[James and Scott got bored and decided to rewatch LOST this summer while there's very little else new on television. We encourage you to follow along with them.]

James: What’s up, famous inker Scott?

Scott: Just warming up, doing stretches, taking my vitamins

James: I’m watching the Tampa Bay Rays hopefully defeat the Cleveland Racist Caricatures to earn a place in the ALDS!

Scott: I completely stopped paying attention to MLB about two weeks into the season. The Rays are in the Wild Card hunt?

James: Yes, they’re playing the Caricatures in the Wild Card playoff for the right to probably lose to the Red Sox. Christian Shephard would never believe it.

Scott: That is one hell of a segue, pal.

James: I do what I can.

Scott: I think it’s fortuitous that we’re doing this the week following the finale of Breaking Bad, which for SOME reason is yet another occasion for people to sling crap at Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse for the ending for a completely different show that has nothing to do with that one.

Scott: Which brings about the more or less final words from Lindelof on the subject.

James: A tl;dr version for readers: Lindelof wrote a piece for the Hollywood Reporter about how the end of Breaking Bad (and said ongoing verbal abuse) has encouraged him to basically just embrace being hated because whatever, he made the finale he made and fuck the people who are still whining.

I, unsurprisingly, agree with his “fuck the internet” mindset.

Scott: It reminds me why we even started this, because EXACTLY THIS THING is still happening on a regular basis, three years after the show ended. That is a FASCINATING level of impotent nerd rage.

James: It is HILARIOUS that there are people who are still angry about a television episode that aired three years ago to the extent that they have to harass a writer who they could just as easily be bugging about UNDER THE DOME instead.

Scott: Are they ever gonna get out from under that dome? Are they gonna find out they were better off IN the dome?

James: Will it turn out that the town was Night Vale all along?!

So far, in our discussion of the sixth and final season of LOST, we’ve had some slight quibbles about specific subplots or episodes, but we’ve generally come out in its favour, in particular the way it kind of relentlessly gives firm answers about series mysteries and how its world operates, despite three years of complaints to the contrary. And really, I doubt that our first episode for discussion in this, our last installment, will change things.

I am, after all, on the record as saying that people who complain about “Across the Sea” are generally, objectively wrong. But I also say this about people who like types of barbecue that I personally do not prefer, so take it all with the tiniest of grains of salt.

Season 6, Episode 15: “Across the Sea”

Scott: There is an argument against “Across the Sea” in that the information it gives could have been, and in some cases was, presented in non-flashback form, to avoid the need to take an entire episode with non-regular characters in the far-flung past, but I think to really untangle the conflict between Jacob and the Man in Black, we needed the objectivity of the flashback device. “Across the Sea” is an episode that I loved when I first saw it, and the years have not diminished that.

James: There are a few slightly off-moments for me, like the Man in Black’s initial awakening to discover Mother has destroyed his adoptive town (I’ll chalk “Island Magic” to how she decimated a well that quickly with no explosives or tools), but generally, I’m always down for a LOST episode that subverts flashback expectations.

Scott: The episode feels, fittingly, more like an ancient myth than an installment in a weekly drama series. Jacob and the Man in Black are those sorts of characters that you find in those old stories, more archetypal in their behaviours than the regular characters of a drama series. Jacob is jealous of the treatment his brother gets, and the Man in Black feels confined to the limited world of the Island, and what they do in response is very grand and melodramatic. Homeric.

As someone who spent a LOT of time with a Book of World Myths as a kid, I found that gratifying, and fitting as the backstory to LOST. Like the origin of Richard Alpert, it’s a great way to reveal key information, explore the characters, and engage in storytelling simultaneously.

James: I think if they’d taken time from other episodes to relay the information about Jacob and Smokey - information that is vital to the series’ end - it would have broken up those episodes too much, and not really fit with them anyway. The series has, every season, used a few episodes that tweaked the standard formula to present a lot of rules about the show’s universe, and “Across the Sea” is one of them. And plus, while I know it frustrated a lot of people, I honestly think it was a good decision to break up the emotional horror of “The Candidate” with the resolution of “What They Died For.” In terms of the structure of the SEASON, it’s very smartly placed.

Scott: Totally. While watching the season over, it feels like the ABSOLUTE right time for this.

