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LOST 06.17/18/18.5: "The End" (Everything Else Was Just Progress)

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ZeoVGM

Banned
LCfiner said:
the broken Virgin Mary was important in that is contained the smack that Charlie wanted to cleanse himself from. the inmagery of the actual statue was not the key part of that scene.

The fact that the smack was contained in the statues was very important imagery. It ties into both spiritual background of Eko and Charlie.

Eko was an interesting character I'll give you that. he definitely wanted to find real faith, not just in the island, but in God to redeem himself. Of course, he got killed off since he was so important.

He got killed off because the actor wanted to leave the show. They wanted to keep him on for 4 years. They had big plans for the most spiritual character on the show but it was out of their control.

Building a church does not equal a show that is concerned with spirituality outside of Eko's character.

No, it's a spiritual aspect of the show. And it wasn't just Eko, it was Charlie as well. Spirituality is part of what helped him get better in season 2 and the church never being finished was significant of Eko pushing his faith aside because he felt he had a more important purpose.

As for Kate, does it mean that anytime a character prays on a show, the show is ultimately all about faith? got it

Did you just confuse Saiyd with Kate? :lol

Locke, we already established as being someone who needs to believe in the island. not sure what you mean.

He posted a scene from the episode where Boone's ghost took him on a spiritual journey, which helped Locke find his way again.

I'm just saying that Lost was way more concerned with EM pseudo science, time travel, dharma mysteries and The Numbers than spirituality for 5 seasons.

Yes, but it was always a part of it.
 
VistraNorrez said:
They 100% justified the X timeline and the happy ending. If you don't accept these things then you don't like the point of show. Which is fine you don't have to.
Yeah, the same show that begins, chronologically, with a delivering mother being bludgeoned...
that show is CLEARLY about a happy ending :lol
 
infinityBCRT said:
So I think I get the whole Hatch and pushing the button thing.

In the 70s, when Dharma drilled into the pocket of energy, they basically uncorked the electromagnetic energy and that almost destroyed the Island until Juliet used Jughead to blow up the hole that they drilled and close it off. (At the same instant it blew up they time flashed so they weren't killed.)

With the Swan Hatch, they ended up drilling into that energy again, but with the pressing of the button they end up corking the pocket of energy so that the Island doesn't destabilize. With that energy they are able to channel it to do time travel (which is shown in one of the Dharma training videos with the two rabbits). MiB likely has done something similar (with more ancient technology) with the Frozen Donkey Wheel.

Whatever energy they were channeling into was the same energy that existed underneath the cork that Desmond unplugged.

Very good point. The Swan Station essentially acted as an artificial cork to keep the energy under control. It wasn't enough to destroy the island, but as we can see, it did a lot of damage when released.
 

Ceres

Banned
I don't get why sharks are an unexplained mystery. Jack was imprisoned inside an operating area in the Hydra which was an unused aquarium. At one time, sharks and dolphins were part of the various science experiments they were performing and were done inside the Hydra.
 

StoOgE

First tragedy, then farce.
Ceres said:
I don't get why sharks are an unexplained mystery. Jack was imprisoned inside an operating area in the Hydra which was an unused aquarium. At one time, sharks and dolphins were part of the various science experiments they were performing and were done inside the Hydra.

It's not so much that they shark wasn't explained.. it's that I was hoping they were going somewhere interesting with the sharks like they did with the polar bears.

As is, the explanation was basically "uh.. they had sharks.. and they set them loose"
 

luxarific

Nork unification denier
Jexhius said:
Weirdly, in BSG
faith was kind of a running theme all along, made much more clear in the last season. And yet I think the way BSG handled it in the finale was far, far worse then how Lost handled it.


So true. That wretchedly self-indulgent
cameo by Moore
was the cherry on top of the shit sandwich that was the BSG finale. Such lazy writing, particularly given some of the great episodes in that show.
 

