TORONTO, May 24, (Agencies): Sci-fi TV drama “Lost” ended six seasons of plot twists in an emotional finale that saw forgotten characters reemerge, an epic battle among key rivals and still more questions in the mysterious island paradise.
Fans looking for answers to the series’ numerous mysteries were treated to the reappearance of characters from seasons past like Boone and Shannon, who served as catalysts to trigger memories of the island for those struggling to remember.
Perhaps it was predictable that the “Lost” creators would reintroduce old characters and leave new questions unanswered. After all, they had already warned they would.
Producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse said in advance that the final episode’s storyline would continue on a season six DVD with upward of 20 minutes of additional material.
Part supernatural adventure, part character-driven drama, “Lost” has evolved from the story of 48 survivors of Oceanic flight 815 who find themselves stranded on a mysterious island into a complicated, mythological tale with an expansive cast.
The series-ending season No. 6 began in the post hydrogen-bomb haze of the 1977 Swan construction site explosion, and it progressed at a break-neck pace shifting through time periods and giving more back story on strange characters like Richard Alpert, Jacob and The Man in Black.
Sunday’s finale, the 114th episode fittingly entitled “The End,” saw the island’s new protector Jack and the nefarious Locke/Man in Black, fight it out for control of Desmond, who served as both a tool to be used and a weapon because of his tolerance to electromagnetic energy and the island’s fate.
Sacrificed
Jack later sacrificed himself to bring the mythical “heart of the island” back to life, watching a plane glide through a jungle clearing before closing his eyes for the last time.
Kate, Sayid, Charlie and the other Oceanic survivors in the show’s alternate “sideways” reality began experiencing flashbacks of their time on the island, leading them to remember they are somehow intrinsically linked to one another.
Some new facts such as Juliet being Jack’s ex-wife in the alternate timeline were revealed, but larger questions about the origin of the island and its strange light, why women can’t give birth and what “the numbers” mean were left open ended.
The series finale was part of a night of programming around “Lost” that ABC aired to keep fans glued to the screen for the show that airs in some 220 countries around the world.
The network broadcast a two-hour retrospective before the program and followed it up with late-night talk show “Jimmy Kimmel Live: Aloha to Lost.”
Since its debut in 2004, “Lost” has won 58 awards, including Golden Globes and Emmys, and while viewership has fallen since its early heyday among TV’s top-rated dramas, “Lost” still averages around 11 million viewers weekly in the United States.
In a related story, the premiere of “Lost” ended memorably with Charlie’s plaintive question to his fellow island castaways: “Guys, where ARE we?”
Many viewers might be wondering the same thing as the much-awaited “Lost” finale brought the series to a rapturous close Sunday night.
Viewers, where are we? The answer: Almost anywhere we want to be.
If ever a TV series could be likened to a journey, “Lost” is it, and as it came to the end of the road it left its audience with comfort and inspiration more than hard answers. There was also, not surprisingly, a sense of being lost in the maw of a show that henceforth will give up nothing more, a show whose sweep and ambiguity will fuel debate and theorizing from its viewers for years to come.
That, dear viewers, is where you are.
As they have all season, story lines overlapped between the characters on the island and in their parallel lives in the “normal” world back home in California.
On the island, Jack (Matthew Fox) has volunteered from among the designated candidates to take over from Jacob (Mark Pellegrino) as the island’s protector.
The Smoke Monster, occupying the body of Locke (Terry O’Quinn), wants to stop the candidates, kill them, destroy the island and sail away.
Back in Los Angeles, Jack, by profession a surgeon, is about to operate on Locke, who (in this incarnation) is crippled.
“If I can fix you, Mr. Locke, that’s all the peace I’ll need,” Jack says.
But then back on the island, Jack and the Monster-Who-Looks-Like-Locke have a tense confrontation.
“So it’s you,” says Monster-Locke, meaning the island’s new protector. “I assume you’re here to stop me.”
“Can’t stop you,” Jack says, but promises instead, “I’m gonna kill you.”
Well, he doesn’t. But a bit later, Kate (Evangeline Lilly) somehow kills the monster-who-is-mortal-again with a single gunshot after a fierce cliffside fight between him and Jack.
Back in LA, Locke’s surgery is a success. From his bed, he gratefully tells Jack he has feeling back in his legs.
“Jack, I hope that somebody does for you what you just did for me,” Locke says to a disturbed-looking Jack, who seems to be having flashes of memory of his alternate existence. It’s the sort of memory bursts all the characters are having: island recollections invading their consciousness.
A few minutes later, Jack runs into Kate, his island love, as they, too, play the haven’t-I-seen-you-somewhere-before game.
“What is happening to me?” says Jack, bewildered as she looks at him adoringly. “Who are you?”
“I know you don’t understand, Jack,” she says. “But if you come with me, you will.”
Come with her where?
To a church where the former castaways are gathered for what seems a beatific funeral reception for themselves. At this reunion, everyone is smiling and embracing. The room floods with light.
And Jack reconciles with his dead father, whose body he had been bringing back from Sydney when Oceanic flight 815 crashed on the lost island at the start of the series.
Jack has a tender conversation with the man he had clashed with so often before.
“I don’t understand,” says Jack. “You died.”
“Yes, I did.”
“Then how are you here right now?”
“How are YOU here?” his father (John Terry) replies.
“I died, too,” says Jack, beginning to weep.
“That’s OK, son.”
And yet it’s all real, his father assures him.
“Everything that’s ever happened to you is real. All those people in the church, they’re all real, too.”
“They’re all dead?” Jack asks.
“Everyone dies sometime, kiddo,” his father replies gently.
Through the run of the series, there was much talk among its characters of being on the island for a purpose. As it draws to a close, “Lost” has sustained the eerie feeling (eerie for TV, anyway) that it was on the air for a purpose — a special purpose beyond selling products and filling time, or even entertainment.
Its cast, producers, writers and the rest seemed drawn to create “Lost,” and keep creating it year after year, thanks to fate as much as show-biz urgencies.
Deeper and wider than any TV series should dare to be, it has been thrilling, captivating, confounding (and, at times, pretty tedious), while it challenged its viewers to think, talk and feel.