Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine Lost: The Final Season

Actually, in this case it worked pretty well. When I didn't know what the Sideways was, I was afraid it was a way to erase all the deaths that had happened by giving them all a chance to re-enter the original timeline. So when the Kwons and Sayid died, I was sad but confused thinking they may somehow crossover from the Sideways. Turns out that wasn't the case at all. True, it was a "happy" ending, but it didn't reverse what happened to all those who died. I'd say if the Island was kind of a metaphor for life and death, then it somehow allowing for all of them to meet up again in the afterlife works pretty well for me.

The Sideways was a way for the producers to have their cake and eat it too - they got all the drama from the deaths of those characters and were able to give them the emotional catharsis of a happy ending as well! Brilliant for its unabashed ambition to milk the audience for all its emotional worth.

In just two days, the sixth season of Lost finally begins!

Well, at least it does for those who didn't watch it when it aired on TV, and have had to wait for the DVDs/Blu-Rays to come out.

I'll be posting thoughts on this thread as I watch the episodes -- but using the "Quick Reply" box on the first page so that I don't spoil anything by reading something I shouldn't. I'll slowly scroll through the pages as I go through the episodes so that I don't get ahead of myself.

I've watched episodes 1 through 7.

I'm really intrigued by the flash-sideways scenes. It seems as though most of the Losties (and Others) are better off in the alternate reality -- or at least alive.

It was good to see minor characters like Arzt with a little more screen time. Even Martin Keamy had a (thankfully) brief appearance! My favorite so far was seeing Charlotte appearing as Sawyer's date -- love her accent. (And it was interesting that she works at a museum with Miles's father -- would that still be Pierre Chang? Though Miles is still "Miles Straume" in the flash-sideways reality, which suggests that he and his mother may have left his father on the island. I don't think they ever explained why, in the "original" timeline, Miles has a surname that is neither his father's nor even an Asian one -- maybe Mrs. Chang had a brief re-marriage after she left the island.) I can't wait to see the flash-sideways Faraday and Lapidus -- I have a special fondness for the "freighter folk" -- plus Ana Lucia, Libby, and Eko. And, of course, more of the flash-sideways Desmond -- is he with Penny in this timeline?

I'm actually starting to sympathize with Ben -- something I'd never done before. (Though his decision not to rat out the principal didn't make a whole lot of sense. Even with a glowing recommendation from a principal who's an alum, there's no guarantee that Alex would get into Yale. And if her grades and scores were good enough, she could get into another school that's just as good or better even without the support of her principal. Maybe Ben was going to wait until after Alex got into college before ratting out the principal -- there's no statute of limitations on inappropriate workplace behavior.)

Looks like most of the characters in the "main" timeline are either going crazy or will die soon.

You watch your mouth!

I'm still hoping for a prequel spin-off called, "Crazy Keamy Comin' Atcha!"

I've now watched through "The Package" (the Jin/Sun-centric episode), and so I guess Keamy had at least one more brief appearance left in him. It was also cool seeing Mikhail, whose Achilles heal always seems to be his eye...

The Richard-centric episode was interesting. Obviously the show is suggesting that the MiB is evil incarnate and that, if he should leave the island, the world is doomed. But why? He's not all-powerful, even on the island. Electric pylons and grey ash can contain him -- what else is he susceptible to? It's not like he can just go around bashing the entire population of earth to death as a giant cloud of black smoke. And yes, he can imitate the forms of others, but even that has its limits, as it appears he's now "stuck" as Locke for some reason.

I don't completely buy the fact that the MiB is actually the bad guy for two simple reasons: (1) everyone else keeps saying he is, and (2) how dumb would it be for the guy in black to be evil and the guy in white to be good? I'd like to think that maybe the MiB is actually just someone or something with special powers that's been kept prisoner by a sadistic higher power. It would be a pretty interesting final twist if the Losties destroy/defeat the MiB in the end, only to realize that they completely screwed up.

And why are Tina Fey and Patton Oswalt working for Charles Widmore??

I've now watched through "The Last Recruit" -- Jin and Sun are reunited at last, and Jack is forced to join back up (at least temporarily) with Fake-Locke.

