Ambiguities After The "Lost" Finale Might Not Be So Bad.
Warning, season 6 spoilers abound!
With the two and a half hour Lost finale almost upon us, I started to think about my life after Lost. There are all these unanswered questions, and there's no way all of these can fit into the long episode. After the finale I'm sure everyone will do a post-mortem about "how they could have answered this" or "how season 6 could have been paced better". I was originally going to contemplate the latter question, writing about how the "flash-sidways" were kind of a waste of time, time better spent resolving a lot of the mysteries.
And there are a lot of unanswered questions. Just in preparation for this post, I ended up with 7 pages open on http://lostpedia.wikia.com/. It feels like every time I go there, I find more unanswered questions, a lot of which I'd completely forgotten about.
The episode "Across the Sea" was a mythological dump. But according to the executive producers, that is what an "answers episode" of Lost looks like. So I'm not expecting much clarification about what exactly the Heart of the Island is, or how the Man In Black's voyage into the Heart turned him into the Monster. I'm pretty sure the finale will deal with wrapping up the season more than the series.
But I digress, the reason people, including me, want answers is because that is the formula we're used to in television. Television has a certain number of seasons, and if it doesn't get cancelled, hopefully a number of loose ends get resolved. For the most part, a show ends and mysteries are solved. But what if we were to think of Lost more like a work of literary fiction. Where characters and mythology are actually metaphors, and it is up to the reader (viewer) to interpret each as they will.
It's certainly not how I've ever approached television before. I'm more of a theorist; I develop ideas of where the story is going to go, and see the resolution and whether I was correct or not. Normally I don't formulate hypotheses if I won't get a resolution, that just seems pointless. But for Lost , I think I might need to change these expectations.
After the Lost finale, I believe the watercooler talk aught contain questions like "What did you think the island represented?" or "What did you think the Heart of the Island was?". The finale should spark a debate or discussion over meanings and representation, and not anger over ambiguous answers. I think we will get a few more answers before "The End", but I don't know how much more or how explicit they'll be. I number of questions I had turned out to have answers, just needed to connect some dots and fill in some blanks. Which should also be fun to dissect with people the morning after. That's if the finale wasn't an utter piece of garbage that made watching the series a waste of time and energy.
With the two and a half hour Lost finale almost upon us, I started to think about my life after Lost. There are all these unanswered questions, and there's no way all of these can fit into the long episode. After the finale I'm sure everyone will do a post-mortem about "how they could have answered this" or "how season 6 could have been paced better". I was originally going to contemplate the latter question, writing about how the "flash-sidways" were kind of a waste of time, time better spent resolving a lot of the mysteries.
And there are a lot of unanswered questions. Just in preparation for this post, I ended up with 7 pages open on http://lostpedia.wikia.com/. It feels like every time I go there, I find more unanswered questions, a lot of which I'd completely forgotten about.
The episode "Across the Sea" was a mythological dump. But according to the executive producers, that is what an "answers episode" of Lost looks like. So I'm not expecting much clarification about what exactly the Heart of the Island is, or how the Man In Black's voyage into the Heart turned him into the Monster. I'm pretty sure the finale will deal with wrapping up the season more than the series.
But I digress, the reason people, including me, want answers is because that is the formula we're used to in television. Television has a certain number of seasons, and if it doesn't get cancelled, hopefully a number of loose ends get resolved. For the most part, a show ends and mysteries are solved. But what if we were to think of Lost more like a work of literary fiction. Where characters and mythology are actually metaphors, and it is up to the reader (viewer) to interpret each as they will.
It's certainly not how I've ever approached television before. I'm more of a theorist; I develop ideas of where the story is going to go, and see the resolution and whether I was correct or not. Normally I don't formulate hypotheses if I won't get a resolution, that just seems pointless. But for Lost , I think I might need to change these expectations.
After the Lost finale, I believe the watercooler talk aught contain questions like "What did you think the island represented?" or "What did you think the Heart of the Island was?". The finale should spark a debate or discussion over meanings and representation, and not anger over ambiguous answers. I think we will get a few more answers before "The End", but I don't know how much more or how explicit they'll be. I number of questions I had turned out to have answers, just needed to connect some dots and fill in some blanks. Which should also be fun to dissect with people the morning after. That's if the finale wasn't an utter piece of garbage that made watching the series a waste of time and energy.