ObieX

Yea, pretty much. I was expecting a bit more out of this episode as well answers-wise. All i got were more questions.

If he never finished that wheel then how was it completed for Linus and Locke to use?

How does turning a wooden wheel with light and water get you off an island?

Has the black smoke monster always been there in the glowing hole and the entering of MIB's body release it? Does MIB('s soul) turn into the smoke monster?

If there was no smoke monster before, was the twin's real mother a real ghost? Or *was* it the smoke monster?

How are all the people killed and the hole filled in? Did "bad mom" kill them? or was it the smoke monster? If it was the smoke monster why would it kill them?

Why can MIB see their mom's ghost when Jacob can not?

Is MIB in later episodes really the smoke monster trying to manipulate Jacob? or is it really MIB as the smoke monster?

What was that liquid "bad mom" madeJacob drink, and why do you need to chant before drinking it?

My biggest question: Why the fuck can no one ever fucking answer any questions on the damn show? Why is the answer to every question always "you're not ready yet"? This is the one thing that has bothered me from the start of the show. Even the regular folks on the island never answer a simple question when asked OR ask stupid questions - it's frustrating.

For example: In one of the early episodes when Claire and Kate were in the hatch with the nursery that Claire was taken to when kidnapped Claire asked Kate to help her lift up a refrigerator so she can look inside to find vaccine. Kate responds with "why? what is it?" Its a fucking refrigerator, help her pick it up!

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Lasereth

It's a sci-fi show. They proved that in season 4. Why do you need to know the answers to all of this? People drive me up the wall saying they "NEED ANSWERS" from Lost. I couldn't care less if they ended the show without answering anything else. They answered everything I wanted to know in season 4 and 5.

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ObieX

I never said i needed answers, but some would be nice. Especially when every episode piles on 100 more questions that never get answered. A mystery is nice, and the best part of a mystery may be trying to find out the answers.. but at the end of a novel/movie the solution to the mystery is usually revealed. Seeing as how we're pretty much at the end of this mystery is it really unreasonable to expect some answers?

---------- Post added at 09:59 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:57 AM ----------

Edit: Just curious, what from season 4 and 5 did they answer for you?

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Lasereth

In season 4 and 5 they proved that the show is a sci-fi show and not just a show where we're supposed to believe that there's a huge secret we haven't figured out yet. It started with The Constant (best episode of the entire series).

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warrrreagl

Who used to sit on the beach with Locke back in season 1 and play backgammon with him? Where is he now?

By the way, Stephen King's TV series Kingdom Hospital ended with a potentially telling twist. Apparently, all the doctors, nurses, and patients we were watching were living in the alternate reality (which was a bit kooky and slightly "off"), and they repaired everything in the last episode by pulling the alternate reality back to the "correct" reality. Maybe the stuff on the island is the "alternate" and what's going on with the sideways flashes is the true reality?

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Jove

Walt? Walt left the island and has reappeared on occasion.

An excellent idea and maybe that is how it is going to happen in the series finale.

I am still a little confused about the origins of the smoke mist monster. As other members have stated in this thread, the smoke mist monster appeared after MIB went into the light. Was MIB dead or just unconscious when he went into the light cave?

I feel this episode should have been placed in the middle of last season since that was when we were introduced to Jacob and his brother.

FoolThemAll

Haha, that's actually them. Pretty sneaky, bro.

I'm pretty sure that the smoke monster is in fact the Man in Black, just based on Jacob not being able to kill him. The theory that strikes me as making sense is that the 'heart' of the island took what was good of MIB and expelled the evil.

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Eilonwy

I would like to have answers not so much becuase I need them, but because on all the previews they keep telling me that 'answers are coming', and, as someone said above, all I get are more questions.

Zeraph

I'm thinking the twist might be that the light is pure evil. Think of the hints.
1) there's a little bit in every human
2) it turned MiB evil when he touched/went into it
3) If Witmore et al exploit it (release it?) all is doomed
4) Jacob's explanation to Richard about the island keeping evil in
5) the island seems to have an aura of madness around it (think of all the people its made crazy)
6) Sayid' case...if people die and are healed by its waters they come back evil
7) its Lost, they fuck with your mind

fresnelly

I like where you're going except in Sayid's case. They made a big deal about how the waters had gone murky instead of clear.

One detail I liked about the episode was how the people's village was in the same location as Dharmaville thereby emphasizing the cyclical nature of the battles over the island.

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Eilonwy

But, if the light is pure evil, why is it so important that it doesn't go out? The 'mother' said that she has to protect it, and when the boys asked why, she said that if it goes out there, it goes out everywhere... if it's evil, wouldn't that be good? Unless the 'mother' herslef was just evil and wanted to keep evil in the world...