This season has been very uneven for me so far. I find more fulfilling the episodes in which a lot is revealed in the flash-sideways timeline, or that focus on one character (Richard or Desmond). Not a whole lot has happened on the island, relatively speaking -- at least, it certainly feels like people have just been running back and forth from temple to camp to beach. There's been a lot of talk about shifting alliances and wanting to leave the island or not leave the island, but it just feels a bit like filler.

And Ilana's death was both painfully telegraphed and pointless. The reasoning that "the island was done with her" seemed like an excuse and a way to avoid saying that "the writers were done with her." Her sole purpose was to explain a bit about why the "candidates" were on the island, and once that bit of drawn-out exposition was done, she would have just been in the way of the main Losties' story.

Which is why I'm certain that Frank Lapidus isn't going to be around much longer. Ostensibly, he's needed because he's the only one that can fly a commercial jet. If the Losties indeed use the Ajira plane to leave the island, then Frank's sole purpose will be to be the pilot. If, on the other hand, circumstances prevent the plane from being used, then I've no doubt that Frank will swiftly be written out of the story. I really can't see him playing any central or crucial role in the plot.

I'm also pretty sure that the plane is a big red herring. Yeah, it's still intact, but would it realistically be flight-worthy? If it does end up being flown off the island, I'd cry foul. I can't imagine that it hasn't sustained enough damage from crash landing that it can't be safely flown again without major repairs (not to mention a longer/firmer "runway").

And why on earth would anyone think that dynamite is even needed to cripple the plane (another reason that Ilana's death was so silly)? They have machine guns and knives -- a few whacks at the plane's tires and engines would render it utterly unflightworthy. Even a sharp stick to the control panel would serve the same purpose -- there really isn't a legion of commercial aircraft mechanics on the island (along with replacement parts) to fix even relatively minor damage to the plane.

It's understandable that sometimes characters do things, under duress, that aren't fully thought out. But it beggars any reasonable suspension of disbelief that not one person among the Losties would have protested the whole dynamite quest, and insisted that they just take some sharp rocks to the plane instead.

Also, I'm more convinced than ever that the MiB isn't entirely bad. The show just tries so hard to suggest that he is. Sure, he's killed people -- but almost all of the Losties have at some point or another! Under extreme circumstances, people do desperate things -- to protect a loved one, or to be reunited with one, for example. How desperate would you be if you'd been essentially incarcerated on an island for untold centuries without being able to see the outside world or to die?

With less than a half dozen episodes left, I really hope this season picks up steam and just gets to the point. I don't know that I can take much more running-around-the-jungle-making-illogical-choices...

It's definitely not Lost's best season, Arby, IMO for the reasons you cite. It really seemed like the writers just blew their load in Season Five with all its great twists, revelations and overall coolness. The island stuff in S6 felt like filler as the creators bided their time for the end game.

That said, I do feel those last episodes pick things up considerably and that the final installment left me satisfied. There's plenty of emotional punch awaiting you. As you'd imagine, though, the degree of satisfaction among Lost fans is all over the map with plenty coming out and saying that they felt like their six years' worth of investment was wasted. I'm definitely not in that camp. Overall, I'm very satisfied wit the conclusion and have very few reservations. But I'll let you judge for yourself.

Just finished "The Candidate" -- OMG, so many people died! Frank, as predicted (want to bet none of the other Losties will miss him or ever even mention him again?), Sayid, and Jin and Sun. At least Sayid's death was heroic -- Jin's was pointless.

I can't stand it when lovers insist on dying together because it's supposed to be the ultimate display of devotion or something. When you're dead, you're gone -- if you believe in an afterlife, then your souls are going to be together for eternity anyway, so what does it matter where your respective bodies are? And if you don't believe in an afterlife -- well, it still doesn't matter if your bodies are floating three feet apart in a sunken submarine, or are buried a thousand miles apart.

If I was trapped and knew I couldn't escape, but knew that my wife still had a chance to do so -- I would tell her that the best way to show her love for me and to honor my memory is to live a long, happy fulfilling life for herself and to make the most of it. (Especially if we had a child together! Why wouldn't Sun urge Jin to go so that their daughter could at least have the chance to grow up with one parent?) It seems either stupidly "romantic" solely for the sake of being romantic to let the idea of "not leaving you" (i.e., dying together) trump everything else -- or selfishly cowardly (i.e., you'd rather die than face the possibility of going on alone).

