The show was really built on one thing: mystery. It wouldn’t had made it if it were cheesy, poorly directed, dumbed-down, or had bad actors. But mystery IS what the show was built on.

Where was this island that Oceanic flight 815 crashed on? How did so many people survive the crash? Where did the polar bears come from? How was the paraplegic guy able to walk? What is the smoke monster? How are all of these people connected with each other? Etc…And that’s all in the first few episodes. Episode after episode and season after season Lost continued to pile one question on top of another. It is really what drove the show. People wanted to tune in the next week to see if an answer to some of the mysteries would be revealed. But usually, instead of an answer being given, each mystery and each new episode seemed to leave only more unanswered questions.

The show appeared to be about numbers, hatches, Others, Initiatives, time travel, electro-magnetic pulses, ghosts, mysterious godlike characters, and the fine blurry line between good and evil. Those are the things that the audience loved to speculate about and that drove countless hours of water cooler discussions over the course of six years.

America fell in love with Jack and Kate, Jin and Sun, Sawyer and Juliet, Claire and Charlie, Michael and Walt, and the dozens of other characters that inhabited the island and our television sets each week. There’s no question that America was passionate about these characters and how the show’s writers dealt with them. There were those who longed for Jack and Kate to be an item, and those who longed for Sawyer and Kate to be an item. I can remember dozens of conversations that I had about these people as if they were close friends whom I cared about deeply. But despite people’s passion for these lovable character’s, it was the mystery of the show that made people drool for next week’s episode.

As the end approached, people hoped that all of their unresolved questions would be answered, and expected that at least most of them would be. Even if every beloved character died a horrible death at the hands of the smoke monster on the show’s finale, people still would have been satisfied if most of the shows mysteries would have been solved.

People waited with baited breath at the beginning of the show’s finale to find out: who Jacob and the Man in Black really were, who and what was their adoptive mother and where did she come from, what is the Man in Black’s name, is the smoke monster really the Man in Black, what is the island, where is the island, what is the bright light emanating from the hole in the island, why did Claire disappear into the jungle before the Oceanic 6(including her son) left, what was the significance of Jacob’s cabin, wait…wasn’t it actually the Man in Black’s cabin, did the Others follow Jacob or the Man in Black, was Jacob actually bad, what was up with the sand around “Jacob’s cabin”, why did the Others disguise themselves with dirty old clothes when they first met the Lost’ies, why did Ben kill the Dharma people (what purpose did that fulfill?), were the Others the descendants of the people that came in the same ship as Jacob’s birth mother, were there other Others before those Others, why was Walt special, why couldn’t people leave the island under Jacob’s care, how did Jacob leave the island to touch his candidates, who discovered or made the wheels that could move the island through space and time and transport people to remote parts of the planet, what was up with the giant statue, why didn’t the giant tidal wave that washed the Blackrock into the middle of the jungle destroy everything on the island, who was Richard really working for and why was he made immortal, couldn’t Charlie have just swam out of the portal when the communication room was flooded with water to escape death and simply deliver the “Not Penny’s boat” message in person, what is the significance of the numbers, where did the “rules” come from the Jacob and the Man in Black had to obey, etc……………….……the questions could fill a 100 page small print book…really.

But when the end did come no questions were directly answered. Sawyer, Kate, Richard, Claire, Miles, and the pilot leave the island on the plane. Ben and Hurley stay behind to protect the island- taking Jacob’s place. Rose, Bernard, and Vincent stay to live a hippie’s life on the island. Locke(i.e. the Smoke Monster) is killed by Jack because he is no longer immortal apparently because the ‘plug’ was temporarily pulled from the island, and Jack stays behind to die in the same location he landed in when the plane crashed.

All throughout the final season there was a side-verse where the Lost’ies never crashed on the island and their lives played out accordingly but they all started bumping into each other in Los Angeles even though they didn’t know each other in this reality. As they bump into each other they start to remember their lives in the other reality on the island. Well, Jack is the last to remember.

Turns out that the side-verse they built up all season long is actually some kind of purgatory where apparently all of the Lost’ies appear simultaneously after they die (on and off the island in different times). They have to work out their problems and sins while they are “there” in order to “move on” (to heaven?). Apparently bumping into their friends from their ‘past life’ reminds them of who they really are/were and because of that they are able redeem themselves and find forgiveness for themselves and for the ones who have hurt them. When Jack remembers his past life, his dad shows up and lets him know that he (Jack) is dead- apparently all of the other characters figured this out (that they were dead) on their own when they ‘came to’ but Jack needed a little help. Once Jack realized that he was dead and made amends with his father, he and everyone else had a little hug- reunion and were able to “move on” (i.e. sit in a church sanctuary and watch a bright light).

This ending, however, was completely unsatisfying for the avid Lost fan because it passed over all of the mysteries and questions that the show was built on and skipped ahead to the characters’ deaths where they were all reunited. It was as if everything that took place while these characters were forming their relationships was pointless and irrelevant to the story: Jacob and the Man in Black really served no purpose in advancing the story, it didn’t really matter what the island and its inner glowing light represented, the Oceanic 6 didn’t really need to return to the island after all, the numbers meant nothing, there didn’t need to be a constant, Daniel Faraday’s research meant nothing, Miles’ ghost whispering abilities were meaningless, etc…All of the great things that had been used to tell this epic story meant nothing through the lens of the show’s finale.

But maybe I’m missing the point. Maybe all of the details and mysteries in life we spend so much of our time and energy focusing on really don’t matter to our stories at all because what matters most is the relationships we make.

I still want to know why Walt was special though. Making birds fly into windows and kill themselves doesn’t seem too special to me.

Although I do think that I would have been more satisfied with the finale if we discovered that the whole thing was just a weird dream after a night of too many milk bones and drinks out of the toilet by Vincent- just say’n.

So last night was the first Thursday in several months that I have not been able to feed my Lost fix. It was a rough night of withdrawals, but Last Comic Standing and So You Think You Can Dance (even though they don’t even come remotely close to the sheer awesomeness of Lost).helped me get through it. I cannot wait until January (?) of next year when our Lost’ies return!