WillyFive

Member
MightyHealthy said:
Yeah, the same show that begins, chronologically, with a delivering mother being bludgeoned...
that show is CLEARLY about a happy ending :lol

Just because it begins with bad things doesn't mean it ends with bad things. Usually the opposite.
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
interesting that the island and their relationships on it were the most important things to them, based on the flashbacks etc. Considering when they first landed on it it was 'how do we get the fuck off'. That really shows how they developed over the seasons and how any of the random shit (the others, whats the point of them) did affect each and every one of the characters and build their memories etc which brought them together in the end.
 
DoctorWho said:
Very good point. The Swan Station essentially acted as an artificial cork to keep the energy under control. It wasn't enough to destroy the island, but as we can see, it did a lot of damage when released.
I think it was enough to destroy the Island (which is what almost happened before Desmond turned the fail-safe key) but it happened at a much slower rate (incidcating that perhaps they were only siphoning a small amount of energy). They had 108 minutes before the Island started to destabilize whereas it only took seconds for the Island to destabilize after Desmond uncorked the hole in the cave.
 

SpeedingUptoStop

will totally Facebook friend you! *giggle* *LOL*
Sir Hamish said:
Not read the whole thread so apologies if this theory has cropped up before, but I think I know what the smoke monster is. I'm guessing its a manifestation of the island's power meant for protecting the island.


We've already had some strong hints that the smoke monster has been around before the MIB falls into the cave. Some of the Egyptian stuff we have seen indicate they worshiped the smoke monster in some way. Also, in Across the Sea there are several indications that the mother is in fact the smoke monster.

1. She kills a whole load of people
2. She fills up a massive hole in the ground with dirt in a short space of time.
3. She warns Jacob not to go into the light because it would be 'a fate worse than death'
4. She thanks the MIB when he kills her, implying she was suffering said 'fate worse than death'

I think this indicates pretty strongly that whoever becomes 'protector' of the island is supposed to enter the light and become the smoke monster and gain its abilities in order to better protect the island. It is essentially a weapon left behind by the whoever created the island, so its appearance and all the weird noises it makes are a result of intelligent (technologically advanced?) design rather than anything random. The ritual that Jacob goes through is only one part of the puzzle. Unfortunately his mother warns him away from going into the light, probably because she herself regrets doing so. The skeletons in the cave also indicate others have entered the light and are probably the remains of previous protectors who shed their physical bodies in order to become the smoke monster and protect the island.

However in this instance Jacob chucks the MIB down the cave instead of going down himself which results in the MIB gaining the island's 'weapon' instead of Jacob. Fortunately Jacob still has his powers over the island and the ability to set rules, so he puts some rules in place that prevent the MIB from ever being able to leave the island and unleash it's power upon the human race, which he would probably do since he has already told Jacob that he finds humans to be 'bad'. Jacob also acknowledges that the MIB may one day find a loophole in the rules and be able to leave the island, so he brings people to the island in the hope that he can change the MIB's opinion of the human race and if, one day, god forbid, the MIB does escape, he will be less inclined to decimate us. The MIB, in turn, tries to prove to Jacob that all human beings are bad, in the hope that one day Jacob will agree and stop giving a shit about humans and let the MIB leave the island to do whatever he wants.

I find it interesting that all the conflict in the show boils down to the upbringing of Jacob and the MIB. If the islands protector was a regular person with some life experience and hadn't been raised in seclusion with weird views of the rest of the species none of this conflict would have happened. Which is why I believe Hurley will make a good protector :)
Damn, that's some spot on stuff. I agreed earlier that the mom is both protector and smokey, but you tied it into their conflict as well. Shit works.


gdt5016 said:
I think it's pretty funny that as soon as Solo finds the one episode to surpass all others, and totally elevate his love for the show, and make it his favorite show ever...he is forced to wear an avatar that says "Lost sucks" :lol .
he got what he thought he wanted, but lost that which was most important
 

sc0la

Unconfirmed Member
McBacon said:
k21cpg.jpg


A nice colour corrected version
I expected it to freeze frame and play eye of the tiger over it. It basically incorporated the Lockey III ending spoof :lol
 
StoOgE said:
There was no character development. Jack learning to be a better father or whatever was pointless because as soon as he "woke up" that was over. What did Kate do to develop her character? Get arrested? Sawyer? Used more women? It was all a giant worthless swerve that set up the reunions.. because as soon as they "woke up" they realized "Oh shit, all that xtimeline stuff I did was pointless.. now I remember who I really am".

