Lost in Spacetime
In the last few weeks I rewatched the last two seasons of Lost. This is the sort of thing I do from time to time, and it was the first time I'd watched all of season 6 since the show ended. Right after the finale aired in 2010, I was quite upset with it. With the entire show now in the increasingly distant past, I wanted to write a more carefully considered review.
Obviously, there are serious spoilers to follow. Please don't read unless you've watched through the end of Lost. Seriously, it's a great show. Don't ruin it for yourself.
Before I get to what in my view is the major, profoundly, materially inexcusable flaw in the final season of Lost, let me address some oft-made criticisms, and why I think they're all wrong.
THE BOMB WAS A LIE
I don't use the word "lie" lightly. It might be odd to say that a piece of fiction lies, because, hey, it's fiction, but THIS WAS A LIE. At the beginning of season 6, Lost tells us that the reason the sideways universe exists is because the bomb was detonated at the end of season 5. It's not. The sideways universe exists because of death. You might say that it is merely implied that the bomb created the sideways universe, and this implication is just deceptive. WRONG! There's a line between a deception and a lie, and this one is a LIE. The causal relationship from bomb detonation to the existence of the sideways universe is suggested, then confirmed, then confirmed again and again and again, until only in the last moments of the last episode do they admit "HA HA, we were just kidding about that". Before I watched the final season again, I had forgotten just how strongly this causal link is established. In "LA X", they reveal the island at the bottom of the ocean in the sideways universe. It's there because the bomb destroyed the island, right? NOPE. The episode starts with all the characters back on the plane, and it lands in LA, which is exactly what would have happened if the bomb went off, right? NOPE. As late as "Happily Ever After", Daniel Widmore (nee Faraday) claims that the sideways universe exists because of the bomb. NOPE. Desmond seems able to transmit information from one universe to another, suggesting that they are parallel universes. NOPE. ALL LIES.
I get why the producers did this. They wanted to do the sideways stories as the afterlife, but they wanted to hold off on this fact, so they created a false explanation to tide us over until the end. The problem with that is that it changes the meaning of these stories. If they're real but an alternate universe, they have a completely different meaning than if they're afterlife. So by revealing that the bomb was a lie only at the end, they retroactively remove all meaning that we gleaned from these stories, making them essentially pointless. Only if I go back and watch them again, knowing what I know now, do I understand how they are intended. Also, the deception just lasts too long. It's as if, in "Through the Looking Glass", the flash forward disguised as a flashback were sustained not just for an episode but for an entire season. It's awesome for one episode, but over a whole season, it becomes manipulative and just pointless.
The question is: was there a better way? Was there a way to avoid lying to the audience without giving up the sideways stories or the wonderful season 5 finale cliffhanger of the bomb detonating? I think there was. I think the way to do it is to sow doubt in the audience's mind much earlier about whether the sideways universe really exists because of the bomb, rather than confirm it over and over again. As much as I liked "Happily Every After" at the time, in retrospect it's a terrible episode, because all it does is confirm the lie that the island universe and the sideways universe are simultaneous. Instead, this episode should have been the one to suggest a different explanation. Heck, I don't even think it would have been so bad to say explicitly that the sideways universe is the afterlife, because I think those stories get better, not worse, if we know that. When I see Hurley and Libby get together, it means so much more to me if I know that this really is my Hurley and my Libby, as opposed to some strange doppelgangers that have had completely different lives.
Next time, maybe I'll make that long post about the finale of Battlestar Galactica that I promised 5 years ago. Or I'll finish that Harry Potter fan fiction story that I started 7 years ago. Or I could do the writing I need to do for my job.
Obviously, there are serious spoilers to follow. Please don't read unless you've watched through the end of Lost. Seriously, it's a great show. Don't ruin it for yourself.
Before I get to what in my view is the major, profoundly, materially inexcusable flaw in the final season of Lost, let me address some oft-made criticisms, and why I think they're all wrong.