James: I think *I* needed to sit with Jin and Sun’s deaths for a week before moving on. I am okay with just kicking Sayid’s corpse under the rug, in part because his sacrifice was a good end to his story and not as tragic as the Kwons’.

Scott: So basically, “Across the Sea” begins with the arrival on the Island of a woman named Claudia, who is pregnant. A mysterious Island-dwelling Alison Janney helps her give birth to twins (although she had only picked one name, Jacob,) before calmly bashing her in the head with a rock and stealing her babies. As y’do.

James: In a nice little detail, I noticed that it’s only the Baby in Black who cries at his biological mother’s death; Jacob is just kinda cool with it all.

Scott: Neat!

Years later, the Boy in Black discovers an Egyptian board game (Senet) which he mysteriously knows how to play, and teaches it to his brother Jacob, while wondering where it came from and what lies across the sea. His mother helpfully informs him that there’s “nothing.”

James: A lot of the first half of the episode is scenes of the two future nemeses as children, and I do like the depth it gives; it would have been unsatisfying, I think, to just have the Man in Black hating Jacob in “The Incident” and “Ab Aeterno.” The entire episode is basically an explanation for why the entire series happened.

Scott: It’s nice to see the very brotherly relationship they have. They get along, but they have significant differences in temperament, which gets worse as the situation does. I think it’s neat that the Man in Black is the one who agrees with the Mother’s assessment of humanity - the one he espoused in “The Incident” - despite hating her guts for keeping them trapped on the Island. Jacob watches humanity from afar, and MiB lives among them, seeing their darker nature. This could have been depicted better, but there’s only 44 minutes for this.

James: I can definitely see the argument that the episode is a little rushed, but barring an entire extra episode of bloating the on-Island plot to give room to space this out, I think it’s kinda the only way. Like most LOST flashbacks, it’s fairly efficient.

Scott: Given all realistic options, this episode’s ultimate form is still the best.

James: And here’s the thing: the episode is full of exposition and answers - what the Island is (repeated in case you were dumb and missed it the first time in “Ab Aeterno,”) what will happen if the Island is harmed, the source of the “rules” between Jacob and Smokey, the Donkey Wheel, senet, Adam and Eve, why Smokey is how he is – but it’s primarily an episode about family.

Scott: Exactly. And that’s what I admire about it. Like the Alpert episode, but moreso, it allows this information to be revealed in the form of a compelling character-based story.

James: It operates by very human reactions, like dishonesty, jealousy, sibling rivalry and hot-blooded revenge. It’s not just a dump truck of answers.

Scott: “Why did throwing MiB into the light make him into a Smoke Monster?” “Because throwing him into the light made him into a Smoke Monster.” That sort of thing has a very mythic quality. Technically, you could say it’s because the Mother made it so they could “Never hurt each other,” so THAT happened instead.

James: And it’s not like Mother didn’t tell Jacob before that exposure to the magic would be a fate worse than death. It’s all VERY tight. Everything, even the Boy in Black telling Kid Jacob that “one day you can make up your own game and everyone else will have to follow your rules,” has ramifications through the other seasons. And it even gives more depth to the rawer, more violent Jacob we saw in “Ab Aeterno,” whose anger is, in fine LOST tradition, rooted in parent issues. Oh, and the title is potentially a reference to a plot from the first season. TIGHT.

I feel like if you’re gonna hate this episode, you kinda have to hate the entire series, and hey, cool, that’s your prerogative, hypothetical wrong person.

Scott: As I’ve speculated before, I think a certain breed of viewer liked the openness of Island mysteries with no obvious answers… and were destined to be disappointed when the answers they craved did not match the ones in their heads.

The final images of the episode are of Jacob placing his Mother and Brother’s corpses in the caves, where they are later discovered in “House of the Rising Sun,” which forms one of the earliest, most puzzling mysteries that hardly seemed like it would play a part in the resolution of the series.

Now, I’m not saying that, when they wrote “House of the Rising Sun,” they knew “These skeletons are gonna be our bad guy and his mom,” but the task was to take that earlier premise (there are weird old skeletons with white and black rocks that we made a point to comment on) and make it something relevant later. And they flipping well DID IT.

James: The problem is that some viewers demanded answers and then resented the ones they got that had, in retrospect, been seeded (or outright told obliquely) in earlier seasons.