JGS said:
It didn't teach him to be a better father imo. The kid was there because Juliet was a part of Lostie group and they had a kid together. It's that simple. The fact that they were in the X-timeline proved Jack was ready to move on- especially since it was after the events on the island.

The reason why I don't buy "David's purpose was to tie Jack to Juliet" is because Jack and Juliet work in the same building. They devoted an entire episode to Jack/David because of the father/son dynamic, which was one of, if not the main, conflict in Jack's life. Without being to understand that relationship, Jack would have never "woken up".

A more satisfying/interesting ending would have been leaving us with the question of who was right. Was smoke monster/old Jack right that the island was being protected by nothing.. that it had no point? Or were new Jack/Jacob/Locke right that the island was special and needed protecting. A better ending would have been to leave it all on island and leave it open for interpretation if the sacrifices were worth something or not. They had done a good job all season of making you question if smoke monster or jacob were right. Clearly smoke monster was an ass.. but up until the writers chucked that sub-plot out the window I was seriously questioning if he was right and Jacob/crazy press secretary mom were wrong.

I would have liked a little more focus on this...but this question still stands. As far as I know (and correct me if I'm wrong), but MIB, pre-death, wasn't a monster or evil inside. He was a man of science, curiosity, and reason. He wanted to leave the island, to LEAVE--he never said (AFAIK) "I'M GOING TO KILL EVERYONE ONCE I GET OFF THIS ISLAND". He was just more than willing (and who can blame him after being murdered by his brother, who supports the person who murdered his real mother, and being trapped for 2000 years) that he would kill anyone who stood in his way. The only people who ever said the MIB was bad and willing to kill everyone else in the world were those going based on what they believed, not what the MIB admitted. The MIB only ever said he wanted to get off the island.
 

Veidt

Blasphemer who refuses to accept bagged milk as his personal savior
Yeah, some of us already figured Mother was Smokey. But not really understood it, in the way Sir Hamis clarified it.
 

Calcaneus

Member
StoOgE said:
except mom's body turned into a skeleton in the caves so she couldn't have been smokey and those couldn't have been the remains of other protectors going down the well to become smoke monster.

I assume those are the remains of other smoke monsters.. but I doubt they were also the protector.. and it at the very least wasn't the case with crazy mom press secretary... so who knows how she shit fucked that village up so quickly..

unless smoke monsters leave skeletons too. I guess that's possible.
There's not really much that says smoke monsters can't leave remains. But we've already seen MIB's original body separated from Smokey, so there's that. Unless the protector of the island isn't cursed with losing their body. Not sure really.
 
The reason David existed IMO, was to help Jack overcome his issues with his own father. Remember, each character went through a transition in their flash-sideways and Jack's was building the relationship with his own son, that he and his father never really established.
 

SpeedingUptoStop

will totally Facebook friend you! *giggle* *LOL*
The only things that don't make sense to me upon reflection of the show is:

The infection - while it lead to great conclusions for Sayid and Claire, what it actually was made little sense. Did Smokey really control it? Why hadn't he attempted to use this power sooner? Is the island just resurrecting people for not being done with their purpose and Smokey is exploiting that? It is all too vague. And stuff like Dogen's good/bad detector was probably the vaguest thing the show has ever done, just a very lame attempt to say "look, we're torturing Sayid!".

Jacob's cabin - I'm just gonna assume that Smokey was trapped in there, but in the wake of Dharma being wiped out, the ash was broken by somebody he could manipulate and he from then on out used the cabin to manipulate people like Ben into thinking somebody was actually in there. That's the only way this is making sense.

ashes - what were these? Where did they come from? Why not just throw them at smokey and fuck him up? I don't care as much as it seems, but it's just weird they have no definitive origin in show canon (unless they're Jacob's ashes, which means they're ashes traveling through time).