(In this respect, one of the few things I respected and liked about Titanic was the ending -- how it showed that Rose honored her love for Jack by living a full, meaningful life.)

Also, it's getting annoying having to refer to the Smoke Monster as "The Man in Black" or "Locke" (especially as he's really not Locke). I'm guessing the fact that he's not been given a proper name (as opposed to his nemesis, Jacob -- who not only has a name but a properly Biblical one, at that) is another way to de-humanize him and cast him even more as an other (pun not entirely intended).

Only three more episodes! I may stay up late tonight and just finish them out...

I kinda agree with you about Jin's decision, but at the same time, it's just such a beautiful and poetic ending to their story. They'd only just been reunited, and then Jin had to face staying with her and facing the end together or letting her die alone and afraid in a watery grave. I love those two characters a great deal, so ultimately, I respect the choice that was made. Yes, writers actually made the choice, but I found it resonated with what we've come to know about these characters.

And there's something in your last post that makes me want to scream, but I'll refrain.

Jin and Sun forgetting they had a daughter seemed completely out of character to me. The scene was beautifully executed, but that point just made the entire thing wrong, IMO.

What's the something?

If he's talking about what I think he's talking about, it's a spoiler.

OK, I finished season 6 and the new mini-sode, "The New Man in Charge." So... spoilers for that, I guess!

I have a lot of thoughts about the three final episodes in season six. I'll kind of just throw them out.

"Across the Sea" was a nice change of pace, but raised more questions than it answered. Why can't a guardian just cover the glowing light hole with rocks, making it impossible to find? Or, for that matter, why worry at all? It's suggested that the hole can't be physically found unless a guardian deliberately leads you there -- you can't just stumble upon it. So long as no one leads the MiB there, why fear him finding it? And why did Jacob's nameless brother transform into the Smoke Monster because he fell in -- because he was "special" to begin with? Because he was thrown in out of anger/revenge? Judging by the number of skeletons down there, quite a few people had gone in there over the years (were they all led there by a guardian?), and there weren't dozens of smoke monsters around the island. Plus, both Desmond and Jack went down, and neither became transformed.

Poor Jacob. Did he die a 2000-year old virgin? All those countless centuries, spent just weaving rugs and staring out at the ocean...

Re: "What They Died For" and "The End":

I was glad to see I was wrong about Lapidus being alive, as he was one of my favorite characters. However, I was also disappointed that I was right about needing him to pilot the plane. The fact that they were able to fix the plane in one hour by covering the shattered windshield and strategically applying duct tape just seemed too implausible to me, almost farcical. I actually kept waiting for the plane to explode because they'd overlooked a second set of explosives -- or for Lapidus to suddenly realize, too late, that there wasn't enough fuel left to reach land. (So what story are they going to come up with this time to explain where everyone else on the Ajira flight went, or why they're bringing back people who supposedly are at the bottom of the ocean in the fake Oceanic 815? It's not like they can discreetly land a commercial jet somewhere and then just pretend they washed ashore on a raft...)

And getting the plane off the ground in a hurry really wasn't necessary, as Jack ended up saving the island -- though I guess the people on the plane wouldn't have known that. Nevertheless, in light of that fact, they really didn't need to take the plane, as once the island was stable they could have gotten off some other way (e.g., used the donkey wheel). One could argue, in fact, that it was riskier to take the plane, as it might have been indiscernibly damaged and not really flightworthy. (And really, there are always ways to get off the island. Since they know the guardian can leave the island and return at will -- they could have just had Jack/Hurley teleport (or whatever) to the U.S. to send over a ship. Or maybe Penny could mount another expedition!)

Another thing that bothered me about the action in the last couple of episodes was the fact that there was WAY too much compression of events and occurrences! How did they traipse all over the island so quickly in the final hours? I remember discussions in earlier seasons about how it would take days to hike along the coast or to get from the beach camp to the barracks -- now they're running from place to place in mere minutes. This was especially glaring when they suddenly came up with the arbitrary "we have one hour left until everything ends!" and then scrambled to get everything done -- seemingly just under the wire.