And it’s cool to not like that, but pretending that it wasn’t, above all else, CONSISTENT, is just being pissy and literally wrong.

Scott: The way I see it, the entire series of LOST is a machine under a tarp. And every season, a bit of the tarp is pulled away, and you see what’s underneath. And they may still have been fine-tuning the machine while it was covered, but hey, it works.

James: And with that, should we move on to the next piece of the machine in “What They Died For”?

Scott: Let’s!

Season 6, Episode 16: “What They Died For”

Scott: Now, ever since the beginning of the series, the questions lingering in the background have been “Why these people?” and “Why this island?” We learned the latter in “Across the Sea” (the island contains the light of humanity that must never be allowed to go out) and the former here… and it’s surprisingly straightforward. Like, even as much as we’ve been noting how the series is ultimately pretty straightforward when people say it’s not… this is REALLY simple.

James: And, for me, really emotional.

Scott: Elegant, really.

James: There is something really heartbreaking about spending years wondering at what arcane architecture has been controlling your life and discovering, ultimately, it’s because a lonely man saw himself in you and wanted to help. And since, as we’ve established, the show has been firmly in Team Man of Faith since early Season 5, it’s not exactly surprising that math had nothing to do with it.

Scott: He makes it very clear when he says, “I didn’t pluck any of you out of a happy existence.” He found people who were broken, vulnerable, alone, angry… and he gave them a direction. Whereas the Smoke Monster’s testimony is that Jacob was manipulating everything, Jacob’s take is that he was helping something that could have been worse without his intervention. “You needed this island as much as it needed you.”

James: And, barring his coaching of perpetual awesome dude Hurley, he really WAS very hands off. It’s LITERALLY what got him killed, not interfering too much.

I really like that it’s Sawyer who, when Jacob is sitting around the campfire giving out answers, who challenges him about ruining his life, since Sawyer is the person who’s hurting the most; in the last few days, he’s lost the love of his life and, more quickly, one of his best friends. Sawyer, more than anyone else, needs to be reminded that things aren’t all bad. In that he’s now capable of perfect, free and open love without restraint.

And Kate gets her surprisingly touching answer of why she was “removed” as a candidate.

Scott: I also love Jacob’s answer for why Kate’s name was crossed off. “You became a mother. But the job’s still yours if you want it… it’s just a line of chalk on a wall.”

James: This episode surprised me with how sentimental it is with this rewatch, actually. The on-Island portion is all about embracing your fate with your friends, and the flash sideways portion is all about, really, just being nice.

Scott: Like the way sideways-Desmond nicely beats the shit out of sideways-Ben?

James: Even the beating was a gift, because it brought back Ben’s memory!

Scott: He did spend a significant part of his life getting beaten half to death. Ah, memories.

The flash-sideways ramps up to the finale in its own way, as certain characters are drawn together in this alternate existence, mostly by the deeds of Desmond. Under the guise of merely being an “alternate universe,” the flash-sideways puts forward a situation where the characters are constantly skimming each others’ lives anyway… only to reveal they retain a certain connection of some kind.

James: It is, as the finale will remind us, all about connection. And the beating aside, the Flash Sideways really is sweet, opening with David and Jack’s repaired relationship and embracing of Claire, and moving from there to Locke being ready to move on, Desmond helping Sayid and Kate and, in two of my favourite scenes in the entire series, Ben finding the family he always wanted in life as it is totally apparent that Danielle wants him to be Alex’s new dad.

Scott: The Ben-Alex-Danielle stuff is REALLY great.

James: The sideways storyline really starts moving as soon as people start being kind.

Ben is one of the series’ greatest victories: he starts off as a villain, gets deepened into a believable and oddly sympathetic character and finally is able to change for the better and affect positive change. And he STILL gets to ice Charles Widmore.

Scott: In an era of television where it’s more common to see a protagonist turn evil, Ben is a great case of an upward character arc.

James: And it’s not trite either, because they spent so long doing it so gradually, just like Sawyer’s shift into a Man of Love and Jack’s shift into a Man of Faith.

Scott: In the action-adventure segment of the episode, Smokey tracks down Widmore, who is hiding in Ben’s house, while Miles and Richard look on. Well, Miles looks on from a safe distance, Richard gets himself knocked halfway into the jungle for his trouble.