Everything else as I see it fits with the evidence given to us, at the very least to an interpretation, all the way up to hard fact.
 

Ceres

Banned
StoOgE said:
It's not so much that they shark wasn't explained.. it's that I was hoping they were going somewhere interesting with the sharks like they did with the polar bears.

As is, the explanation was basically "uh.. they had sharks.. and they set them loose"

Not everything has to be a huge mystery.
 

StoOgE

First tragedy, then farce.
Ceres said:
Not everything has to be a huge mystery.

and yet they sold it as one and the end of S1

OH SNAP DHARMA SHARKS!

Oh yeah, those.. they didn't really have a purpose. Some dude thought they looked cool.
 
Jacobi said:
Why didn't Desmond become Smokey then?

That's the thing. For some unexplained reason, Desmond was different. That's one of the few things I wish they would have elaborated on more.

StoOgE said:
and yet they sold it as one and the end of S1

OH SNAP DHARMA SHARKS!

Oh yeah, those.. they didn't really have a purpose. Some dude thought they looked cool.

Really? You're caught up on Dharma Sharks. :lol It's implied they were part of Dharma experiments. When Dharma was wiped out, something may have triggered their release. Either a generator failing and opening the tank, or someone opening the tank themselves. Beyond that, I really don't think they were an important plot point.
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
so - in theory - that epilogue/alt.timeline would have happened regardless of the island/plane crash? Jack would still have father issues and therefore when he died he'd have a child just like he did here.

That'll happen to you when you die, that'll happen to me when I die.

The only difference is the 'awakening' which makes them remember their friends etc? So is that enough to let them move on without eg being a great dad? otherwise presumably they'd already have moved on.
 

jon bones

hot hot hanuman-on-man action
DoctorWho said:
That's the thing. For some unexplained reason, Desmond was different. That's one of the few things I wish they would have elaborated on more.

i'm guessing he's special because of the season 2 finale
 

LCfiner

Member
omg rite said:
Did you just confuse Saiyd with Kate? :lol



holy shit, I did :lol

would still hit it :p


look, I recognize that there was an element of faith in the show but it was not a main theme like it was in BSG.

and that's why the ending in the church of the universe bugged me so much. the show spent so much time focusing on characters during their lives and how they can evolve and improve themselves that it feels like a copout to show them achieve this understanding - but only after they're dead.

Jack's death on the island, and his acceptance of his fate was hugely more moving to me than anything these characters may have learned or accepted about themselves after they died.

maybe it's because I don't see these ghosts of the characters as being the same thing as the real people. the people are dead. these are just "souls" floating in a timeless space. I don't care if they achieve enlightenment at this stage. it means nothing.

in my mind, showing all the characters happy with themselves and their fellow losties actually diminishes their sacrifices and how they changed and improved themselves over the course of the show. and it's because all this last minute bliss is happening to dead people.
 
StoOgE said:
and yet they sold it as one and the end of S1

OH SNAP DHARMA SHARKS!

Oh yeah, those.. they didn't really have a purpose. Some dude thought they looked cool.
Did anyone really care about this? Wasn't that like a two second clip that had to be paused on the DVR to even notice the Dharma logo? They were doing research on polar bears, so why can't we just assume that they were doing the same with Sharks and leave it at that?
 

bachikarn

Member
I'd like it better if Desmond was special because of the season 2 finale. He had the balls to be a ground zero when the hatch imploded and he was rewarded for that.
 

Sadist

Member
DoctorWho said:
That's the thing. For some unexplained reason, Desmond was different. That's one of the few things I wish they would have elaborated on more.
I'm still kind of amazed Widmore knew about this certain ability. Or am I forgetting something important right now?
 

SpeedingUptoStop

will totally Facebook friend you! *giggle* *LOL*
I think sitting on top of EM for 3 years made him special enough (AKA resistant enough) to survive the EM blasts. I'm sure Kelvin would've been the same if he was such a pussy who tried to run away.
 
Sadist said:
I'm still kind of amazed Widmore knew about this certain ability. Or am I forgetting something important right now?