Yes, and I also liked how they referred to them as 'the other' people.

Zeraph

I saw that as more literal. As in, it will "go out" of the island and "go out" of people everywhere and consume the world in darkness. I saw "go out" as in leave, not extinguish. However, thinking of it like that, its probably more likely that you're right.

Zeraph

omg omg omg this Sunday show finale omg omg omg

Cynthetiq

Is the mom also a smoke monster? How did she kill all the villagers?

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fresnelly

It's a good question and one I doubt we'll get an answer to.

I personally don't think she was a smoke monster because that seemedc to involve getting hit on the head and making contact with the light.

However, as an Island Guardian she has some measure of immortality like Jacob and MiB.

The rules on how Island guardians die and are killed are vague but I imagine a scenerio where the villagers were unable to kill her and she could just kill them one at a time zombie-style.

I wonder how much power Jack has now being a Guardian himself.

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Zeraph

Yeah, I think we'll find out now that Jack is The One and knows kung fu. The finale is 2.5 hours long, so here's hoping its packed to the brim with answers.

Eilonwy

Supposedly, Jimmy Kimmel's going to show alternate endings, too, so maybe there will be even more answers in those...

warrrreagl

I anticipate that it will be packed to the brim with commercials.

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warrrreagl

Grancey and I are heading out to finish all our chores for the day and wrap things up early. We have our chili cooked and ready to go.

We're ready for tonight! Bring it on.

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Lasereth

This is gonna be a commercial fest, you're right. Oh well let the end begin!!!!!!!

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Cynthetiq

Tivo FTW! I'll blow past all those commercials!

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Lasereth

I'll be satisfied if another show is as good as Lost in our lifetime; what a great finale

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Jackebear

I agree...awesome. I guess Jack was too scared to admit that he was actually dead, and everyone, including us, were waiting for him to come to terms with it, accept it and "move on". Well done Jack.

What a great series. Thanks for being a part of my life. I appreciated it.

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Cynthetiq

I don't know. I am not so satisfied then with the rest of the mythology that they built and the rest of the back stories of the other characters. In some ways I feel a little betrayed in the same way that Patrick Duffy awoke from a dream, although I wasn't a Dallas fan.

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Reese

Well, At least everything on the island really happened and only this last season's alternate reality was the afterlife.

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Cynthetiq

was it? or was it just minutes after the crash he was wandering the jungle?

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guy44

So:

A) I think that was 50% commercials. When they expanded it to 2.5 hours, I think they just inserted another 5 commercial breaks and called it a day. Fuck 'em for that.

B) I waited through an hour of Jimmy Kimmel's awkward finale special show for alternate endings, and I got...jokes? Goddamit! That's an hour of my life I'll never get back. Plus, that whole special will 100% show up on the DVD anyway.

C) Line of the night: when we saw Jack's body, bloody and damaged, after he heroically restored the Island, my buddy goes: "Now he turns into a cloud monster!"

D) Those Target ads were actually pretty clever.

E) I don't even know. I've got to think on the rest.

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pan6467

I'm very disappointed.... dish network kept "experiencing technical difficulties" so the vast majority was all broken up and pink screened (PINK??? WTF COLOR TO BLUE SCREEN A TV)... but the best part was the commercials seemed unaffected we got those clearly.

I guess they are going to rerun it "in it's entirety" Saturday at 8. which if someone took tonight off work or had a party for the show and I were them, I'd be extremely pissed right now.

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SecretMethod70

As for Lost, I've never really watched it so I have nothing to add

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Reese

Yeah, I think it was real. Jack's Father tells him that they are dead, some died before him and some died long after, I'm guessing the ones that died first were waiting in the afterlife for their little going into the light afterparty. Then Hurley tells Ben that he was a great #2 which seems to me that they spent quite a while watching over the island together before they eventually died. So yeah, I'm saying the Island was real.

Also, Pan, My DVR decided to not even record LOST tonight and I just happened to check about 25 minutes into the show and see it's not recording.

Oh and Frank Lapidus lived! WOOT!

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Frosstbyte

I said exactly the same thing, and, for a fraction of a second, was completely convinced it was going to happen. I ran through a whole scenario where Jack became the Man in Black and that Christian was the Man in Black on the alternate timeline, and the series ended with the plane exploding over the island and the church exploding as Christian walked out.

It would've been an interesting alternative.

Either way, I was 100% satisfied with the finale as it was and I agree entirely with Lasereth. I said sometime earlier in this thread, at some point I stopped worrying about "the answers" and suddenly I started enjoying Lost much more. And this episode confirmed completely that that was the correct attitude to take towards the series. I teared up every time someone "woke up" and when I was trying to talk to my wife about the end, I definitely started crying. And I'm ok with that.

