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Think of the sideways universe as being a waystation where a soul cluster bonded together in life gather to help each resolve lingering issues and move on together.
What if I just want to think of it as a place the Losties created so they could find each other? All this atonement and reflection stuff evaporates like a mirage when Charlie drives you off a dock or Desmond smashes you repeatedly into the hood of his car, doesn't it?
No, it actually doesn't, and in your last couple of posts you seem to be strongly implying that your view of the writing is somehow objective truth rather than opinion and those who disagree are kidding themselves. Can we keep the discussion more respectful than that please?
I'm treating the aired work as the objective truth of the imaginary Lost universe. Others prefer to consider the writers' intent or allusions to outside sources, but I think the work should stand on its own merits, so I'm only considering the show as aired. In the show as aired, the flash sideways universe was not created for the unburdening of earthly cares or the redemption of sins, it was created as a place for the losties to meet each other. This is supported by Christian's statement. I think he was intended to be a reliable witness, he speaks from a position of authority, but I could be wrong. It's also supported by the haphazard way in which some characters relived their lives, others lived alternate lives, and no one gained any type of self-realization from the construct reality that led to their graduation: they were all awakened by reliving experiences from the island, mostly due to Desmond's machinations. They "let go" after recovering their memories, not before. The false memories of the construct reality did nothing to help them let go, and quite possibly impeded the process. But that didn't matter, since letting go wasn't the point of the construct reality, findng each other was.
The incidental characteristics of the construct universe were not random; the universe was created by humans, and it reflects them. Studying it can tell us about those humans. But the purpose of that universe is not to be found in the incidentals. The purpose is just what Christian said it was. If we must have a teleological universe, I want someone named Christian Shepherd to explain it to me.
If you feel I have been disrespectful towards you, show me where, and I will do what I can to clarify any misunderstandings and apologize for all offense.
If you feel I have been disrespectful towards you, show me where, and I will do what I can to clarify any misunderstandings and apologize for all offense.
Ah, sorry, now that you've made that post I see that I misunderstood what you were saying in your previous post. I use the term Losties to refer to fans of the show, not to the characters, and I thought you were doing the same - implying that fans were "finding each other", i.e. grasping at straws. Yeah, misread that one badly. Again, apologies.
As to the sideways universe being simply a place for them to gather and no more, well, if that's all you want to see it as then you can certainly do so, but there's text and subtext, and to me the extent to which their situations in the sideways universe reflect a combination of their regrets and yearnings means it's more than that. Plus redemption has always been one of the major themes of the show, so reading the sideways universe as having an element of atonement makes sense to me - even if Christian didn't spell it out in what he said to Jack.
I don't think that Desmond acting as a guide in the awakenings removes the element of atonement and redemption. It's as if they're stuck on a karmic wheel in the sideways universe, playing out scenarios that tie in with their regrets and aspirations, and then the chain of awakenings kick off and they help each to realize, "It's okay, you don't have to do this anymore. You can let go." That's the way I see it, anyway.
Unfortunately, all we can learn about the concept comes from the writing. If what is written is inconsistent with the concept, the concept has to go and we have to come up with a better one. Or we can just say the writing sucked and ignore it in favor of a poorly-communicated concept, but where's the fun in that?
Fair enough, and I don't mean to excuse the writing by saying the concept is all right. What I meant was that this is a recurring problem for the Lost writers: they come up with a concept, then they bite off too much with that concept, then it ends up coming out muddled, with unclear motivations. I've certainly never let them off the hook for doing that with Kate's character. I also don't think that it makes the problems with season six all okay. But it also doesn't mean that Lost isn't one of my favourite shows anymore.
I still liked the finale, and I think that is largely based on the emotional catharsis it provided. I also like the idea of our heroes going off on some new grand adventure together in the afterlife, ala Narnia. What can I say, I guess I'm a bit of a romantic.
To provide further, perhaps unnecessary, context, some of my other favourite shows are The Wire, Battlestar Galactica, The West Wing and Angel. None of these shows are flawless, all of them are marred by weak writing and storylines at some point. Some ended well, some didn't, some were in the middle. But I still consider them some of the best shows to go on the air because of the great TV--entertainment or thought provoking or both--they provided over their runs.