James: Ben looks like he’s making an impromptu heel turn by siding with Smokey, but, well, nothing is that simple, as we find out in the series finale, but for now, the big question is: was Ben right to waste Widmore? Was it pure revenge? Was it partial defense of the Island? Do we believe Widmore when he tells Ben that Jacob came to him and made him see the error of his ways?

Scott: These are the types of questions people SHOULD be asking, coming out of this: difficult philosophical ones. Whether or not I think it was the right thing to do, Ben does explain himself succinctly: “He doesn’t get to save his daughter.” That’s not a rational explanation, but a very in-character one. For all his logic and scheming, we know Ben is a man ruled by emotions. Just ask Keamy and Goodwin.

James: It’s very interesting and gutsy for the show to present Ben at his best in the sideways scenes - kind, benevolent, grateful - in direct opposition to the culmination of his three season-long revenge vendetta. It asks us to accept ALL of who Ben is.

Personally, since we even saw TWO scenes of Ilana getting visited by Jacob, I highly doubt that Widmore’s apparent change of heart (which, let’s all remember, included kidnapping a man away from his wife and son) was that genuine or, at least, wouldn’t have been reversed eventually. But hey, I spent four-to-five seasons being totally okay with seeing him get murdered.

Scott: Sadly, we don’t really get an alternative explanation. We do know that Jacob was aware Widmore was on his way to the Island in “Lighthouse.” Maybe after visiting Hurley, he took another cab over to the hospital to lay it all out. Who knows. In the end, it’s rather moot. Widmore and his Tina Fey-like companion get got.

James: It’s one of the few significant questions that isn’t answered directly, actually.

Scott: I remember back in the day, people HATED Zoe. Like you wouldn’t believe! The gall of introducing another new character to be mean to our established ones. But for the rewatch, I felt like she did so little to earn that scorn, I felt nothing either way for her.

James: The worst you can say about her is that she’s a skilled and competent employee of a man who may or may not be bad.

Anything else to say about “What They Died For”? Besides the wonderful return of Ana Lucia, whom I regret ever hating, that is?

Scott: Sideways-Ana as a crooked cop is fun. At the end of it, we’ve got Jack accepting his role as the New Jacob (for the time being,) while Locke goes to get Desmond, only to find he’s already been mysteriously rescued, and revealing he intends to destroy the island.

James: For reals. She is just kinda DELIGHTFUL, and my previous dislike of her is maybe the one thing LOST-related I was wrong about.

Scott: And with that, our characters are on a collision course with “The End”!!!

Season 6, Episodes 17& 18: “The End”

James: Easily the most notes I have made about a single episode, and I will probably talk about none of them, because, well, the individual details don’t matter to me as much as the overall feeling and ending. This is, I realize, the exact opposite of most LOST fans.

Scott: The three tasks in this episode are pretty simple: On-island, Jack and Locke both want to use Desmond to uncork the island because they believe it will help them accomplish their respective goals (and it does,) while Miles, Richard and Lapidus work to fix up the Ajira Plane so that the world’s greatest pilot can fly them away once and for all. In the sideways-verse, Desmond and Hurley want to finish helping characters awaken so that they can “leave,” whatever that may mean.

But let’s not bury the lede: Rose, Bernard and Vincent are back! It’s nice that they were able to keep their cabin after the Jughead detonation/Incident/timeskip.

James: I like that they try to be hardasses about not getting involved in Island Saviour Bullshit but the VERY FIRST SECOND Smokey shows up, they’re willing to sacrifice themselves to help.

Scott: They may want to extricate themselves from all this feuding and fighting, but the people involved are still important to them. It’s almost as if the people on this island have some kind of Mysterical Spiritual Bond(TM)

This episode is not without its odd moments of humour, as the show often has. Lapidus, dressed in the same pilot’s uniform he’s been wearing for weeks now in-story, informs Miles and Richard that he is, in fact a pilot. Hurley having a bad feeling about this - which is the CORRECT way to make a Star Wars reference, finally. Richard getting his first grey hair.

James: It is legit amazing that within about ten seconds of finding out about Richard and Miles’ plan, Lapidus has come up with a better one that will, ultimately, save lives.

Scott: “Locke,” while helping Jack lower Desmond into the heart of the island, suggests they could get him a button to push.

