**SPOILER ALERT** -- LOST: An Epilogue

Rather than reject the current Lost ending outright I will attempt to write my own 'Epilogue' describing events that happen after plane leaves the island but before the "eternal journey" begins.

To briefly recap: Ben, Hurley, Jack, Desmond, Rose, Bernard and Vincent are still on the island; Kate, Claire, Sawyer, Miles, Lapidus, and Richard Alpert are on Ajeira flying to somewhere. Boone, Shannon, Libby, Charlie, Sayid, Sun and Jin are dead on the island (along with some others, but we don't care so much about them). We also have some Lost diaspora unaccounted for: Walt is somewhere around Manhattan, Aaron is either in Los Angeles or Australia with his grandmother, Ji Yeon is in Seol Korea with her grandmother, Clementine (Sawyer’s daughter) is somewhere, and Penny and Charlie Hume are somewhere. There are some major questions that have been left unanswered at this point (some of which are likely unanswerable): (1) what is the island? (2) What happened when Juliette activated the nuclear bomb at the end of season 5 in 1977? (3) Does the island require some sort of balance between benevolent and malevolent forces in order to exist? (4) What ever happened to the Dharma Initiative? (5) Who were the others and where did they come from? (6) Why are the numbers significant?

Hurley has now taken Jack's place as protector of the island with Ben as his "number 2." However, it is unclear what Hurley’s role should be and the ending is ambiguous as to when Jack dies. Let’s say the island heals jack’s knife wound and he wakes up in the bamboo field, now what? I say Hurley’s first move is to get Desmond off of the island so that he can return to his wife and child. Desmond gets on his old boat and Hurley sends him on his way (discovering his new-found Jacob powers in the process). After parting ways with Desmond, Hurley has to do something to pass the time on the island, so he begins to investigate the numbers again. He talks to dead people some more (except Jacob, who is gone for good) and he sets up shop with Ben in the old Dharma town. One day Jack wanders into town and finds Ben and Hugo; they exchange excited hugs but there is an unmistakable tension between them. Hurley realizes that he has the power to send Jack back to the real world where he can be happy and live a complete life; he tells Jack about this idea, but Jack has made his choice and insists on staying on the island. Jack walks away and Hurley calls after him “you have to go back!” What ensues is a constant game of cat-and-mouse between Hurley and Jack on the island, with Hurley trying to get him to leave and Jack stubbornly insisting that he stays (inverting the Jacob—Esau tension).

In the meantime, the plane passengers manage to find their way back to civilization without making a huge scene, and Kate is forced to take on a central leadership role as Claire’s life-counselor and Sawyer’s therapist. She reunites Sawyer with his long-lost daughter and brings Aaron and Claire back together. At some point she manages to resolve most of what was unsettled, and she finds herself longing to find Jack. She turns to Richard, who has sought out either a life of seclusion or a fast-paced city life to complete his temporal journey, in hopes that he can guide her back to the island. But Richard has severed ties and is just living out the end of his life, so she eventually finds Desmond who has inherited Widmore’s fortune and connections to the island and the Dharma initiative. Clearly there is a lot of time and drama here, but the real question is do Kate and Jack ever find each other? My answer  not until they meet in “purgatory” aka sideways timeline.

Answers to other questions … The Island is exactly what Jacob said…the cork in a bottle full of good and evil. Juliette never activated the nuclear bomb in 1977, instead the island “flashed” them back to the present right when she tried to trigger it. The island always has good and evil aspects represented, so there will always be tension and a struggle for balance. The Dharma Initiative faded years ago, but what remains of it is probably owned by Charles Widmore or Ben’s contacts in the real world. The others were another group of stranded travelers that Jacob brought or allowed to come to the island in search of a replacement, he allowed them to live on the island and communicated with them through Richard, and eventually they were well established as a Jacob-worshipping cult on the island. The numbers are a representation of the essence of the island and thus have strange powers and effects just like the mystical electro-magnetic properties; Hurley’s unfortunate fate is that his life will be guided by the numbers until the day he dies. But before Hurley can die, he must find a replacement! My nomination  Walt! Hurley needs someone to keep him company on the island (and play white-and-black metaphorical board games with him), so why not bring back his long time mind companion Walt (he probably hates it in NYC anyway).

Also I would like to note that Ben is the only one of the “main” characters (not including children) who is not present in the church at the end of Lost  Thus he is going to hell (and he knows it!).

