SPOILERS: If you haven't yet seen the last episode of "Lost" do not read any further!
The reviews for the last ever "Lost" episode, entitled "The End" (duh), seem to range from absolute love to extreme hate. I thought this one of the best series finales ever. It was masterfully crafted.
The reason "Lost" has generated so much debate is because there are two main camps: those who wanted answers to the "Mythology" and those who were deeply invested in the characters. My response to those who hated "The End" is that the whole point of this series-ending episode was not to provide answers to the weird Lost mysteries, but to provide closure for all the characters. I can understand those who were disappointed that The End did not provide enough answers. There are a lot of things which remain vague. Many people feel slighted that the writers made us care so much about the mysteries, yet concluded the series in a totally unexpected manner.
I call The End, and Lost in general, "masterfully crafted" because they spent six years exploring every aspect of the characters, made us love them, and made us anxiously wonder what fate awaited them all. So, in The End, we were completely and utterly overwhelmed precisely because of this long, long, set up. Those who criticize The End because it failed to provide answers to all the mysteries miss the whole point -- while the events on the island were important and were very real, they are secondary to the resolution of the story. You see, what Lost has taught us, as was affirmed in the finale, is this: the actions and events we undertake in our lives really only have meaning because we encounter other people, make connections, and share our experiences with them. If all we had were the answers to the island mysteries with no focus on the emotional journeys of the characters, Lost would have failed as a story. The unbelievable and grueling events on the island only served as the basis on which Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Jin, Juliette, Sayid, Locke, and the others forged their relationships. The End was masterful because it repeatedly hit us with scene after scene of the characters awakening to the relationships they had on the island - NOT the island events themselves. If you look at the "flashbacks" during each awakening, you'll see only scenes of the characters loving one another. When I am an old man, I will not remember the nuts and bolts of my everyday life, but my acquaintances, co-workers, friends, and loved ones. The six years on the island created the emotional connections, and The End completed the circle, if you will.
It was also fitting that the last character, who stubbornly refused to acknowledge the awakening to his past island life, was Jack. Jack started out as a Man of Science and through his experiences on the island became (evolved?) into a Man of Faith. But in the sideways world, Jack had to overcome his Man of Science self before he could awaken to the faith that would see him through to the end and that would reconnect him to the others in his life. Jack had to LET GO -- and this is the other message that The End wanted to convey. Merely having connections with other people is not enough. We have to get rid of the obstacles that hinder or lessen such connections (i.e. greed, hate, envy, regret, sadness, and all the other naughty things). In order to experience true happiness, we have to value the personal connections in our lives and let go of anything that would negate these connections.
After the last scene of The End, I had to take a few moments to process what I just experienced. The End deeply resonated within me and I was thinking about it all day. It would be over the top to say that a TV show changed my life, but what Lost managed to accomplish is to make me think about the connections I have made in my own life. It made me re-affirm that what is important is not the motion I argue in court, the apartment I rent, the things I buy, etc., etc., but the people who were brought into my life by these life events. The End, and Lost as a series, was a success because it unabashedly hammered home the point that without others (not THE Others), we will have missed out on the opportunity to find what we are all fundamentally searching for -- happiness. Jack was able to reach his epiphany because he let go of his past, both good (his sideways son, for example) and bad (all the suffering on the island), and accepted the unquestionable reality that what he needed, more than anything else, were his friends and loved ones. Happiness alone may have meaning, but it is so much better if we have others to share it with.
The End was a success even if only for the reason that it has made us think about the things above.
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