Well, Jacob met up with Widmore and probably told him that Desmond was "Special".
 

Jex

Member
DoctorWho said:
Well, Jacob met up with Widmore and probably told him that Desmond was "Special".

Jacob has a side job patching plot holes and providing characters with motivations. He has to do something between weaving and being smug.
 

Jex

Member
I remember spotting the shark the first time I watched that episode and I was like "re-wind, that shark totally had a logo on it!"
 
Calcaneus said:
There's not really much that says smoke monsters can't leave remains. But we've already seen MIB's original body separated from Smokey, so there's that. Unless the protector of the island isn't cursed with losing their body. Not sure really.

Yeah someone else pointed out the whole 'leaves a body thing' to me. Im guessing they loose their physical body when they become the smoke monster, which is the 'fate worse than death', but regain their physical form once they either pass on their power to another or the light at the heart of the island goes out thus dispelling all light related magical effects.

If this is true, the mother can be both a skeleton in the heart of the island and the skeleton in the cave in the same way as the MIB can be a skeleton in a cave aswell as Locke's slowly rotting body on the edge of that cliff.


When it comes to the 'infection' I'm assuming thats just a by product of smokey. The mother never really elaborates on why becoming the smoke monster is a fate worse than death, but along with loosing their physical body maybe Guardians that choose to employ the island's power in a destructive and offensive way also begin to loose their humanity, i.e. they become infected, they loose feeling and are only driven by their strongest emotion. In this case the mother's love for her children, or the MIB's desire to get off the island. Maybe... I haven't really thought about it as much as my previous theory.
 

JGS

Banned
Mr. Snrub said:
The reason why I don't buy "David's purpose was to tie Jack to Juliet" is because Jack and Juliet work in the same building. They devoted an entire episode to Jack/David because of the father/son dynamic, which was one of, if not the main, conflict in Jack's life. Without being to understand that relationship, Jack would have never "woken up".

I didn't mean for it to sound like that. I was saying that Juliet & Jack had a kid together in the X-Timeline. This makes sense since they were attracted to each other on island, but it really takes a huge connection to be re-awakened and Jack and her never had that.

The episode was to get us to understand that Jack was a different father than his dad was even though he may have immitated him a bit when he was married to Juliet ending in their divorce. But Jack was a great dad at the beginning of the episode. He just had to help his son see that.
 

antispin

Member
I think Desmond is my favorite character, closely followed by Locke and Sawyer*. I'm gonna miss them. See you in another show brotha.
(*And that crate of dynamite. Best comedic relief ever. BOOOOM)
 
We did a party and saw the episode in HD in a projector yesterday again with 20 more people, all of us saw the episode twice, and people who didnt like it the episode the first time, liked better the second time.
The party was awesome and we all finished clapping (and some crying) with the ending.
We also saw Lost Untangled at the end of the episode, and this one finished with an awesome song that recaps all the series.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDcZDbJPWMw
 

unomas

Banned
Love Lost for the mysteries and characters, and originally many fans of the show complained in the early seasons that we weren't getting answers to mysteries. Mysteries were a huge part of this show for the first few seasons, and then the creators of the show switched directions because they had no idea what they were doing. Many people kept watching the show because of the mystery of it, and I'm glad the rest of you were so attached to the characters, but this show completely Lost me when I realized they had no idea where they were going with it. It felt sloppy and patched together, and it's a shame that much of what happened with the mystery of the island meant absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things.
 
bachikarn said:
I'd like it better if Desmond was special because of the season 2 finale. He had the balls to be a ground zero when the hatch imploded and he was rewarded for that.
Desmond was already resistant to electromagnetic energy at that point if my theory is correct (post 8648).
 

Patrick Klepek

furiously molesting tim burton
Dharma Shark was an easter egg for the screen capture audience. The writers later clarified it was nothing more than that (and thus a mistake because how would the audience know what was a joke and what wasn't) and the nod to sharks elsewhere in the show, like the season six opener, are merely nods to the in-joke.
 
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