I watched again this morning with my daughter and had the closed captioning on and when Jack puts the plug back it says there are whispers saying "no." Anyone hear those whispers? I wonder what they were referring to.
Did it answer all of the questions? Of course not, nor should it have. What it did do was provide an incredible emotional resolution that's rarely provided in a series finale, one which I think only Babylon 5's "Sleeping in Light" tops.
My only complaint, truly only complaint about the finale is that Michael (and some way, Walt) weren't present in the church. If they were there, the entire original cast would have be reunited (and I think it wouldn't be that hard to get around Walt's growth spurt). That being said, Michael's earlier appearance in the season deals with his lack of presence: he wasn't ready to move on, but that doesn't quite deal with Walt. Alas.
Also, apparently not all dogs go to heaven.
Speaking of Walt, he's the only question I wish we did get answer to although I admit it would have been hard to work into the narrative.
More thoughts to come later. I want to read what everyone else had to say.
"- What is the light? We still don't know. - What was all that infertility stuff about? Wasn't answered." To my mind these were both explained in "Across the Sea". Mother said the Light was the source of all life/souls for mankind. If it's destroyed then all life will be destroyed. They'd already said several times this season that the Monster was going to destroy all life on the planet. Ergo, vis a vis, concurrently, whenever a little baby is conceived and born in the world, a little soul swims out from the Island and into the baby. But if the baby is conceived and born on the Island, it doesn't register with the soul computer (it'd be like one of Santa's Elves wishing for a present) and so the baby is soul-less and dies before being born. Claire's baby was alright because it was conceived off-Island and already got the soul. Sun's baby was alright because it was taken off-Island before it was born and thus got a soul in time.
Excellent explanation. Like the explanation from Cuse and Lindelof about Aaron (as posted on the first page), some of the best explanations are better pieced together by us, the viewers, instead of explained outright. As any good writer should know, "show, don't tell."
Nice catch. I didn't think about at the time when I was puzzled by her concern but I think nailed it. Just another fine example of what I just mentioned.
The flash-sideways, everything we saw of them since "LA X" -- all of it was Jack, in that "staging area."
Think about it.
Jack had a son with Juliet.
Jack fixed Locke.
Jack saved Charlie's life.
Oceanic 815 never crashed.
Jack got to meet and take care of his sister Claire.
All these things were things Jack didn't have the opportunity to do in the 'real' universe. And true to Jack's character, he also couldn't let go of life without the help of all his friends.
I don't know why everyone seems so hell bent on saying they were all in purgatory. They weren't. Jack wasn't either. About the only one who really struck me as being anywhere near purgatory was Ben, sitting on the bench by himself outside the church while everyone else was together inside.
I'd love to see a gathering of the annoying B-island survivors. Arzt, Frogurt, Nikki, and Paolo, etc. I think that would be funny as hell.
Still not sure why Michael is trapped on the island. He did a terrible thing no doubt about it but he did come back to help those left behind. Kate, Sawyer, Sayid, and Ben have done terrible things before and after they left the island.
Besides the actor not wanting to do the show, Mr Eko is nowhere to be found either and he was studying to be a priest.
However, I'm wondering if it was because Micheal was tricked by the Others who are supposed to represent Jacob into doing what he did is the reason. Not sure.
I think it had more to do with the fact that Michael was someone Jack simply could not save. Further, Michael was someone who betrayed all of the castaways, even if he did redeem himself later, it wasn't directly with Jack.
The blink-and-you'll-miss thing about the finale is that up until the church scene, the flash-sideways all season long I think have been about all the characters reconciling their deaths. The church scene however was only for Jack, and so only the people who were important to him during this "most important time in his/their lives" (i.e. the island) were there: Christian, Kate, Sawyer, Juliet, Hurley, Jin, Sun, Locke, Shannon, Boone, Libby, Sayid, Rose, Bernard, Desmond, Penny, Claire, Charlie, Aaron ...etc.
This is not to say that they each didn't also have their own version of the church scene where the people most important to them were present; it's just that this particular scene was for Jack's sake.
