Lost: The Final Season - Ending the Series

I was a latecomer to Lost, but that doesn’t change the fact that I was never so in awe of a pilot episode as I was when I popped that first Season 1 disc into the DVD player and got a crash course in the world created by J.J. Abrams. To this day, I have still never seen an episode of network television as dynamic and explosive as the Lost pilot. Survivors wandered, some aimlessly in shock and others with purpose, around a beach littered with the wreckage of a plane crash. A doctor tried to help where he could, but so many people were scattered around the sand with life-threatening injuries. And I sat, gap-jawed, completely sucked into the world, and then a guy got sucked into a jet engine. Wow!

And the first season really never let up, with a diverse cast of individuals trying to cope with their situation and doing what they must to survive. Season 2 introduced some new elements and continued with the trend of excellence. But that’s not to say everything on Lost has been awe-inspiring. Seasons 3 and 4 notably slipped in quality, requiring viewers to trudge painfully through bad writing to get back to the quality, albeit confusion, of Season 5.

I’m going to refrain from recapping the first five seasons or any specific character threads here, as I’m writing on the assumption that anyone reading a preview of the final season of Lost has watched the previous ones. If not, they’re worth it…even the bad ones, and there’s not much point in trying to pick up on the show without a major catch-up session – it’s that kind of a show. Everyone else knows Lost has become something of a force in television, bringing in fantastic ratings, while also bringing a very bizarre, science-fiction story to a mainstream audience.

And it has worked for good reason. Despite my early impressions being “Oh great, someone’s creating a fictionalized Survivor, or a rehash of Gilligan’s Island,” Lost turned out to be so much more. It’s a story to watch for the characters as much as the plot, and there is a constant air of mystery pervading the show. Underneath that is a wealth of complex ideas, including logic vs. faith, science vs. the supernatural. And unlike most stranded shows, Lost raises the question of whether it’s in everyone’s best interest to get back to the world they came from, and for those with sketchy histories whether starting over is really possible.

But these concepts have all been brought about through very complex plot elements, and the involvement of different writers have left Lost potentially with a lot of plot holes, and in the words of Ricky Ricardo, Lost has “got some ‘splaining to do.” Season 5, more than any other, was ridiculously plot-driven, with time-travel among the crazy ideas explored – so confusing that ABC decided to replay episodes with explanations of certain elements and how they tie to previous story threads.

But Lost has a rather unique opportunity in its final season. Many shows like this might never have taken off on network television. Even fewer would be able to create such mystery and be afforded the opportunity to end it on their own terms, rather than flogging it into oblivion, then canceling it before a proper ending can be written. Instead, Lost’s creative team announced roughly two years ago that they knew how Lost was going to end, and cited a definite end date for the show.

The challenge, however, is not ending a show. With a show the caliber of Lost, which has built such a following and so much mystery, the challenge is ending it right or destroying the legacy completely. Because no matter how good that pilot was, no matter how much we’ve cared about the characters, a terrible last season would tarnish the otherwise impressive feat that is Lost.

Another challenge is that the writers on board now must take both the good and the bad of the show’s past in making sense of it all, and that really must be the goal in Season 6. Answers – people want them. Lost has built a show around an ever-growing mystery, creating about 10 new questions for every one answered, and that’s not going to fly with fans in the final season.

That said, fans shouldn’t expect explanations for every last piece of information provided by Lost, and the writers shouldn’t try to wrap everything up in a nice, neat package for fans. The joy of Lost has always been the mystery, and some of those elements like faith versus logic shouldn’t have definite answers. Some of the convoluted plot elements need closure, and character arcs need to be completed so that the island has affected them in some way and solidified the type of person they are. But at the core the island is a catalyst for everything else, not necessarily the most important element of them all. So rather than answer every last question, the writers should bring closure where it is most appropriate. As for the rest, fans should, as the Coen Brothers say in A Serious Man, “accept the mystery.”

The season premiere of Lost is scheduled to air Tuesday, Feb. 2 at 9 p.m. EST.

About the Writer
Bill Jones is the editor-in-chief of padsandpanels.com, a site dedicated to the coverage of comics and games.