- There are so many unanswered questions!! So... for 6 years you watched a show that was all about mysteries, and you're surprised that every single detail of every single mystery was not explained? I mean, I do feel your pain. It didn't make sense to me that Sayid could come back from the dead, while Locke coming back from the dead was so impossible that the only way it happened was for the monster to impersonate him. There are any number of other unanswered questions that I feel slightly cheated by being left unexplained. But, I can forgive them for two reasons: (1) The questions that were left unanswered are the little ones; it matters more to me whether the BIG questions are answered. And they are. Every single one. What is the island? Answered (a cork). What is the monster? Answered (the man in black after being thrust through the heart of the island). Who is Jacob? Answered (a guy in charge of the island who brought people to the island to replace him). (2) The producers of the show are human beings; thus, in the interest of creating a show that is full of mysteries and intrigue, they were sometimes not able to get around to resolving everything perfectly. Lost is an insanely intricate and tight narrative told over 121 episodes of television; you try writing something like that without making a mistake.
- They were dead the whole time!! This has got to be the stupidest complaint ever made about any piece of fiction. It's a bit like saying "I don't like Star Wars because Luke Skywalker dies at the end." Um... you do know that he doesn't, right? If you actually watched the finale of Lost and you think all the characters were dead the whole time, you either (a) don't remember it very well (forgivable, but you might want to check your facts before bitching on the internet (too much to hope for, I know)), (b) were playing Angry Birds instead of paying attention to the TV, or (c) are not great at interpreting audiovisual media. In the flash sideways universe in season 6, everyone was in fact dead, but everything else that happened on the show, including everything on the island, really, truly, honestly happened, as much as any event in any piece of fiction has ever happened.
What annoys me most about this ludicrous criticism is that in every interview I've seen with the producers since the show ended, if they address the disappointment in the finale among fans, then they only address this criticism, rather than the much more legitimate issues that some people have with the finale, such as mine (see below). This would be a straw man if not for the fact that there is a massive army of straw people marching all over the internet, holding straw pitchforks and demanding the producers' heads on straw platters. Those people are all straw, but there are so many of them that the producers don't seem to notice the people made of other stuff. - The producers were making it up as they went along!! This is a very complicated issue, about which I've argued with laura47 numerous times. My traditional position was that, when it comes to a piece of writing, one should only judge the final product, not what the author knew when while writing it. However, recently I've become less confident in this position. I think that if you present a mystery to your audience, and you have absolutely no idea what the answer to the mystery is, you're being irresponsible. Conversely, I don't think you should be bound to obey every detail of your original plan. If you modify the answer to the mystery in a way that is consistent with what came before, and better than your original plan, that's fine. That's the way writing works.
Getting back to Lost, the reason I think this criticism is wrong is that, for the big decisions, the producers absolutely had a very clear plan, long in advance. Again this is a big vs. small issue. There are any number of small points that the producers didn't have clear plans for. When Kate and Sawyer admitted in the first season that they'd each murdered, the writers might have had some vague idea of what those murders were, but the actors sure didn't. I don't think it's absurd to say that it's unfair to the audience if the actors don't know things that their characters do know. But still, this is small potatoes compared to: the plan to reveal the contents of the hatch, the plan to flash forward, the plan to have some characters leave the island and come back, the plan to time travel back to Dharma days, the plan for Locke to die and come back as the man in black, the plan for Jack to become the new Jacob and then die. It's very clear that all these big story beats were planned out way way in advance.
