SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t watched the final episode of Lost and plan to do so spoiler-free, then why are you even on the internet right now? Quit reading immediately and go crawl under a rock somewhere until you’ve seen it.

So, after six years of smoke monsters, polar bears, time travel and some of the best characters ever to grace the small screen, Lost came to an end last night. Heather and I hurried home from community group, put Jordan to bed and curled up on the couch to see how it would all end.

My initial reaction last night was that the finale was a fantastic episode on an emotional and character level that didn’t really pay off with its big final plot twist. I loved the countless payoffs for these characters we’d come to love over the past six seasons, especially the “a-ha!” moments that would jar their memories in the flash-sideways world, triggering a flood of recollection about the events and people that shaped them back on the island. The closure that most of the characters received felt pitch-perfect, especially the reunion of Sawyer and Juliet, probably my favorite couple from the show. However, when the show made the big reveal with about 10 minutes remaining that all the characters gathered in the alternate-reality chapel were actually dead, Heather and I weren’t sure we liked the twist.

Initially, we both thought that everything we’d seen, events on the island included, was just some sort of afterlife test before moving into the great beyond. That just felt cheapening to many of the events that had taken place and it seemed like a bit of a cop-out, since it was basically the oldest Lost fan theory in the book. However, after reading the consensus understanding that only the flash-sideways was an afterlife, while the events on the island were very real (if largely unexplained), and rethinking some of the final moments, we actually warmed to the ending. It’s not the way I would have written it and its obviously rife with theological problems, but it was actually a rather poetic ending that feels like it fit the tone that Lost carried throughout its run.

So, Lost was six years of great drama and the finale was two-and-a-half hours of fantastic TV, but what else can we take from it? I think there are several things the show teaches us about ourselves. First up, we’re fascinated with the idea of redemption. Lost is a show that ultimately, beginning to end, is about redemption. The search for it is the thread that ties every one of its characters together. As human beings, we know we’re broken and we desperately want to be fixed. That’s a chord that Lost strikes again and again throughout its tale. Secondly, I think the show exposes a sort of paradox that exists in our culture right now. On one hand, postmodernism and its focus on narratives rather than truths is alive and well in our culture. It’s plainly evident that the show’s writers sought a finale that would deliver an emotional conclusion to the stories of these characters rather than focusing on answering the countless mysteries that surrounded the island. Even the church where the characters end their journey contained a mash-up of just about every religious symbol imaginable. However, despite the great postmodern, mysterious bent of the show, the fan reaction to the finale also serves to point out that we as a culture still crave answers. It won’t take long looking around the web to find fans who are infuriated that the finale didn’t really say anything about what the island was or why it was so special. Even for fans like me who found the final episode rather satisfying, it is a bit irritating to know that it all revolved around some unexplained light fountain that Jack had to stick a cork in to prevent a giant cloud of smoke from ending the world. There’s something in the human heart that longs to know the answers to the questions that plague us. This is where Lost, I believe, demonstrates that our culture is begging a question that only the gospel can answer. The gospel is a beautiful story with a perfect ending, but it is much more than a story. It also answers the questions that we have about who we are and, more importantly, who God is. Sure, we may not get the answers to some of the little peripheral questions than nag at us, but we do get a deeply satisfying look into the author of the story who is trustworthy, true, and is most certainly not trying to string us along to boost his ratings.

I’d be interested to hear your take on the Lost finale and on the show as a whole. Personally, I really enjoyed the conclusion, and the whole tale was a great ride. It was a fantastic story, and it also serves as a great reminder of and pointer to the greatest story ever told.

For the Lost fans out there – someone with a really keen editing eye and way too much time on their hands put together this clip showing the final fateful moments of Oceanic Flight 815 in real time from every perspective imaginable.  Pretty cool.

Last night, the long-awaited final season of Lost kicked off on ABC.  Heather and I spent the last six months getting all caught up on the show thanks to Xbox Live and ABC.com so that we can watch the final season as it happens (something we’ve never done with Lost before).  Last night’s premiere packed a lot into it’s two-hour running time, and I’ve got a few comments to make on the whole situation.  So, SPOILER ALERT if you haven’t yet watched the episode, and if you have, I’d love to get your take in the comments.  Here’s what I thought…

1.  The big question from the end of season 5 was whether or not Farraday’s H-bomb plan would work.  From last night, it would appear that it did and didn’t.  The episode followed two different realities, offering no explanation for what was happening (other than Juliet’s cryptic postmortem “it worked”).  It would appear that we’re seeing two alternate realities, one in which the survivors are still on the island and one in which they never crashed there at all.  I must confess, this has me feeling a little disappointed.  Is J.J. Abrams really all out of ideas?  His other current TV show Fringe is exploring the whole alternate reality thing, as did his take on Star Trek last summer.  Both have been good, but sooner or later using the same plot device over and over just starts to get a little old, especially when it’s used in an attempt to be thought provoking.  Now granted, the whole setup hasn’t been explained and Abrams and Co. may well do something really cool and fresh with the concept, but for now I’m just not sure it was the best move – and I’ve been onboard with all the time-travel/flashback/flashforward craziness of the first five seasons (which, seeing it all presented together in that hour-long recap special, you realize is completely nuts).  I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt though. 

2.  That CG sequence of the island at the bottom of the ocean was just awful.  Obviously, TV budgets just don’t allow for CGI that matches what we’ve come to expect from movies, but if used wisely it can still blend somewhat seamlessly into the experience (see Firefly for proof).  Plainly put, if you don’t have the resources to do it really well, then don’t try to do a huge, epic shot.  Better small and good than big and bad.  Those fifteen seconds were just a mess.

3.  The best part of the episode?  The Jacob/Man in Black material.  Terry O’Quinn is doing a superb job portraying Bizarro Locke/Smoke Monster/Man in Black.  He’s really taken on a terrifying new persona, and his acting chops really shine when you watch a scene of this new character shortly after a scene of old Locke chatting with Jack in an airport.  He keeps this up, and an Emmy may be in his future.  It’s going be really interesting to see just how this story unfolds.  Heather was talking last night about her hunch that the two of them are a play on the God/Satan motif, and I can definitely see the parallels.  The religious imagery has been pretty blatant for a while, and it was kicked up a notch last night with a giant ankh (an Egyptian symbol for eternal life) being pulled out of Jacob’s guitar case.  I’ll be interested to see the point of it all unfold.

All-in-all, the premiere was just OK for me, but obviously it was just the beginning of the unraveling of the Lost mysteries.  Perhaps I expected a bit too much.  I’m certainly looking forward to seeing where they go from here.  What did you think?