James: Oh man, I LOVE what happens when “Locke” tries to reference the Hatch to Jack, because the New Jacob is having none of that and his calm rebuking of Smokey and utter conviction that he is right and will kill Smokey is the first time we see the series’ villain genuinely, truly worried.

Scott: And then we see the last of the Cool Lost Things: the Heart of the Island, literalized as a stone cork in a pool of electromagnetically-charged glowing water, which only Desmond can wade into because of his electromagnetic powers. Uncorking it does indeed cause the Island to begin to collapse, but also allows Jack to bloody “Locke,” showing that he has become fully human - and thus can be killed. So the finale becomes a classic Race Against Time™!

James: It’s interesting that each of the three players in this scene have an idea of what will happen and none of them are totally right, while only one (Desmond) is totally wrong.

Scott: Desmond’s experience in Widmore’s Power Shed has caused him to glimpse the sideways universe, and he is of the belief that uncorking the island will allow them to go there. Like Richard’s testimonial that the island is hell in “Ab Aeterno,” Desmond believes that the on-island “world” is false. It’s nice red herring that explains why Desmond has acted the way he has since “Happily Ever After.” It’s one last rebuke to the idea that what’s happening on the island isn’t really happening. Well, not the LAST one.

[Note from James after the fact: This reminds me: knowing that the sideways world is one stage of the afterlife, does that mean that Widmore’s machine actually did nearly kill Des, giving him a near-death vision, or is it just electromagnetic wonkiness? We may never know!]

Scott: Jack hunts Locke down before he can get on the Elizabeth and sail away for good. They have a final battle in the rain on the cliffside - suitably epic - and Locke delivers a killing blow, but in short order, Kate arrives to perform her best action in the entire series, complete with her best line.

James: As I’ve mentioned frequently in the last two seasons’ discussions, I think that for a lot of the time, the writers didn’t have the best handle on how to treat Kate once the mystery of her background and its representation in her ambivalence about who she lived. In the last half of this season, however, they really nailed what made Kate great, and her coming into save Jack is not only true to her character, but true to the core message of the show: nobody does it alone.

Ultimately, the Man in Black is defeated by teamwork and friendship; he truly can’t conceive that Kate would come back to help Jack, because he’s acted alone and through manipulation his whole life, even back when he was a man who hated his fellow Islanders but was willing to use them to get his donkey wheel. It is SUPREMELY fitting that what Jack couldn’t do by himself, he was able to do with the help of someone he loves.

Scott: Thematically, it’s excellent.

James: Also, Jack has a slow motion running air punch, and that will never not be amazing. Ben even saves Hurley - and thus, ensures the future of the Island - by pushing him out of the way of falling rubble and gets trapped. Because, not to hit you over the head with it, readers, but this show is about helping people.

Nobody. Does. It. Alone.

If the Man in Black had made even a single friend in like two thousand years he might have actually won.

Scott: If only a character had literally said something to that effect early on in the series. Or if, like, there was an episode entitled that.

James: Live Together, Die Not Paying Attention. If I’d been thinking ahead, I’d actually be wearing my “LIVE TOGETHER, DIE ALONE” shirt as planned.

Scott: Narratively, I have always applauded the fact that this “strangers crash landing on an island” premise resulted, a mere 6 years later, in a story with world-ending consequences, where the thing that could destroy the world is located on the island, and it can be stopped by one original cast member killing another, and a beloved secondary character fulfilling a role he has had basically since his introduction.

James: Yeah, it is extraordinarily tidy. And it doesn’t require many, if any, mental gymnastics or leaps to get there, either. Once you accept that Magic is Real™ in like the first Locke episode in the first season, it all kinda slides together in the end.

I’ve seen complaints that the “whole world depends on a cave in an island” climax is a little contrived, and to that, I say, the show has literally been saying since the Pilot that the Island is unique and special and important, so if you didn’t get that in the six years before this episode, MAN, I don’t know what to do with you, because you apparently lack basic viewing comprehension skills.

Scott: To some, it seems strange that at the very end, the show is about this island deity and his evil twin smoke monster brother, but if Mark Pellegrino and Titus Welliver had been appearing from the beginning, the show would have seemed slightly more straightforward about its intentions, sure, but way less interesting. It’s the JOURNEY. Trust me, you would NOT want to watch a show where Jacob and Smokey were making regular appearances to check in from the shadows, and that show would NOT have lasted or become a phenomenon.

