People don’t seem to like the Lost finale. Personally, I only liked half of it.

Spoilers ahead, but really…why wouldn’t you have watched this by now?

First things first, the island story. I was actually pretty happy with how this ended up. Jack saved the island from its current threat, the man in black, and gave his life in the process. He passed protection of the island on to Hurley, who was probably the nicest and purest person that could have gotten the job.

Then the questions start. People seemed to expect that this finale would answer where everything came from. These people are missing the point of Lost. Lost is about people being wrapped up in a conflict that is bigger than them, never having all of the information at any one time. If, at the end of the show, they said that the island existed because “blank”, these people would want to know “why ‘blank’”? Let’s just take it for what it is, the questions that were necessary to tell the story were answered.

I mean, look at my computer. Well, at least imagine it. I have a vague understanding of how it works. I don’t know where each piece was designed or manufactured. I don’t need to. I can use my computer fine without that knowledge.

That out of the way, let’s delve into the “flash sideways”.

Utter nonsense.

For an entire season they string us along with this alternate reality. How does this relate to the events on the island? Did the bomb cause this? They try to trick us into thinking that Desmond knows about it on the island. In fact, several times they try to make us believe that it is tied to the current island narrative.

Then in the finale, they reveal to us that the “flash sideways” is some sort of half-baked afterlife that the island characters created for themselves in order to “find each other”. It doesn’t fit anywhere in the chronology of the show, because it doesn’t have a time. It’s just a stupid conceit to give everyone a happy ending.

Instead, it just confused the shit out of 75% of the Lost fans that I know personally. So many people believed that they had just revealed that everyone had been dead the whole time. To be fair, that’s not what happened, but Lost still wanted to reap the benefits of that sort of ending. In doing so, they angered and confused a great number of fans that thought that Lost was above such nonsense.

Season 6 would have been better served without any sort of flashing gimmick, and a straight forward march towards the conclusion that was reached to the island story.

All that said, I stand by the series as a whole. I loved watching Lost and will miss it a great deal. I can’t imagine being as intrigued by any other show for quite some time.