It also says something about Ben's character that even in death and what was likely a long life after Jack's death in which he could have redeemed himself, he still chose not to go in to Jack's church scene.
Wow, fantastic observations, 005. For most of the series, Jack was one of my least favorite characters (from Boone's death to Juliet's) but I'm finding myself, much to my own shock, completely agreeing with you here. Additionally, it somewhat satisfies my complaint about Michael and Walt not being present (although it would have still been very cool to see the entire original cast together again). I'm intrigued to discover how I feel about Jack as a whole when I rewatch the entire series.
Just a little nuance. Desmond's 'See ya in another life, brothah' to Jack, and his 'See you in another life" to him, actually happened! They did see each other in another life
Yet another excellent observation. True, it served the purpose of misdirecting us about the true nature of the flash-sideways but this shows that it wasn't simply a hollow addition. After all, I think it's safe to say The Island was alive, too.
LOVED IT! Excellent end to and excellent show. Very emotional ending. I know many will not like the "religious" aspects to it and blah, blah, blah. Others will hate t because the writers didn't mysteriously adopt their pet theory to end the show with. Oh well. It was great!
BINGO. I think stained glass window showing six major religions together emphases this point. In fact, I'm quite surprised by the lack of attention to this point in this thread (I've seen it come up only a couple of times but I'll address those posts further down). Just as Sören Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling is about faith and not religion, so is Lost and especially "The End."
Oh, one other thing I think they should have done.
When the plug came out and the earthquakes started I think they should have cut to places off the island and shown the earthquakes happening worldwide. Like show Penny & Charlie in England and glass shattering and everything shaking. Show Eloise in the Lamppost station and have the pendulum crash down.
Stuff like that to show us that the "death" of the Island would mean the death of the world. That would have added more drama and suspense, plus show us the stakes out in the real world if Jack didn't replug the hole.
Okay, I don't have time to read through this entire thread, but here's some of my thoughts.
Looking back at the flash sideways, it's interesting all the clues that were there early in the season regarding its true nature. In LA X, Rose smiles at Jack and says, "You can let go now." We didn't think anything of that line when we first heard it. That's what I love about Lost. When you rewatch the show after knowing what's going to happen, it's like watching a different show. On first viewing, "The Life and Death of Jeremy Benthem" has a happy ending. The second time you see it, it's tragic.
And now some of the producers' comments about the flash-sideways make sense. There were a couple of times when interviewers would ask Lindelof and Cuse about dying on the island and popping up in the flash-sideways. A couple of times, the producers said something like, "A more interesting question is what happens if you die in the flash-sideways?" Given what we now know, this is indeed an interesting question.
As far as the afterlife thing went, I was reminded of some of the ideas explored in Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt.
That book is set in an alternate world which diverges from our own during the era of the Black Death. Here, the plague wipes out even more people in Europe than it did already, almost wholly de-populating it. This means that the continent has to be re-populated from elsewhere - but also that other areas of the planet rise to the modern age in its stead.
However, what the book is really about is the journey of a specific jati - a group of souls who journey together through the path of samsara on a mutual path to greater enlightenment. Each soul is demoted by a letter, K, I, B and so on, and the people the souls become on Earth all have that letter in their names.
Each time they die, they enter a shared holding area in the afterlife - though some struggle against their path, others risk falling behind, and still others try to keep the group together.
For me, the people shown together at the end of this show are a kind of jati - drawn together in life, waiting for each other in death, moving forward to see where the next stage of existence might take them.
For me, Babylon 5's "Sleeping in Light" is the gold standard but perhaps because I still haven't gotten to Six Feet Under yet. It's on my list, right after The Wire and Blake's 7. So many shows, yet so little time.
I'll wait for the uber massive everything-and-the-kitchen-sink DVD set and watch the series again. For now, I just want to recover from the impact of that finale. It could take a while.
Michael Emerson revealed the following on Attack of the Show:
"For those people that want to pony up and buy the complete ‘Lost’ series, there is a bonus feature, which is, um, you could call it an epilogue. A lost scene. It’s a lot. It’s 12 or 14 minutes that opens a window onto that gap of unknown time between Hurley becoming number one and the end of the series.”
