Thoughtnami | How Would YOU Have Ended Lost

Originally Written 05/25/10 by Jeff Harris

Let me put this out here before I begin. People were whining and kvetching about the way the series ended, which prompted me to write this a few days after watching the finale. After rewatching it all, let me put this thing some folks may have missed on their first viewing.

The whole cast didn't die in the plane crash. They're not all dead. As Christian Shepherd said himself, some died before Jack, most died long after Jack. The side world is a kind of middle-ground between the living and the dead, bound by all faiths, and this place reunited those most important to them because everything on the island did happen.

Now, I can begin.

The thing that kind of bugs me about the internet is how many people were pissed about the ending of one of the finest sci-fi dramas ever produced, ABC's award-winning series Lost. From a religious/metaphysical viewpoint, I was satisfied with the finale. Others were ticked at the final minutes of the series and the ambiguous nature of it. Again, I'm a theologian, and I got the ending. Hell, the theory that the entire series was Jack Shepherd's journey from a skeptical individual who didn't believe in anything to beliving in something so strong enough to sacrifice himself to save others and, in the end, himself is a great one. There were many alegories to Judeo-Christian, Hindi, Islamic, Taoist, and Buddhist customs/beliefs that most would miss (the window in the chapel tied all faiths together, but most viewers really didn't get the symbolic nature of the drinking ceremonies between Jacob and his "mother," Jacob and Jack, and Jack and Hurley).

There was just so much anger and confusion from the critics and angry fans who wanted something more than what they got? Which leads to the initial question, how would YOU have ended Lost?

There's been a lot of television finales over the decades, and to be honest, a lot is left to be desired. You leave the island because the war ended. You leave the office or home one last time, with the last one turning out the lights. You share one last group hug. You're either confined to a desk job as a cop or as a regular Joe Public.

You leap five years into the future where you become everything you wanted to be but realize you and your crush are better off as friends. You don't leap back home. You finally clear your name as a fugitive. You become a fugitive of the US government.

You narrate what happened in the years after your wonder years. You eat dinner at the table with your family. You go on a space mission, become a national hero, and return to the love of your life. You return to your home planet after living as humans for a good portion of your life.

You get abducted by aliens while your friends go about their separate lives. You go to jail with the rest of your jerkish friends for, essentially being a jerk. You reunite with a son you didn't know you had or leave town with the daughter you don't remember giving birth to.

You sell off your law firm to a duo who later married each other so another wouldn't have to share with his ex-wife. Long time lovers finally marry each other. Other lovers reunite after breaking up and start the cycle over again. You sacrifice yourself to save your friends trapped on an island by an omnipotent force.

Or sometimes, you're trapped in a perpetual loop because your show didn't really end, but was canceled with no real resolution over anything. Or fade to black quickly. Or was nothing more than a dream or delusions of an autistic boy playing with a snow globe.

Maybe some folks would have wanted Lost to end like an anime show. Maybe some wanted Jack to find a native boy, train him to be just like him, and ascend to the stars with him. Maybe they wanted everybody to start singing in the nude for no reason at all

Perhaps they wanted one final fight with the big bad guy. Wait. They got that in the Lost finale.

How about a mega happy ending with the cast, who are all day, hugging and congratulating each other with praise? Yeah, they did that too.

Perhaps after the fight with the big bad guy, the hero, battered, stabbed, beaten, but victorious, smiles and collapses. Dang, they did that too.

Truth be told, people weren't going to be 100% happy with the finale because everybody has their mind made up as to what the ending of Lost was going to be. Some thought that everybody would just leave the island and return to their normal, boring lives. Some thought that the two worlds would somehow collide and that everything actually happened. Maybe they wanted to see a strange new character bridge the world on both sides revealing that the paths taken were of the individual's taking. Or, maybe they wanted the whole series to be in the mind of one of the survivors, who was either crazy in a mental house and telling the story to a shrink or pitching an idea to a studio. Or they could have just written off that they were trapped by in an alien dimension and these tasks were formed by aliens who crash landed in an island unknown to the world by their choosing.

I like the theological/metaphysical direction the series took myself. The clues were always present on how the series would be. We just didn't know it at the time. Now that the show is over, perhaps they could be understood and appreciated, and I applaud the cast, creators, and crew for creating an incredible series. It may not be the ending some folks were anticipating. If the Simpsons ended, people would be disappointed in the way that ended too because that's a series that no ending would satisfy anyone either.

I'll miss Lost. I'm not the only one either.