James: It would have just been any other expensive genre drama.

Scott: And about a million times more confusing than LOST actually was. But y’know, the dialogue about the finale doesn’t focus much on the on-island stuff anyway. Honestly, the way people remember it, you’d think it was one two-hour long church sermon with hugging and smiling. When it was only like half to a third that.

James: Before we move on to the really controversial part of the episode, I want to wrap up our talk about the on-Island portion with Hurley tearfully embracing his role as Protector of the Island. And son, you’d best believe I cried.

(One of like five times in the episode.)

Scott: We’ve paid special attention to Hurley throughout this entire thing, both because we knew the outcome, and because he is objectively an incredible character. Hurley is one of the few characters on the show who is sensitive and people-smart. He cares enough to find out what’s going on with people. He’s exactly the kind of guy you want protecting your magic island. Hugo es muy bueno.

James: It is just so phenomenal the journey Hurley went on. In some ways, it’s even more impressive than Jack, who really just had to go from being a natural leader who believed in reason to being a natural leader who accepted that his messiah complex was completely literal. Hurley, on the other hand, goes from being someone who’s shy and scared and convinced that his very existence is a cursed affront to all he holds dear, and gradually comes to embrace his uniqueness without ever for a single second not trying to do right by his friends. He learns to accept that he is meant for great things, whereas Jack just had to accept that he was meant for a DIFFERENT great thing. And even when he’s finally accepted that he is meant to be the Protector of the Island (via the beautifully simple “Now you are like me” motif), he’s still scared and confused, but he asks for help, from someone who he used to hate and fear. It’s brave and moving and one of the best moments in a series whose bread and butter was great moments.

Scott: Ben has a bit of an epiphany of his own when he realizes that Jacob’s way of running things - the philosophy he blindly followed for the bulk of his life - doesn’thave to be the way Hurley runs things, and that Hurley can use this power to do what he does best, helping people.

James: Jack is Sir Winston Churchill, a wartime leader, and Hurley and Ben are ideal peacetime prime ministers.

Ben’s final acceptance that maybe he’s just a Number Two and that is where he is best suited, is really powerful. He’s finally AT PEACE. That whole scene is magical for me in a way that only the finest art is. It makes sense that Hurley and Ben, Best Bros 4 Eva™ is a key part of the resolution to the Island plot, the sideways plot and the last scene in the series’ epilogue, which we will discuss soon.

Scott: Art is definitely the word to use. There’s a lot of well-made TV out there, but it isn’t automatically “art.” It satisfies a desire to see these characters learn and grow, and that we might glean some insight into humanity along with that. This is, and has always been, unabashedly a show about BIG ideas. “The End” makes no attempt to hide that.

James: `Hence the Flash “Sideways” plot

Scott: The “flash-sideways” at first seemed merely to be an alternate reality where flight 815 never crashed, and “would these people still meet each other?” But halfway through the season we started getting hints that it was more related to our regular timeline than that. One by one, characters encounter people from the other timeline that they had significant connections to - Hurley meeting Libby, Kate and Charlie helping Claire deliver, Locke regaining the feeling in his legs - and seeming to regain their memories. This episode sees all the characters go through this process - and yeah, it’s a lot of hugging, smiling and crying, but it’s fairly well earned. These are characters we care about. We WANT them to remember where they’ve been, and to feel happy to see each other again. Sawyer’s and Juliet’s slyly involves a microcosmic version of the entire plot of the episode - unplug it then plug it back in.

You were no doubt pleased to see that this process somehow involved Boone getting beaten savagely.

James: I don’t see how anyone can complain about an episode that features literally the one useful thing Boone does in the entire series, taking a brutal beating.

Scott: LOST, having the idealistic view of humanity that it does, ultimately presents a scenario where every awful thing that’s happened to you, every hardship you’ve ever endured and decision you’ve made right or wrong, has MEANT something. That this was important, in the effect you’ve had on the world, on other people, and on yourself. Moreover, that you didn’t do it alone. You are part of something bigger than yourself.

We can’t say that enough.