Whoa, seriously? One the one hand, I'm really excited about such a clip, but on the other, I'm in the "Everything should be explained in the series and not in extra material" camp. We'll see...
My take on Sun and Jin in the sideways universe and how their story there reflected the mix of regret and wish fulfillment that those clinging to their earthly concerns tended to have:
In the sideways universe Sun and Jin are essentially in it together right from the beginning. There is no extramarital affair and they are lovers only to each other. Sun is pregnant and there's no question that the baby is Jin's. Both of them are scared of Sun's father and neither of them speak English: they are equals and in the same boat. Sun has been secretly making arrangments to run away with Jin rather than from Jin.
Here are some good observations from Jeff Jensen at EW about Jack's story in the sideways universe:
Next to John Locke, no one clung more tightly to his Sideways life than Jack. That's because the Purgatory that Jack had created for himself offered a balm for his most painful regrets. In the past, I have characterized Jack's relationship with his son David as healthy — as an opportunity for him to work out his father issues and break the legacy of neglect that he had inherited from his old man. But I was wrong. David was a pipe dream — a wish-fulfillment fantasy designed to assuage the guilt over derailing his father's redemption.
We forget that Christian was trying to change his life before his death. He had enrolled in AA and was trying to get sober. He had come to realize he had psychically wounded his son with his crap parenting and was trying to atone for it. But Jack rejected his father's contrition and atonement. He couldn't let go of his anger and resentment; his whole damn fixer identity was glued together with his daddy bitterness. Jack busted up his father's bid to go sober after suspecting that he was having a romantic relationship with his ex-wife Sarah. Even when Jack realized he was dead wrong, he still clung to his anger. Christian, destroyed, spiraled into relapse, and then to his death in Australia. And so began Jack's journey to The Island.
Now reconsider David. When we first met him, he and Jack didn't have the greatest relationship, either. Then Jack made a bid to atone for his crap parenting, and what did David do? He forgave his father and reconciled. David became the son Jack wished he had been to his father — the son who could forgive, and move on. David was Jack's ''White Rabbit'' dream come true. Literally.
(Similarly, Sideways Jack's surprisingly healthy friendship with his ex-wife spoke to his lingering guilt for emotionally wounding his ex-wife Sarah. They never should have gotten married, and he knew it, and in driving her away, he hurt her terribly. Now, Sideways Juliet was no Jack figment made pseudo-real — she was Island Juliet's Purgatory avatar. And if you recall, Island world Juliet had a pretty bad relationship with her former husband, too — a husband, by the way, who had a pretty enmeshed, guilt-streaked relationship with his mother, not unlike Jack. Bottom line: Jack and Juliet's overlapping Sideways fantasies assuaged similar regrets.)
In ''Lighthouse,'' we were reminded that Jack was a big Alice In Wonderland fan. We also learned that his son David's favorite characters were the two kittens from Though The Looking-Glass, Snowdrop (white and good) and Kitty (black and bad). Alice's adventure in that book ends badly. She becomes convinced that her world is a dream, and a bad dream, at that, and when she shakes her nemesis, the Red Queen, the villain turns into... the black cat Kitty.
Jack's Sideways story followed that arc. It was about a guy who got lost in a fantasy-gone-bad and needed to wake up from it. David was akin to his Kitty — a dark-haired tempter that needed to be exposed as fraudulent, as an enemy to his redemption, as he kept him tethered to the Sideways world. Locke called it out: ''You don't have a son, Jack.'' Kinda cold, but it was true. Locke's words jolted Jack — but he resisted the implications. But the dam was starting to break. Next came Kate. She beckoned him to remember. ''I have missed you so much,'' she said. Another burst of total recall hit him — but Jack turned away from Kate and kept enlightenment at bay. Silly man. There's no denying Kate. Once upon a time, Kate Austen was a woman who ran away, and she was lost. But by the end, Kate had become a woman who runs after people, and she finds always them. This was lamely dramatized in the second episode of season 6, but it was well done in the finale. She got in Jack's grill and asked the man she loved to come with her. And Jack could not resist.
