The Lost Series Finale Explained Again
Lost has been off the air since 2010, but even all of these years later there are still big questions about the series as a whole. The last two seasons were not the greatest, and the show’s ending, in particular, infuriated many loyal fans. In 2014, Lost showrunners Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof reunited with a few cast members at the Paley Center for Media during PaleyFest 2014 in Los Angeles, California. Of course, the Lost finale came up in the discussion.
Four years after the controversial series finale, Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof are still trying to explain what exactly happened at the end of Lost. While some are apparently still arguing that the castaways all died in the plane crash of Oceanic 815 at the beginning of the series, Cuse and Lindelof reiterate — yet again — that that wasn’t the case.
Cuse said about the Lost finale, “No, no, no. They were not dead the whole time.” He explained that footage of the plane wreckage was meant to act as a buffer.
“We thought, let’s put those shots [of the plane wreckage] at the end of the show and it will be a little buffer and lull. And when people saw the footage of the plane with no survivors, it exacerbated the problem. But the characters definitely survived the plane crash and really were on a very real island. At the very end of the series, though? Yep, they were all dead when they met up in heaven for the final ‘church’ scene.”
Cuse went on to explain that the Lost finale was always going to be the finale they had in mind over the years and that the showrunners wanted Lost to end on a spiritual note.
While the decision to end the Lost finale in a non-denominational church was received with heavy criticism for years to come, Cuse and Lindelof stand by their decision to take Lost in this direction for its series finale.
Cuse followed up by saying about the Lost finale, “We felt the ending really had to be spiritual, and one that talks about destiny. We would have long discourses about the nature of the show for many years, and we decided it needed to mean something to us and our belief system, the characters, and how all of us are here to lift each other up in our lives.”
Damon Lindelof also downplayed the popular theory that the characters had been in purgatory. Even though some would argue that the purgatory theory works better than what we actually got, Lindelof contends that the Lost finale is stronger that way.
Lindelof said, “For us, one of the ongoing conversations with the audience and there was a very early perception, was that the island was purgatory and we were always out there saying, ‘It’s not purgatory, this is real, we’re not going to Sixth Sense you’. And we felt it too that the show had to become sort of meta in this way.”
The Lost series finale will always be one of those things where you either love it or hate it. I was slowly moving away from Lost beginning with the end of season four, so I wasn’t too upset with the series finale.
For me, the last two seasons were a complete clusterfuck that couldn’t be salvaged with a coherent series finale. But no matter what, Lost started off being a great TV show with one of the best TV pilots ever made. It’s just that after that premiere episode, not even the series creators could live up to the promise of the show’s first two episodes.