James: Here’s the thing: like you said, it’s an episode that is basically one third tearful smiling and hugging, but it’s not like this is something that is meant to stand on its own in isolation. It’s meant to be an apotheosis of six years of television, and when the theme of that six years was connection, and it also spent a lot of time explicitly tearing apart the LITERAL connections, these people finding their ways back to each other is emotional because they’re people we care about and we presumably have a lot invested in them being happy. I don’t mind 40 minutes of hugging and crying because I spent the entire series wanting Sayid to find peace, Ben to make the right choice, Hurley to get to kiss Libby and families to be brought together.

So the drama here isn’t IF these people are going to remember their pasts and see their loved ones again, it’s about the catharsis of finally seeing it happen. Sometimes, it’s Jack sobbing as he finally gets the relationship with his dad he wanted. Other times, it’s Ben and Hurley just smiling at each other. Sometimes it’s an apology being accepted. These don’t exist separate from each other. They are the culmination of every single reason I watched this show. It is, fundamentally, an acknowledgment that everything matters. And no number of but-they-didn’t-answers is ever going to convince me otherwise.

I will accept that Shannon being the key to Sayid’s happiness after literal years of being told it was Nadia is a little surprising, but that’s it. And even then, the emotional moment is just so spot-on, I forgive it. Ultimately, LOST is a show whose imperfections I forgive because the emotional through line is so satisfying.

Scott: We have not been easy on the show when it does things one or both of us doesn’t like, but you’re right about it being satisfying.

James: Then again, I am someone who cried like five times in that hour and forty-four minutes, including the fact that Vincent the dog showed up to lie next to Jack so that he didn’t have to die alone.

Scott: There’s been a spiritual current woven throughout the series from the very beginning, and the show ends by laying it bare, embracing it, and tying it all together. This happened. This mattered.

It’s something that every show would like to re-affirm before they end, but few are afforded a textual language to do so… that’s the beauty of LOST’s format-bending form, that they could apply it in such a direction. There is a literal “cause and effect, good vs. evil” story, and then there are the internal and spiritual ones.

James: I understand watching the show primarily for the mysteries and being disappointed that the finale was all about emotion (even if I think this is a wrong and heartless approach to art), but I will never understand people who thought the explicitly spiritual ending was anything other than the logical culmination of several seasons basically saying this was a spiritual show.

Scott: I frankly think it did a good job in the end being both.

James: Also, the church was a metaphor.

Of course, for people who just wanted cold, ruthless answers, they got the somewhat-hastily-produced epilogue “The New Man in Charge,” what might be the first episode in TV history to be comprised completely of fuck-all-y’alls.

Epilogue: “The New Man in Charge”

aka, the exact thing a bunch of fans asked for explicitly and still weren’t happy with

Scott: “Okay, assholes, here’s your dumb answers to your pointless questions.”

James: If Lindelof is finally swearing off being defensive about the finale, this was maybe his finest moment in being defensive about it. It is an epilogue where two thirds is literally two dickbags saying, “We deserve answers,” being given a literal list of them not unlike the one io9 demanded before the final season started airing, and then them being unsatisfied with it because they’re pedantic nerds. Once again, unsurprisingly, I love it.

Scott:

1) What’s the deal with the pallet drops? (They’re automated, set up by the last remaining DHARMA mainland employees)

2) What’s the deal with the Hurley Bird? (It’s a bird. The sound it makes kind of sounds like it says “Hurley.”)

3. Polar bears? (Yes, they were doing experiments on polar bears.)

4. Pregnant women? (Electromagnetism affects them. Presumably this was exacerbated by the Incident.)

5. Room 23? (Invokes a sense of amnesia after interrogation.)

James:

6. The reason for all the name changes of Pierre Chang? People squealed.

It is literally a list of answers and then the executive producers, via Ben, smirking about it in acknowledgement that yes, answers without the context and framework of emotional storytelling are empty and disappointing. I would think it was TOO petty if the final four minutes wasn’t just classic LOST friendship van. Also, it’s outrageously funny.

Scott: One wonders why Hurley had to send in Ben - known (albeit reformed) child-kidnapper - to recruit Walt, when he definitely would have gone with Hurley right away.

James: I think it was to give Ben the chance to apologize, and that Ben might have actually asked to do it.

Scott: Works for me.

We spent all that time waiting for Walt to come back into the story, and sadly the way it was plotted out, that couldn’t happen (my pet theory going into season 6 was that it would end with Walt pushing Locke into a volcano.) But at least we get this: Hurley brings Walt back to the Island so that it can help him the way it helped Hugo, help him realize his potential, and let him help his father move on. It’s where he belongs, and at long last we don’t feel like that’s a BAD thing.