As a related side-note, this is another point where I think the producers have not helped themselves in interviews. They've said several times that fans seem to want the answers to both "do you have a plan?" and "do you take fan reaction into account in writing?" to be "yes", and that these are contradictory. I care a little bit if they have a plan, but I don't give a damn if they take fan reaction into account. Make a good show, and I'd be happy if you didn't even know viewers exist. - The finale was too overtly religious!! This is maybe not so oft-made, but it's something I didn't like immediately after the finale aired, but I've changed my mind after thinking over the final season again. The numerous religious symbols in the church are a little much for my taste, but there's a good reason for doing what they did with the flash sideways: the show is about redemption and death. In the first few seasons, events for the characters on the island were a way of dealing with the issues from their previous lives; similarly, events in the flash sideways (i.e. the afterlife) were a way of, in death, dealing with the issues from your life. Can Ben sacrifice his own prospects to help another? Can Locke learn to accept his disabilities and find happiness with another? Is Sayid only good for killing, or can he also help people? Is Jack doomed in his relationships to repeat the mistakes of his father? In a story where so many characters die, each death is an unresolved story. According to Lost, whatever is unresolved from the story of your life, you resolve in the afterlife. The flash sideways stories are these resolutions: they are lost souls meditating on their own lives at the moment of their death, and eventually finding solace in one another. Once I realized that this was the reason for the flash sideways stories, the fact that none of them really happen, and so cannot contain any dramatic jeopardy, doesn't matter so much anymore. In this sense, and only this sense, I like them a lot.
THE BOMB WAS A LIE
I don't use the word "lie" lightly. It might be odd to say that a piece of fiction lies, because, hey, it's fiction, but THIS WAS A LIE. At the beginning of season 6, Lost tells us that the reason the sideways universe exists is because the bomb was detonated at the end of season 5. It's not. The sideways universe exists because of death. You might say that it is merely implied that the bomb created the sideways universe, and this implication is just deceptive. WRONG! There's a line between a deception and a lie, and this one is a LIE. The causal relationship from bomb detonation to the existence of the sideways universe is suggested, then confirmed, then confirmed again and again and again, until only in the last moments of the last episode do they admit "HA HA, we were just kidding about that". Before I watched the final season again, I had forgotten just how strongly this causal link is established. In "LA X", they reveal the island at the bottom of the ocean in the sideways universe. It's there because the bomb destroyed the island, right? NOPE. The episode starts with all the characters back on the plane, and it lands in LA, which is exactly what would have happened if the bomb went off, right? NOPE. As late as "Happily Ever After", Daniel Widmore (nee Faraday) claims that the sideways universe exists because of the bomb. NOPE. Desmond seems able to transmit information from one universe to another, suggesting that they are parallel universes. NOPE. ALL LIES.
I get why the producers did this. They wanted to do the sideways stories as the afterlife, but they wanted to hold off on this fact, so they created a false explanation to tide us over until the end. The problem with that is that it changes the meaning of these stories. If they're real but an alternate universe, they have a completely different meaning than if they're afterlife. So by revealing that the bomb was a lie only at the end, they retroactively remove all meaning that we gleaned from these stories, making them essentially pointless. Only if I go back and watch them again, knowing what I know now, do I understand how they are intended. Also, the deception just lasts too long. It's as if, in "Through the Looking Glass", the flash forward disguised as a flashback were sustained not just for an episode but for an entire season. It's awesome for one episode, but over a whole season, it becomes manipulative and just pointless.
The question is: was there a better way? Was there a way to avoid lying to the audience without giving up the sideways stories or the wonderful season 5 finale cliffhanger of the bomb detonating? I think there was. I think the way to do it is to sow doubt in the audience's mind much earlier about whether the sideways universe really exists because of the bomb, rather than confirm it over and over again. As much as I liked "Happily Every After" at the time, in retrospect it's a terrible episode, because all it does is confirm the lie that the island universe and the sideways universe are simultaneous. Instead, this episode should have been the one to suggest a different explanation. Heck, I don't even think it would have been so bad to say explicitly that the sideways universe is the afterlife, because I think those stories get better, not worse, if we know that. When I see Hurley and Libby get together, it means so much more to me if I know that this really is my Hurley and my Libby, as opposed to some strange doppelgangers that have had completely different lives.
Next time, maybe I'll make that long post about the finale of Battlestar Galactica that I promised 5 years ago. Or I'll finish that Harry Potter fan fiction story that I started 7 years ago. Or I could do the writing I need to do for my job.