Lost is over. Now what?

The Lost finale was last night. And it wasn’t just the season finale, it was the series finale. Like, the end. It’s done.

Wait, what happens now?

Okay, I’ll admit that I didn’t watch all of this season until literally friday night. I had twelve episodes to get through. Friday night I watched three, saturday morning I watched two, and saturday night I watched six. Sunday morning I watched the last one before the finale. I was on my own personal Lost marathon. And I feel like I should have been having an entire 6-season rewatch for the last 2 months or so, but in those last 2.5 hours, it all came back. I didn’t need to go back and watch 6 of the greatest seasons of television, because along with the characters, I remembered. I won’t try and explain anything, because it’s far too complicated to understand the depth of the story that Lindelof and Cuse put forth all those years ago, but the finale was beautiful. It was exactly how it should have been.

I cried. A lot. I cried the night before when Jin and Sun died together, I cried during the finale when Charlie remembered Claire, and Juliet remembered Sawyer, and when Jack passed the torch to Hurley. And at the end when Jack was dying, for the good ten minutes. No, really, I’m pretty sure Jack stumbled around the Island dying for the last ten minutes of the show, after we all finally found out what the Island actually was.

Some people are probably still unsatisfied with the ending, because there were still questioned unanswered, but did they really think that they could answer everything question without being incredibly campy and ridiculous? Cause some things don’t even matter anymore, so why try and resolve them. The only things that were resolved were part of the whole story to begin with.

[EDIT] I figured that the Island was purgatory all along, but I was wrong. All the symbolism and plot that went into finishing out this great story astounded me. It was so much deeper than just purgatory. The Island was real. They were really there. The last scene exemplified that with the footprints on the beach by the crash site. The Island happened. I read this article earlier, and it explains it pretty well. The crash actually happened, they were actually on the Island, but they died. They all died. This alternate universe that we’ve been seeing all season with Sawyer and Miles as cops and Jack and Juliet married, that was the dream. The dream that they were living in this millisecond between death and actually moving on. Apparently in the Tibetan belief of bardos, once awareness is freed from the body, it creates its own reality as one would experience in a dream. This dream occurs in various phases (bardos) in ways both wonderful and terrifying – that was the dream. The dream that they were trapped in that they had to move on from.

My mom was watching the last bit of the recap with me and was like, “did we always know that Jack’s dad’s name was Christian?”

“Yeah, mom.”

“Good lord, I could have figured it out a long time ago if I’d known that.”

“Yeah, I know mom.”

I’m not a religious person, but I think I’m a person of faith. I believe in things. No specific things, but things. And what I loved so much about Lost is that it made you ask so many questions – not just about the show, but about yourself. I mean, in a time where shitty shows like The Bachelor and Private Practice – ones that involve no thought whatsoever, shallow and useless, we had Lost. They had these series of notes from viewers in between the recap last night, and one very aptly said, “who says TV fries your brain?”

Here are a couple more that especially touched me.
“Our minds may tell us that it’s over, but our hearts will forever remain on the Island.”
“The world is full of smoke monsters. There is a smoke monster in all of us.”
“I lost 6 years to you, and I don’t want them back.”
“Why does this have to end?”
“I’ll miss you, Freckles.”
“Thanks some much for an amazing six years.”
“To all the Losties out there, may the love of this show unite us forever. Goodbye, LOST. Thanks for the memories.”
“You were ridiculously awesome at keeping me addicted to confusion.”
“May as well sell the TV! Nothing can compare. Thanks for 6 amazing seasons.”

I’m just sad I didn’t get to watch the finale with anyone else. I literally got home last night at 12:30 and had to eat dinner and help my mom with something for work before I watched the 2.5 hour finale. Well, with fast-forwarding through the commercials. But I didn’t get to bed until 3:30. So I got less than 5 hours of sleep. Or less. Depending on how long it actually took me to get to sleep. I woke up with a sore throat, headache and puffy eyes. Good job, Abby. Now I’m gonna be sick for Sasquatch. Time to take way too much Vitamin C. Not that Lost got me sick, it just got me hella tired for today. I’m going to bed at midnight. And that’s that.

But I know some people are probably reading this thinking that I’m ridiculous. I am. But am I ashamed for loving Lost? No. It’s a show that made you think. And sure, it’s completely fictional, but it’s just like when you finish reading a great novel, or a great series of novels. I guarantee that if you read all 7 of the Harry Potter novels, you cried at the end. Unless you’re, like, heartless or something. And I cried at the end of Lost not because everyone died, but because it was over. I mean, you can’t really write a show to take its place, because nothing will live up to it. It’s not like a sitcom or medical melodrama, or a cop show or reality show. Serial dramas don’t follow a formula, and that’s what I loved about Lost. I literally had no idea what was going on half the time, let a lone what was going to happen next. It was a show that you had to actively watch. Like reading a book, but with a wonderful score and really attractive male leads.

And it’s different when serials end, because when series end, we know that in the universe within the series, life still goes on. It’s just that the story is no longer being told in episodes. When serials are over, they’re over. The story is over. It’s really the end. And in Lost’s case, it was all of their end.

When I read that article I linked to earlier, one point that she made hit me.

“If you live together, you won’t die alone.”

I can’t explain why it poked at my brain so much, but it was kind of wonderful. The Oceanic 815 passengers had to find each other so that they could leave together. I swear to God Jacob and Christian explained the entire reason they were there.

In the last few moments of the finale, I had the perfect sense of deja vu. There Jack was, dying in the middle of the bamboo reeds, and Vincent comes to sit with him so he won’t die a lone. And then the camera comes in on Jack’s eye closing. The series started with Jack’s eye opening and Vincent barking after the plane crash.

God this show was fucking amazing.

Goodnight, Jack. Goodbye, Lost. It was nice knowing you.
❤ Abby

P.S. Another excerpt from Jezebel's article. I want to live my life like this.
“Because a part of the shared human experience—which is basically what the entire show boiled down to—is that we want to leave our mark, so that people know that we’d been here. (I mean, that was the point of all the different shit, like the statue, and hieroglyphs and the empty Dharma barracks. They were all just footprints of the people who had been on the Island before.) And a large part of that, of leaving a footprint, or a mark, is to establish a basic need: To know that we matter.”