James: It’s a denouement rooted in kindness and helping others, the LOST-iest values of all. Well, that and Boone getting beaten up, but two out of three ain’t bad.

Scott: And with that, we say goodbye to the characters and the show itself, the story is all told.

James: Any final thoughts on the series as a whole, or did we cover it all?

Scott: Yes

James: Should I just tell nerds to go suck it one last time?

Scott: I mean, yes, final thoughts:

Final Thoughts on the Series

Scott: Simply put: LOST begins with a bunch of characters crash-landing on an island. That’s just the premise of a TV show, and honestly, it doesn’t sound like one that would last very long. There have been a lot of shows in the years since that superficially copy LOST, but miss out on the deeper significance. On any TV show, you have a character and a setting, but you rarely indulge in the question of WHY these characters and WHY this setting. They took the opportunity to create a story where it mattered who was there and why: where the suggestion of destiny became the story of it. Along the way, they looked into notions of free will, human kindness, the value of society, and even created a shorthand for what we all kind of hope the afterlife is like. LOST, simply put, went above and beyond the call of duty. It is my favourite TV show of its kind. Ever. It was exciting to watch, and it had something to say.

James: It was by no means a perfect show - it had some duds of storylines, some characters that weren’t always as useful as we were told they were, and it even had some growing pains after it became more wildly popular than the producers ever imagined it would. But the things it did right outweigh, for me, the mistakes it made, and it was always an ambitious, uncompromising show, which I will never not respect at the most basic level of all. LOST appeared on TV when people were saying that network TV was dead and devoid of art, and ABC took a giant chance on it because it played with big ideas and metaphors. It almost singlehandedly reminded people that network TV can be thrilling and smart, and it did so in a way that was emotionally resonant, too. I’ll take a flawed but ambitious show over almost anything else any day of the week.

That said, I also had the idea to start this rewatch for the site explicitly because I wanted to challenge the people who watched the show, as I saw it, wrong, and encourage them to reconsider an unnecessarily virulent opinion. Along the way, I ended up being reminded of what *I* liked about the show so much. I appreciated some things more this time, was less thrilled with others, and even completely changed my mind about characters like Ana Lucia. For all my consistent and constant bluster about telling nerds off, the real reason I wanted to rewatch this show and write about it is because I like it and I wanted to experience it again. It was worthwhile. It mattered to me.

Scott: I think that one of the best exemplifiers for the greatness of this show - in concept if not always in popular opinion of its execution - is that vitriolic hatred it still inspires years later. We live in an age where things disappear from the public consciousness almost immediately after they are gone, and people are STILL telling Lindelof off because this show has inspired some very, very strong feelings. Misguided ones, we would agree, but strong ones that merely “okay” TV wouldn’t, or even great TV with a straightforward ending. It has that ending because it knew exactly what it was, and refused to budge on that. Some see that as a stain, but I see it as a badge of honor: a bit of artistic independence in a medium not known for it.

James: Yeah. I’m not a fan of art provoking people JUST to provoke people, because that’s tacky and exactly what I dislike about the Seth MacFarlane oeuvre, but LOST inspired anger as a result of its taking chances and refusing to compromise, not a shitty AIDS joke. It was a show about ideas and hey, some people don’t like them all. That’s okay, I guess.

Scott: Lastly, in the course of doing this, I’ve been reminded of things I forgot, or had my attention drawn to things that I wouldn’t have noticed on my own. So thanks for inviting me along. We should never, ever stop talking about things we love.

James: No, we should not. Tune in next summer, for our Fringe rewatch!

Scott: Considering I’ve never watched Fringe, that will be interesting…

James: Oh, you’re in for a treat.

Scott: Goodbye, LOST. I’m sorry I murdered you.

James: Goodbye nerds, you can always be angry about Ben Affleck as Batman tomorrow.

Dude, this has been a lot of fun. Thanks for agreeing to do it with me! In true LOST fashion, it worked because we did it together.

Scott: Yeah, man, I’m really glad this all happened.

James: Now I’m going to say I’m going to go to bed and instead watch HOUSE OF ANUBIS on Netflix.

Scott: And I am going to go collapse into some bamboo.

James: Good riddance.