In the pre show they talked about how, at the end of the day, Lost was about relationships, and looking back on the series, I think that's probably true. Those of us who loved the show, I think, loved it because we loved the characters. Maybe not who they were as individuals, but who they were together. I don't really care what the end "meant." I really cared about seeing everyone come back together over the course of the season. And I felt very satisfied by the end, in whatever context they were back together, and whatever it meant for Jack to close his eye as the plane flew overhead.

I will miss Lost. I will miss the mystery and the mythos and the characters and the sounds. It was a great, if sometimes inconsistent, ride, and it will enjoy a happy place on my bookshelf for whenever I need it.

Jove

I enjoyed the 2.3 hour series finale and thought it was fantastic when Jack flew through the air colliding into Locke with a super punch.

Before watching the finale, I expected everyone on the island to die and in a way I am right, but I do have a slight problem with the ending because it seems like having all the characters finding out they are have been dead since the plane crash is the easy way out. I am not sure if the writers were stuck half way through the series and were just trying to figure out a way to end the show, but I felt it could have been different.

Lasereth

That's not what happened. They are all dead at the end but they all died of different reasons. Jin and Sun died on the sub, Jack died on the island at the end, Sayid on the sub, Charlie in the dharma station, etc. Christian said there is no when, they simply all met up for an afterlife party before moving on. All 6 seasons were real. The only trick was that the alternate time line of season 6 was actually a post-death era where they needed to get their shit together before moving on.

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warrrreagl

Grancey found an article two weeks ago that explained this (so you should ask her if you want more details, old buddy). It had something to do with some kind of debris in the orbit of the TV satellites, and they knew it would effect people on the evening of May 23, but they didn't know exactly who would be the most effected or to what degree. We were lucky that our good old Charter cable didn't screw up.

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Lasereth

I'm so buying the bluray in August. It's been years since I've seen the previous seasons.

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Troublebot

Years ago, when I read the finale of Stephen King's "The Dark Tower" series, I made a desision to never fault a writer for how they want to finish the epic they were writing. Even if I disagreed with it or wanted characters to end up different ways and do different things, as long as it wasn't completely divorce from the reality of what had come before, I was going to be ok with it.

It served me well reading The Dark Tower, it served me well at the end of The Soprano's, and it serves me well here.

Did I get all the answers I wanted? Nope. But I'm looking at the island as a dusty, skipping record. So much weird shit has happened there that it skips and pops, making a different piece of music than was originally intended. The numbers start out as one thing and end up as something completely different. It twists and turns so much because of Jacob's rules, or the way Dharma or "The Others" deal with them, or the way folks off the island react to coming in contact with them, that they lose their original meaning and become something different all together... like winning lottery numbers perhaps.

I don't need everything answered and I don't need everything spoonfed. Sprawling epics like this are going to get dicey in places, so you have to trust the writers that got you through the parts you enjoyed. King did it with TDT, Chase did it with The Sopranos and I think the Lost guys did it here. (Even though Newhart's probably done it better than anyone.)

Also, I'm going to be out in front of the ABC offices picketing for a new series of Hurley and Ben on the island. Anyone care to join me?

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ObieX

Overall I'm very satisfied with the ending and it left a little bit left unsaid to ponder over.

I'm looking forward to the spin-off: "The Adventures of Hugo And Linus"

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warrrreagl

My buddy at work is a fellow fan of LOST, and he and I discuss it frequently. This morning, he told me he hated the finale and was very disappointed. I loved the finale, and feel very satisfied.

I suspect there will be a lot of that going around.

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Zeraph

I enjoyed it, loved the series, etc. But there is a part of me that is annoyed too. I thought the show was scifi not fantasy, but I guess not. There just ended up being too many holes I thought were going to be filled in, but none were. Like was said previously, there's no reason Jack shouldn't have turned into a smoke monster like MiB. There's no way that plane could have taken off though it was nice for symmetry.

So a nice piece of art I can enjoy, but not science fiction like I had hoped.

I totally cried.

The_Jazz

I don't necessarily think that Jack HAD to become a smoke monster. There's a critical difference between his experience and the MiB - the light.

When Jacob kicked the MiB into the cave, the golden light was in full effect. Actually it was probably the brightest we ever saw it. Maybe that's relevant, maybe not. Jack only went into the cave after Desmond (who's apparently immune from the effects of whatever electromagnetic energy is present) pulled the plug. That apparently stopped whatever mechanism created the smoke monster since the light was distinctly red until Jack replugged the hole. The only question, for me at least (and only this sole topic ), is whether or not the smoke monster-creating mechanism is in proximity to the pool jack sat in. Willing suspension of disbelief lets me assume that it was far enough away not to change him.

Then again, maybe that's what Hurley and Ben protected the island from post-show.

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