Here is a handful of snippets from reviews of the season finale of ‘LOST‘ last night. I thought that overall the finale was riveting, interesting, and informative. The swift pace of action kept viewers glued to their sets over the 2+ hour marathon.
The battle scene between Jack and Smoke Monster Locke was epic, including the heroic kill of Locke by Kate. Along with others, I had predicted that the show would conclude with Jack’s eye closing in the bamboo field, as a homage to how the show opened, with Jack in the bamboo field with his eye opening.
I had figured last episode that Jack’s guardianship of the island would be temporary and that he would be replaced by Hurley, due mostly in fact that Hurley bluntly said at the campfire with Jacob that he didn’t want the job of protecting the island. And Hurley was the absolute perfect person to protect the ‘LOST’ island.
Jack was extremely important to go back into the cave-hole and replace the stone tub plug so that the light would return around the world.
The entire episode was great until the last 5 minutes in the church, in my opinion. So they are all dead?!? Did they die during the initial plane crash on the island or did they just re-gather at the church after dying naturally (and unnaturally) on and after leaving the island?
Regardless of the final episode, or final five minutes of the finale, it was a great and enjoyable ride over the six groundbreaking seasons of the show.
Click the links to read the full reviews. The review by Alan Sepinwall below is very thorough and worth a full read.
Alan Sepinwall (Hitfix.com) – And I still don’t know how I feel about the scene in the church, and about Christian’s suggestion that the people everybody met on the island are the ones who matter the most to them now that they’ve crossed over. While I think that’s a nice nod to the idea of “Lost” as this show that matters so much to those of us who stuck around through the end, the conceit doesn’t seem to hold up to the “it’s all about the characters” philosophy. Why would Sayid’s heavenly soulmate be Shannon and not Nadya? Why would Jin and Sun be okay going into the light without Ji Yeon? If this is only a reunion for people who were on the island, why is Penny (who never set a foot on the place) there, while Daniel, Charlotte, Miles, Ana-Lucia and so many more are not? (Won’t someone please think of Nikki and Paulo?) Couldn’t Ben just bring Alex? Do Jack and Juliet no longer care about their imaginary afterlife son?
Ken Tucker (Entertainment Weekly) -If there was any big surprise last night, it was how overtly Christian in its imagery and message the series proved to be. Its heavily underscored lesson was that everyone was forgiven — that word was used over and over. And the water at the Magic Glowing Source was used for the purposes of transubstantiation: “Drink this,” Jack was told upon being handed water, a phrase later repeated when Jack gave water to Hugo. Given the liquid’s effect particularly on Jack, the dialogue might just as well have quoted directly from a Communion service: “Drink this, for this is my body which is given unto you. Do this, in remembrance of me.”
For if there was one thing we can probably all agree upon, in the end, Jack Shephard was a Christ figure whose sacrifice saved many other people. The imagery could not have been more specific: Jack’s questioning and obeying of his father; his leadership of a small group of disciples; his final ascension (in TV terms, in a glowing white light). Even the piercing of his side by Locke/Man In Black was in the part of his body where Christ was speared while in agony on the crucifying cross.
Kristin Dos Santos (E! Online) – However, the Sideways world was a post-death place of limbo where Jack was waiting until he was ready to “let go” and cross over to The Light, which is basically Lost‘s form of Heaven. The Losties who appeared in the church at the end all died at different times in different places (some much later on) but came together in that space to help Jack move on.
But it wasn’t only about helping Jack. The Losties all gathered in the church to cross over to The Light because Jack saved that very Light when he rescued the island. As we were told this season, if The Light “goes out here, it goes out everywhere” and “everyone you love would simply cease to be.” If the Light had gone out, the Losties could never have reconnected with their loved ones again. But because Jack saved it, they all get to live blissfully ever after. The (brilliant) end.
Jeff Jensen (Entertainment Weekly) – In a way, this really was the zombie season of Lost after all, wasn’t? The Sideways world was a Bardo, a kind of Tibetan Book of the Dead intermediate state. It was… Purgatory theory come true! All pause for laughter — and all pause to appreciate the point Lost hammered home all episode long. The Island world was real. Everything that happened on that damn rock mattered. We worried at the beginning of the season that five years of investment would be squandered by a time reboot. Nope. We worried the messy redemption struggles of each soul would be cheapened by Jughead’s clean and easy atomic whiteout. Nope. ”Whatever happened, happened,” Jack told Desmond, admonishing the idealistic Scot for his wanting cheap, painless shortcuts to salvation. Still, what did the Sideways world mean? And was it truly dramatically necessary to Lost? Some thoughts to come.
Mary McNamara (L.A. Times) – Because watching “Lost” has been a bit like being pregnant. The thrill of discovery, followed by the delight of watching a nascent form evolve into something real. Then the long delightful exhausting middle months, until it came down to a few final weeks, fueled by fevered anticipation and the wretched, bloated desire to just get the dang thing over with.
And as with most birth experiences, there was blood and there were tears. Lots of tears. In the end, “Lost” was not, despite all that blogging to the contrary, a modern allegory of good versus evil or faith versus science. “Lost,” it turns out, was nothing more or less than a love story, the 2 1/2 hours of its finale tilted much more toward lovers’ reunions than the final battle between Jack ( Matthew Fox) and John Locke (Terry O’Quinn).
Max Read (Gawker.com) – And yet, somehow, we all kept coming back. I’m not going to use the “abusive relationship” metaphor, because that’s hacky and offensive, but I’ll say this: Those guys know how to write a finale. Season after season, it was the same thing: The first five or six episodes were great. The middle ten were terrible—just lazy, premise-stretching garbage—and then they’d pull it together for the finale.
Do you remember the hatch lighting up? Or Jack blasting In Utero and realizing that you were witnessing—I still sh*t my pants thinking about this years later—a flash-forward? That was why we kept watching the show: The amazing, game-changing, cliffhanger finales.
Henry Hanks (CNN.com) – The “letting go” scenes in the “flash-sideways” varied in their effectiveness (Sayid and Shannon? Um, sure why not?), but when they worked, they really worked. Sun and Jin seeing their baby’s ultrasound, the pure joy coming from John Locke once Jack healed him, and best of all, Sawyer and Juliet’s realization. If that scene didn’t get you, you don’t have a romantic bone in your body. (For the people who watched “Lost” for the romance and relationships, this finale was an epic win, including Jack and Kate’s kiss.) At the same time, Kate’s “let go” moment was not about Jack or Sawyer, but delivering Aaron.
The action scenes also worked just as well as anything else on “Lost.” Aside from the scenes down the mystical waterfall, and the brutal fight between Jack and Locke, we had an extremely gripping takeoff scene with Lapidus, Miles and Richard… and last-minute passengers Kate, Sawyer and Claire. One assumes they went home to some form of happy ending, as did Desmond, eventually. How the aging Richard might have started a new life on the mainland is anybody’s guess. I’m actually really pleased with how many people lived through the main action on the island.
Mary Stasi (N.Y. Post) -While Jack was fighting for his life on the island, he was getting sweaty over Kate at his father’s funeral. Jack’s dead father, Christian, told Jack in the roomful of everyone who had ever been on the island (and on the show), “This is the place you all made together so you can find one another. You’re not leaving, you’re moving on.” What? Were they all dead all along? Probably.
After the show was over, as the credits rolled, we saw the horrific, original wreckage.
Perhaps the series was really about what would or could or may have happened had they lived. The possibilities, the loves not loved.
[image: abc]