It was also good to see Bernard and Rose, but their quickie cameo came off as kind of pointless other than to remind viewers that they were still on the island and alive. (How come no one ever found them over the course of three years? Did they build their hut next to the glowing light hole?)

Overall, I was glad that Miles, Lapidus, and Richard were alive -- I was worried that they'd literally kill off everyone except the main four -- Jack, Sawyer, Kate, and Hurley.

And is Claire still insane (if she ever truly was)? It seems that people who are "taken" by the MiB can still recover their sanity/morality -- as Sayid and, arguably, Ben appear to have done. It's still not clear whether she had just done desperate things over the years because she was, well, desperate, or whether there was instead some metaphysical "illness" that had infected her heart. If the latter, maybe Claire was "cured" when the MiB died.

So what does being the "Jacob" of the island get you? I thought that the guardian couldn't be killed by the MiB -- although Jack was, eventually (or I guess one could make the argument that he didn't and wouldn't have died from the knife wound, but rather died from the massive amounts of EM energy he absorbed in the glowing light hole). But maybe that was only a specific rule between Jacob and the MiB because of the machinations of their "mother" -- and not between any other guardian and the MiB. If the guardian can be killed just like anyone else can, it would appear that he is technically immortal only in the sense that he apparently does not age or get ill, but can still die from physical trauma. (This would suggest that Jacob was extraordinarily lucky or careful or both over the millennia.)

The last "flash sideways" scene was poignant and effective on its own, but the whole flash sideways timeline really being some sort of purgatory was ultimately a bit silly and gimmicky. The denouement worked on the level of the heart, but not the head -- tearful reunion aside, I felt a bit cheated. Essentially, nothing that happened in the flash sideways "timeline" was really relevant to the plot other than further illuminating different characters' personalities a bit. It didn't really matter what anybody did or how they did it, so long as they eventually came into contact with someone else who made them understand what was happening and prepare them to "move on."

I wished we'd seen Lapidus and Michael in the flash sideways -- and I wished we'd seen Walt, Nikki and Paulo, and Eko even briefly anywhere in the final season. Nikki and Paulo probably weren't asked to return! It still would have been cool to see at least Nikki on TV in the background as her bikini-clad character from Expose. "Razzle dazzle! Hah!"

"The New Man in Charge" actually was a nice epilogue for me, as it wrapped up a couple of questions that I was literally asking myself as the credits rolled on the final episode.

It was good to see where the Dharma food drops were coming from. I wonder who paid for the food and the workers' salaries after the purge? I would guess that the Others did -- after all, they seemed to be the main beneficiary of the food drops. But what will Hurley and company do for food now?

I'd also completely forgotten about the "Hurley bird"! I thought the stuff about the polar bears had been explained already, though -- that seemed like a bit of repetitive exposition.

I'm glad the show eventually looped back in with Walt, rather than leaving him out to dry -- in hiding for the rest of his life, under an alias. Although I do wonder why Walt was at the Santa Rosa Mental Health Institute, which is in Southern California, when he had previously been shown living in NY. It was also heartening to see that Walt's "special" gifts could actually be used to help out his father and the other spirits that were trapped on the island.

Overall, maybe my comments come across a bit harsher than I mean them to. I was satisfied with both season 6 as a whole and the final episode specifically. But I don't think the final season had as many truly stellar episodes as some previous seasons, and while the final episode wasn't bad, it also was a bit disappointing in light of how good it could have been, given the quality of some other episodes over the years.

Also, wasn't there a "rule" that Ben and Widmore couldn't kill each other? Or at least that Ben couldn't kill Widmore? I guess it turned out to be more of an Others' operational guideline than a "law of nature" type of physical restraint.

Two things, actually: the fact that Lapidus wasn't actually dead and how you were unintentionally close to the mark with your references to the afterlife, given how the "sideways" turned out!

Jeepers! Now we can get back to discussing Lost II: Isle of Kong!

Cool Sawyer Line:

"Son of a bitch... that's one massive pile of monkey crap!"

Maybe bad form for cross-posting, but for those Lost fans that don't normally read the "What are you currently watching" thread, you might get a kick out of my recent post:

http://www.legionworld.net/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=9;t=001657;p=61#000906

I so have to find that movie Ex...sounds way cool.