LOST hangover

The wife and I have been big fans of LOST from the beginning. I happened to read a review of the show before the pilot aired, it sounded intriguing, and so we dived in. It's been an alternatively exhilarating and frustrating six years of television--dealing with revelations about the survivors and their island existence and questions that never seem to get answered--but it's never been boring.

And so Sunday night's series finale was something we were both amped up about. We watched, she cried, I fought to stay awake (not because I was uninterested but because I was up way past my bedtime watching on DVR!), and as the credits rolled we both felt melancholic and satisfied.

It's a bit strange to say this but it feels a little like a good friend has moved away. This was something we shared for the last six years and suddenly it's gone. There is a void.

And it was a good friend. Unlike some others who have expressed everything from outrage to deep disappointment in the way LOST wrapped up, Jen and I felt it worked just fine. Better than fine.

For me, the series can be summed up in one very memorable exchange between John Locke and Dr. Jack Shepherd.

John: "Why do you find it so hard to believe?"
Jack: "Why do you find it so easy?"
John: (with deep emotion, shouting) "It's never been easy!"

In the end, this half Sci-Fi, half mystical-spiritual show fell solidly on the side of Mystery and Faith, at the expense of Reason. This is what no doubt frustrated many who were looking for answers to the myriad of unresolved questions created over the last six years.

But as one who has often not found it "easy" to believe himself, I was glad the writers chose ambiguity over answers. Increasingly, over the years, I have found that when I can be comfortable and at peace with the Unknown, it is ever so "easier" to believe in what has been revealed.

Finally, I loved the symmetry of the final scene: Jack, laying on his back, staring at the sky, bruised and bloodied; and as the series started six years ago with a close-up of his eye opening, now it ends with a close-up of that same eye closing. Very satisfying.

(One comment on the revelation that everybody seemed to have actually died in the original Oceanic crash (again, somewhat ambiguous and open to interpretation), and the last six years have been lived in a kind of purgatory existence, on the way to the afterlife.

This reminded me of C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce, in which characters who have died don't realize they are dead and are living in a kind of Hell. In Lewis' imagination [and he is clear at the onset that it is just that--his imagination] those who are in this Hell are not confined there, that indeed they can move on to heaven if they choose. But in the whole book we see only one individual who is able to make this transition. The rest are too inward focused, too attached and consumed by their "demons."

The producers have gone on record as being men of faith (Catholic Christians, I believe), and even had one character--a woman, in a minor role--named Charlotte Staples Lewis. A clear nod, in my mind, to Clive Staples (C.S.) Lewis. So, who knows, maybe their idea of "purgatory" was not simply influenced by Roman Catholic theology, but also by the fiction of a British Anglican. It's fun to wonder.)