WARNING: spoilers for Lost follow.
One of the criticisms that makes me think people really weren’t watching the final episode of Lost that closely, which I’ve seen all over the place, showed up in comments today:
I agree with much of the criticism and I’ll throw in one of my own: Shannon. I know Sayid’s lost love from iraq wasn’t on the island, but she’s the one he should have wound up with.
See, here’s the thing: the entire point of the “afterlife” isn’t to make people happy, because what was evident from the entire season was that given a chance, some people are just going to keep punishing themselves for their sins, imagined or otherwise. Locke did it (stuck back in the wheelchair, and this time it was genuinely his fault as opposed to somebody else doing it to him). Charlie did it (hedonistic rockstar lifestyle which actually just made him desperately unhappy). And Sayid especially did it, giving himself an afterlife where not only was the supposed love-of-his-life not his wife but where he’d still done all the horrible things he felt guilty about, and on top of that he was forced to do things that would only isolate him further from her.
It’s obvious why Sayid constructed his afterlife in that way: because as much as he loved Nadia, the primary emotion she inspired in him was guilt, both for what he did directly to her/allowed to happen to her in their younger days and for allowing her to die when he got back from the island. That’s exactly why Nadia couldn’t be the one to help Sayid “let go” – the guilt she represented was what he clung to hardest. And that’s why it had to be Shannon who made Sayid remember again: because she was the only memory of happiness strong enough to make him do it.
And this is consistent with the other afterlives. Locke’s lady disappears once he remembers (triggered by feeling his feet again and suddenly remembering the first time he felt them again, not by Twoo Wub) because she was never really there, just like Nadia wasn’t really there. Jin and Sun’s memories aren’t triggered by their love for one another but by seeing their child again/for the first time. And so forth.
Related Articles
22 users responded in this post
I can buy that, but then I don’t get why Ben doesn’t enter the church at the end. Is it, he didn’t feel guilty about all the crap he pulled on the Island, and so set himself up in alterna-LA with a PhD and cushy-ish job? And then, seeing Alex didn’t bring back his memories, but somehow Danielle did? And only at that point does he feel guilty about what he did on the Island, and so takes longer to “let go” (even though Christian more or less tells Jack that time no longer has any meaning)?
Ben first started getting his memories back when Desmond beat the shit out of him outside the school. And I don’t think he was punishing himself. His daughter, Rousseau, and his father (assuming none of these people were constructs he made up himself like Jack’s son or Locke’s fiance)were all there. He was taking the chance to do right by some of the people he’d wronged horribly.
Yes, but:
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1936291
You just put to bed one of my biggest complaints about the finale, and simply and effectively explained to me why I was wrong. Thanks MGK.
I’m pretty sure the “afterlife” ending is supposed to be Jack’s dying dream, ala “An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge” or _Mullholand Drive_ – it ends when he does, after all. Is there any detail in the alternate world that would have been a deep dark secret that the person would never have mentioned to Jack or anyone else? And why was Aaron still a baby in the church?
The more I hear about it, the more I’m not regretting in the least not having watched any of Lost. 🙂
Congratulations to the proud winner of the Smug Tit Award: Mad Scientist.
I just figured they each had to remember something that had happened to them _on the island_ in order to realize the “flash sideways” wasn’t real.
NemaVeze, I think Ben wasn’t inside because he was directly responsible for the deaths of Charlie, Boone and Libby and so it would have kinda killed the mood for them. They weren’t around for his redemptive moments.
Hurley and Ben thanking one another for being such a good partnership pretty much kills the “it’s Jack’s dying dream” theory, as Jack left before Hurley offered Ben the job and it’s a real stretch to claim he imagined what happened anyway.
I am still proud I never gave a crap about Lost
I am still proud I never gave a crap about Lost
I’m happy that’s working out for you but don’t quite see why you are following discussions about something you are so thrilled you have no interest in.
Are you very bored?
Thanks for mentioning it on the internet, Zenrage!
Thanks MGK, i thought (rationalized) the same thing: Sayid’s relationship with Nadya is littered with grief and pain, which had to be shed before entering the church. Or something.
Hah hah, I never watched it either.
Actually, I did, and I liked the show a lot. I just wanted to see what the appeal was in being a jerk about these things. It felt kind of empty.
[…] […]
I still have issues with the show having no overall narrative as such. The details emerged in order to bring the story to a conclusion, but there was no real meaning to any of it.
Focusing on the characters and heaving to emotional beats that (courtesy of plinky plinky piano music) leave fans an emotional wreck is certainly a winning formula. It works best for soap operas. And that’s what Lost is, a soap opera with a very literate index for you to follow up on (“I’m going to go on Amazon and buy A Treatise of Human Reason/The Third Policeman/Carrie”).
The creators call Lost a mystery show, but I don’t think that’s correct. There is no mystery, just six years of increasingly bizarre occurences. It sets up a dialogue between faith and reason (Locke vs. Jack), but the godsquad wins hands down, much like in BSG….which was set in space!
Faraday was an interesting scientist character on the show, but then his mother performed an abortion on him during the 138th trimester. Bad show for science I guess.
That actually makes sense.
This is a well-reasoned argument, but there’s a simple reason why I don’t find it convincing: there was literally no setup. How many times was Sayid’s relationship with Shannon mentioned in seasons 3-6, compared to his relationship with Nadia?
If they had gotten Maggie Grace to appear earlier in the season, I might be able to accept this explanation. But considering what was actually shown and told to us on the show, my opinion about Sayid/Shannon remains the same: it was an emotionally manipulative piece of fanservice that didn’t actually fit Sayid’s character arc.
Nicely argued. But I think the writers did us a disservice by having Sayid and Shannon fall into a passionate embrace. Their moment should have been more like Hurley and Libby on the beach. Or possibly a moment of recognition followed by Sayid saying, “Hurley’s waiting for us. Let’s go.”
Can we all just agree to forget this horribly convoluted clusterfuck of a series ever happened?
[…] I can see why a lot of people would hate it. But then, again, there are certainly arguments for what they did end up doing. […]