That is all…

Dan this is a LOST plot spoiler

Before I start, I have a way of sounding like I hate everything because I analyze things very critically so let me state that I enjoyed the finale of Lost and it was a lot of fun having everyone (except Dan) together for it. Having said that:

So after I went to bed last night I was considering that last episode and I came to a conclusion I'd like your opinion on. It seems to me that that last episode indicates that the writers hadn't planned from the start how they would end the show. My reason for thinking this is that in the season 2-3 time frame lots of viewers started supporting the "current reality is purgatory" theory. In the final episode they turn the flash sideways world into limbo. The flash sideways reality didn't exist back when the purgatory theory started and there was no indication that the show would have to end with limbo being a theme. So it seems to me that the writers changed course at the end and came up with an ending that didn't really call on the story line from the rest of the show in terms of the fundamental plot (the plot associated with the island history not the character personalities). I don't read the Lost websites out there so maybe this is already common knowledge. What do you think?

The ending was kind of weird considering the kind of show it was in the past. The final season built up this island mythology storyline that really seemed to be going somewhere and then turned out to be completely irrelevant like it was a storytelling inconvenience to be ignored as gracefully as possible. If there was any warning signs of this coming it was that for the last few seasons the show had been getting less deep in terms of having less layers. Gone were the subtle Easter eggs like seeing the numbers, the dharma marked shark, the oceanic symbol etc. I just really feel like that element was really toned down at the end. I also feel like plot developments were really shoved in your face like "do you get it? Bla and bla was the one who did it!” All of this leads me to believe the show was dumbed down for a larger audience. The fairytale ending that was entirely character driven was just the continuation of the giving-the-average-Joe-what-he-wants as opposed to exercising anybody’s brains.

I was thinking about how I would have ended it and my first ideas were:

Jack = Jacob, Ben = Smokey (If you wanted smokey to be bad) This time have it be that for some reason for the safety of the island they need to keep Ben off the island instead of keeping him on.

Jack = Jacob, Desmond = Smokey: If smokey doesn't need to be bad.

But I have to admit we would have seen those coming so to be true to the original spirit of the show where we were really surprised by plot twists I tried to come up with something really out there:

It turns out Widmore has brought along Aaron and Sun’s baby as leverage on Jack, Kate, Sun, Jin and anybody else with a soul (we'd have to rewrite a couple episodes). Widmore gets wacked by Smokey, Claire finds a way to steal the kids after Smokey does his thing meanwhile the rest of the Lostees finds Widmore and the rest of his posse and think the kids are dead. Most people leave the Island, maybe the plane goes down as its leaving, Claire takes out some people (at the very least kills Kate) ... Anyway, it ends with Claire and the two babies being the only two on the island (Rose and Bernard can stay). Flash forwards: The kids are 11-12 and Aaron is staring out to sea (maybe Aaron starts having visions of Kate who tells him there is a world outside the island, that she raised Aaron and that Claire killed her. This makes Aaron the new Esau and give credence/explanation to the fortune teller’s insistence that Claire raise the baby) and Sun’s girl is helping "mom" like a momma’s girl. Aaron, Claire’s favorite of the two ends up being the bad one and Sun’s girl is the future Jacob. That ending has the advantage of being a snake eating its tail ending but I feel like someone could come up with something better that uses ever more of the island mythology (black vs white, Egypt, super electromagnets etc) to really tie up a nice satisfying interconnected type of ending.

So my challenge to you guys is to come up with your own ending that would have been better than the real one but it has to be a nobody-would-have-seen-it-coming ending. And then share please.

Alan the eye closing call was badass.

MIA

Hey kids,

Once again, my bad for not picking up the phone/watching Lost with you guys. My only excuse is I'm studying basically 6 to 8 everyday (that's 14, not 2 hours) and then go to bed... I catch my TV in study breaks and meals, so I'll be caught up hopefully soon. I miss you guys/having a life; maybe we can all swing a winter break get-together? I'm gone all summer studying/in Japan, but we need another reunion!

I'm not so good with picking up the phone, so start posting on the blog with what the heck is going on in your lives! Alan/Nick, you guys figured out what kind of law you're going into? Rissa, what're you doing with your last summer off ever? Robin, how was Europe? Joseph, do you have free time yet or are you still wall to wall work/school?

Okay, still feel guilty about ditching you guys, but i think that's all this Catholic influence at Loyola.

Cheers,
Dan

*tear*

For all the fabricated, cookie cutter moments that Lost has generated over 6 seasons, they still have the ability to generate truly awe inspiring moments. This episode contained at least one such moment (Sun and Jin going down with the ship Titanic style). There are moments when I am staring at the screen and wondering why the hell Claire here and who even cares? My current theory is that they signed Emilie de Ravin to some long-term multi-year contract a few seasons ago and they've been kicking themselves ever since because they have NOTHING for her character to do, so they gave her a bad hairdo and made her play with a fake doll-baby in hopes that she would quit.

Thoughts?

ZOMG

Oh. No. They. Didn't.

Also...I'm going to see Iron Man next week hung-over as soon as I get done with finals. Remember when we all saw the first one together? And Joseph liked it enough to not complain about the science?

Good times.