I liked the enlightenment moments; the revelatory flashbacks offered some needed redemption for several characters who died prematurely. These are the real ‘loose threads’ that would have bugged me, had they not been tied up. Juliette needed some more Sawyer lovin’. Charlie Pace deserved one more shot at not screwing up his romance with Claire. Above all, we wanted some sort of happy ending for John Locke, the Man of Perpetual Sorrow. We got all of these, but not the way we expected. When their memories broke through, the characters we loved were suddenly, unexpectedly back. If it was all a bit too saccharine, it still worked, since we had the tragedy of their earlier lives balancing things out.

Re. “LOST has never been really Shyamalanian”… to me, LOST is the most Shyamalanian thing on TV. What other show generated more WTF moments than this one? The dissonant trombones and dull thud have accompanied dozens and dozens of mini-Shyamalanian endings:
- “What?! Locke never really came back to life?”
- “What?! Locke is in the coffin?!”
- “What?! This has been a flashFORWARD, not a flashBACK?!”
- etc., etc.

The fact that it had been done before doesn’t help, especially when the thing that’s been done before is a surprise ending. But my critique about the Shyamalanian approach is more about the fact that LOST has never been really Shyamalanian. They’re tacking on a Shyamalan ending to a non-Shyamalan thing. For me, it doesn’t fit.

But I have always like the relationships and, like you, that is a big part of why I have watched the whole series.

I’d be interested to hear WHY you felt “sideways=purgatory” was ‘the easy, cheesy way to go with it.’ What about it felt cheesy? Was it the fact that it had been done before (e.g. Sixth Sense)? Or was it just executed poorly?

I like the relationships too, of course, but this last scene was just too much for me. I think saying “it’s about relationships” can also be a cop out from writing a solid plot.

The showrunners have always made a big deal about character connections being the thing that makes LOST work. Sure, we’ve got polar bears and weird psychic kids and a world-saving button and an ubervillain made of smoke, but all of that is window-dressing. What makes the show rock is Desmond and Penny, reunited via an unlikely phone call. It’s Jack and his dad, acting out a conflict that goes back decades. It’s Sawyer and Juliette, an unlikely romance that somehow worked. It’s Hurley and Miles, bantering back and forth.

Rather than using the finale to to answer the plethora of questions the series has raised, then, the writers wisely kept us focused on LOST’s greatest character ties.

And, to me, it’s these connections that help rescue the last few scenes from mediocrity. It seems right that the LOSTies’ ultimate redemption emerges only in a communal context. They need each other to become whole, and it is only in relationship that their sanctification is possible. The work begun on the Island continues in the next life–it is an enduring vision of communal redemption that I found pretty refreshing. “Die alone, then live together,” we might call it.