickier complaints about the last season is that the cave of light, which is the island’s source and/or the source of all life in the universe, never really gets explained. It was driving the entire narrative, apparently, but it arrived late in season 6 with Allison Janney and zero backstory. We’re expected to accept it at face value, just as the characters do.
In 2010, I said barf. In 2022, I say sure.
I mean something has to give life to the cosmos, right? We don’t know the origins of God or dark matter or The Force, so why do we need a backstory for this? So it’s in a cave. Dig it. As I said, we can’t ever understand how the existential sausage gets made, so I’m alright with the Lost God giving humans a metaphor to tend to instead. Inner sanctums, it was in you the whole time, etc., etc.
Yes, it’s held in place by a man-made stone cork, which is a bit… on the nose, I agree. But we’ve been claiming to hold divine power in handcrafted vessels for a few thousand years now. It’s no weirder than the Ark of the Covenant, is it?
I also really, really—please hold your raw produce until the end—liked the flash sideways.
*ducks*
Twelve years ago, I wanted it to be a parallel universe as much as the rest of you. Twelve years ago I would have breakdance-fought someone for it to have been a parallel universe. We all wanted J.J. to land the flash-sideways plane. The fact that he changed it to a spitwad in mid-air was the source of most of our finale rage, I think.
This time, though, I knew what was coming. And because of that, I watched the flash-sideways not as a string theory mystery but as a set of [extremely fit and attractive] people working out their karma. Stuck in the mitote. Looking through a mirror darkly. The stuff most ancient traditions say we came down here to do.
And then when they gathered in the church to all move on together, I did not roll my eyes. I curled my fingers into a chef’s kiss and blew it at Matthew Fox.
Of course they want to leave Earth together. Jack’s dad says their time on the island was the most important time in all of their lives. But not because of the cave light, or Jack’s heroism, or any of the other wacky mysteries we spent our nights sweating over on the fan forums.
It was because of the people they met, fought with, loved, and tolerated along the way. For a set of people who were all lonely and isolated (which is why Jacob picked them), there was no more divine experience.
Nor is there one for us. After all, we only exist in relationship to each other, if you want to get all Alan Watts about it.
With that said, there are nits to be picked in that church. I would feel better, even with my time-softened heart, if we took a moment to do so together.
Sayid should not, under any cosmological system, have been entering the afterlife with Shannon. Sayid belonged with Nadia, even in the flash-sideways of his own making, and Shannon belonged in a white Jeep convertible driving eternally toward a high-end outlet mall in the opposite direction.
Walt wasn’t there at the afterlife bon voyage, but then Walt hadn’t been there for much. On the boards, we understood this was a child actor problem and that he’d aged out of the timeline. However, even with Malcolm David Kelly off screen, would it have been so hard to throw us an exposition bone about what the island did to his powers? Or why Jacob thought he needed him? Boo.
Michael should have been there, too. Yes, I get that he’s a ghost stuck on the island, but why? Because he shot Libby and Ana Lucia? While Ben gets to move on after exterminating 75 members of the Dharma initiative? Boo again.
There’s more, but I’m telling you that in spite of these things—and alllllll the other loose ends and narrative corners J.J. painted himself into—I turned off that much-maligned finale as a middle-aged woman and felt happy.
If you watched the Lost finale live in 2010, you’ve lived long enough to have probably changed as a person. At least a little bit. May I gently, and with my arms raised protectively over my face, suggest that you see how that might have changed your view of Lost? Of the stupid light in the stupid cave? Of the stupid flash sideways and the stupid they were dead the whole time and all the other stupids you never thought you could ever forgive, but maybe now you can?
I recommend that you rewatch Lost. The worst that can happen is you’ll see Desmond Hume with his dress shirt jauntily unbuttoned. And that’s a spiritual experience I think we can all get behind.
