Making a series finale is a pretty thankless task. If people are talking about it, it’s usually because a good portion of the audience thinks it's shit. If you make a really terrific one, no one pays much attention. Lost tried to weave a balance between the fantastical island resolution and emotional character connections, and, indeed, the debate between those who like the finale and those who are ready to write off the series completely now hinges mainly on whether the characters are more or less important than the mythology and mystery elements. The sideways, however, has been a giant freaking clue that the writers were always more interested in the characters than the specifics of the island mythology. There's apparently a lot of mythology answers coming on the DVD. But honestly I don't think core fan queries will be among them.
One of the defining things about the show is that it dramatically shifted its focus every season. What it was "actually" about was, of course, the people and the weird island that threw them together, even though at times the show was "primarily" about one or more of the following: 1) people trying to get rescued from a plane crash, 2) people trying not to get eaten by polar bears, 3) the secretive, experimental Dharma Initiative, which also involved a weird feud between two leaders who wanted to kill each others' daughters, 4) the Oceanic Six desperately trying to get back to the island, 5) the '70s, 6) parallel universes, 7) Jacob, MIB and the Glowcave of Humanity, 8) Jack's daddy issues. And every time the show shifted, it flipped a whole 180 degrees, as if to say, "Now THIS is What's Important! IS YOUR MIND BLOWN?"
What I got out of the finale, though, was a final readjustment of, "None of those paradigm shifts individually were important; it was about these people and their connections to each other, which just so happened to be forged on a kickass magical island." And it's hard to hear that the things they made us think were important either weren't important all along, or were simply written off by the showrunners. It's hard to deal with that breach of trust. They did achieve a balance in the past. The Constant, which I hold to be the show's best episode, succeeded in creating a fusion of the primary focus, time travel, and the actual focus, Desmond's quest to return to the woman he loves. The scene between Penny and Des on the phone is perfect.
There were some fantastic directorial touches from Jack Bender, and all the main castaways had their share of the tender and the epic. The ending did veer into the sappy, and I have problems with Jack's kid being maybe imaginary, but whatever. The easy complaint is that the island wasn't explained properly and the answer to the sideways turned out to be the very thing that the producers insisted wasn’t the solution from the beginning. The sideways universe wasn’t exactly purgatory, but a metaphysical time-space convergence of old friends. Still, no Lost fan could watch the resolution without thinking of those early purgatory guesses, and I’m sure that “so it turned out it was basically purgatory, ugh” will be the reaction of mythology buffs and many who gave up on the show years ago and tuned in just for the finale last night. And that is a valid reaction.
But there was a thematic unity - the show ended the way it began. I can respect that, no matter what I thought of the various balls they dropped along the way (WAAALT!!). This is a show that swung for the fences and whiffed a number of times. You may think it succeeded or you may think it failed, but even if it failed, it had a damn good time doing it, and I had a damn good time watching it, and even at its most frustrating, people still loved it and were engaged by it. I don't think there's ever going to be another series quite like it - a sprawling genre epic, appointment-television, rubiks cube of an ensemble drama, shot in glorious 35mm. Aloha and Amen.
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