Lost: “The End” (Season 6, Episodes 17 & 18)
My reaction to the Lost finale seems to be similar to nearly everyone else’s: Really enjoyed it, too emotional to care about all the unresolved mysteries –and glad about that (at least, for now).
However, there was one moment in ‘The End’ when it was as if I’d been run over in my wheelchair or teamed up with a maternity specialist to trick a vending machine. In that moment, I saw it all. I saw how Lost was going to end. I saw what the message of the show was. I suddenly understood what The Light was, why Jacob needed to protect it, and why Smokey wanted it extinguished. It was as if I was a fried chicken tycoon kissing a mental patient on the beach. And this was the moment: After Desmond pulls the plug out of The Island, Jack punches the Locke-Dressed Monster in the face and he bleeds. Smokey has become mortal.
Don’t you see? The Light was not keeping the Earth alive, it was sustaining divinity! The Light went out but no one died. All that happened was that Smokey became human. The Light, therefore, is simply a manifestation of people’s belief in the divine.
It’s just like The Bible says, and I’m paraphrasing: “In the beginning God created the Earth. It was dark so he put on the lights.” Note: The Earth was made in the dark. This explains Norwich. Anyway, God’s Earth begins with The Light and now Lost continues the metaphor and writes the final chapter in which humans switch off The Light and take full responsibility for themselves.
Freewill at last, freewill at last, fuck Jacob Almighty and his, “I’m a terrific fellow and so I’m giving you a choice: one of you four people has to commit to centuries, maybe an eternity, of guarding this Island, or else everyone everywhere will die forever.” What sort of a choice is that?
Jacob wanted The Light to survive because it was the source of his godly powers and Smokey wanted The Light extinguished because it stole his humanity. It also explains why the audience’s relationship to Jacob went from one of enchanted mystery to questioning the direction of his moral compass all the way to dismissive contempt as we learnt that he chose to maintain a loving relationship with the woman who he knew murdered his mother all because she said everyone else in the world was bad. That’s a spectacular dereliction of thought. Thou Island’s holy and blessed protector is a fucking idiot. In your face, deities!
Why did Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, with unblinking conviction, knowingly entice millions of people all over the world with all sorts of cryptic happenings and assurances of revelations, only to renege on it all? So they could say that, like the Bible, like the Koran, like all other religious texts, Lost is at best an epic parable for how humans should live their lives and at worse a story which makes no sense whatsoever should logical thought be applied to it. Lost is ultimately an audacious and courageous critique of religious narratives that made its point by demagoguery, by using its tantalising mysteries and promises of answers to take its audience through a process of indoctrination.
This paradigm shift also goes someway to making sense of Lost’s constant, contradictory use of the terms “good” and “bad”. No one is ever purely one or the other. These terms are transient, elusive, and at worst, their simplistic use leads to thoughtless judgements rather than understanding or forgiveness. Yet, we, the Lost audience accepted the idea that there might be definitively “good” people and “bad” people despite everyone all around often and openly lying, betraying, beating and even killing each other.
And why were certain characters named after great scientists or philosophers? Because those historical figures exemplify man striving to better understand the world and themselves rather than abdicate humanity’s unique gift of intellectual thought.
The point of the characters’ journeys was to empower them to change their ways, to reject the flaws that defined them and fulfil their potential. And to do that they had to understand that they alone controlled their lives and no one else was going to save them.
So Lost is the story of humanity’s progression. The Island was the location where Man confronted Gods, and where faith is finally redirected back to ourselves to give us the power to make the most of our lives and each other.
Except it wasn’t. I just thought it was for a few moments. Then dead people realised they were dead people and went to Heaven. Oh well.
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