The End of “Lost” Explained

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Lost is one of the greatest television shows of all time, and I will argue that until I’m blue in the face — and then I’ll go and blog about it. I remember when I watched the first part of the pilot when it premiered on ABC back on September 22, 2004 and that inexplicable feeling I had that I was witnessing the beginning of something special. Before Lost came crashing into the living room television and became all that I could think about, there was Alias, another series hatched from the mind of creative genius J.J. Abrams. Alias was the first show where I made an effort to catch each new episode, fearful that I might miss out on a crucial plot twist or that a favorite character might bite the dust. But, as Alias tinkered with its plot each season and, as a result, began to lose all semblance of the show it once was (a criticism more than a few people have leveled at Lost), I lost enthusiasm after Season 3, unable to keep up with the show’s complex plotting. But with Lost, a show in which I believed I had found a kindred spirit, I was there from beginning to end, unable to break free from the bonds I had formed with the show’s cast of flawed characters.

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[/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”239″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]To better understand and appreciate the elegance of the series finale, I’d like to first quote a speech from Jack in the first season’s fifth episode, “White Rabbit.” In this episode, Jack has been chasing visions of his late father through the jungle, while the rest of the survivors on the beach grow restless. When Jack returns to the beach, he finds his fellow survivors about to gang up on Boone, who has been caught concealing the camp’s last few bottles of water.

“It’s been six days, and we’re all still waiting. Waiting for someone to come. But what if they don’t? We have to stop waiting. We need to start figuring things out. A woman died this morning just going for a swim. He tried to save her, and now you’re about to crucify him? We can’t do this. Every man for himself is not going to work. It’s time to start organizing. We need to figure out how we’re going to survive here. Now I found water. Fresh water, up in the valley. I’ll take a group in at first light. If you don’t want to come, then find another way to contribute. Last week most of us were strangers. But we’re all here now. And God knows how long we’re going to be here. But if we can’t live together, we’re going to die alone.”

Now, I’ll get back to that later. But keep it in the back of your mind until then. When I’ve asked a fan why they were disappointed in the finale, most of their answers have been in the form of a single similar statement: “They were dead the whole time.” This could not be further from the truth.

The source of this confusion is, without a doubt, the introduction of what some fans refer to as the “Flash Sideways World.” The first three seasons featured flashbacks to the lives of the survivors before the plane crash, the fourth season introduced flash forwards that revealed the lives of the six survivors who would escape the island, and the sixth and final season, with no other direction to go, brought us the Flash Sideways World. In this world, Oceanic Flight 815 never crashed and instead landed at its destination in Los Angeles, preventing the passengers from ever being stranded on the island, which now resided on bottom of the ocean. The existence of this alternate world was never explained until the finale, when both the audience and the survivors became aware that it functioned as an afterlife of sorts for our band of castaways. But when Christian Shephard informed his son that he was dead in the final moments of the series, this revelation led several confused viewers to believe that Jack and the other survivors had been dead for the entire series, and the events of the previous six seasons were all part of this Flash Sideways World.

To those fans still under this belief, I urge you to watch that scene again. Characters died at various points throughout the series, but no one was from ever dead from the beginning (with the lone exception of the Smoke Monster). Jack did die on the island, but not until those final moments of the series as he succumbed to his wounds while watching his friends leave the island via the repaired airplane from Ajira Flight 316. Once he died, his consciousness or soul or spirit or whatever you want to call it was then lifted into the Flash Sideways World, where it would remain undisturbed and unaware until his other survivors were able to join him in the great beyond. Characters like Kate and Sawyer, who were able to return to the mainland on the airplane, would continue to live their lives off-island until death, when they’d be whisked off to the Flash Sideways World.

One clever hint about the nature of the Flash Sideways World is when Jack (or the version of him inhabiting this other world) continues to find what appears be a shaving cut on his neck in several episodes, when in fact the cut matches the one he receives from Locke in their fight in the finale.[/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”240″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]You see, the Flash Sideways World was nothing more than a construct, a purgatorial world created so that Jack and the other characters of Lost could move on together, even if most of them were forced to die alone on the island or in the real world. In his speech in “White Rabbit,” Jack warned the other survivors that they’d die alone if they couldn’t figure out how to live together. The Flash Sideways World was the fulfillment of that promise, allowing this group of friends the ultimate reward of being able to move on together in death after learning to live together on the island.

But why was the Flash Sideways World so different? Sawyer was a cop, Jack and Juliet were divorced with a teenage son, Hurley was the luckiest man alive, and so on and so forth. The Flash Sideways World, in addition to operating as a waiting room for the castaways after death, also functioned as wish fulfillment, allowing the characters to live out aspects of their lives that they were otherwise unable to in their real lives. Jack was able to work through his father issues with the son he never had, Kate was able to help Claire and make up for taking Aaron off the island, Sayid was able to protect Nadia like he never could in real life, and the list goes on.

But their re-imagined lives were far from perfect. While some of them were offered a second chance at life, each of them was still haunted by the flaws that had defined them in real life. Take, for example, John Locke. For most of his existence, John was miserable and pathetic. His flaw was that he thought he was special, and he wasn’t. Even his death was unspectacular, strangled and left hanging in a rundown hotel room. But his death was the catalyst for the return of the Oceanic Six and, eventually, he inspired Jack to embrace his destiny as the Protector of the Island (however briefly). In the Flash Sideways World, Locke was able to experience the life with Helen that he never had, but even then he was plagued by guilt and self-doubt. It wasn’t until he let go of those feelings and let Jack help him (much like how he helped Jack in death) that he was able to make peace with his unexceptional fate and realize that he as an individual wasn’t special, but rather it was his experiences and relationships on the island that were important.

The Flash Sideways World allowed each of the survivors to come to terms with both the blessings and burdens of their past lives, let go, and move forward with the people who mattered most.

Why have none of the characters aged when we see them in the Flash Sideways World? Because, regardless of how long each of them lived, the most important experiences of their lives were shared on the island. Remember, Jacob brought each of them to the island because all of them were broken in their lives back in the real world, struggling and unable to find happiness. During their time on the island after the plane crash, each of the characters experienced a spiritual and personal awakening, allowing them to let go of their past mistakes and instead realize their potential (e.g. Sawyer is reborn a selfless leader, Jin and Sun save their marriage, etc.).

What about Michael and Walt? Michael left the island in Season 2, and even then his relationship with the other survivors was almost non-existent after the shooting deaths of Ana-Lucia and Libby. Even when he was able to redeem himself by sacrificing his life on the freighter in Season 4, Michael was remanded to the island, his spirit trapped there until he could atone for his sins. Walt also didn’t spend much time on the island after leaving with his father at the end of Season 2, having spent that season living with the Others. Other characters, like Ana-Lucia and Eko, were also absent, because they were unable to redeem themselves on the island or simply didn’t spend enough time there to have the chance to truly change.

How was Desmond able to cross over into the Flash Sideways World? Desmond, as was revealed by his nefarious father-in-law Charles Widmore, was special. Because he possessed a resistance to the unique electromagnetic properties of the island, Desmond was able to shift his consciousness through space and time when exposed to the island’s energies. When Widmore blasted him with electromagnetism, Desmond suffered a near death experience, and was transported to the Flash Sideways World for a brief time. It was then that he began to wake up the other characters in the Flash Sideways World, forcing them to realize that this world was a lie and that each of them needed to remember their previous lives in order to move forward together. These awakenings were often triggered by an interaction with a significant other, often a loved one, or an experience similar to an important event from their previous life. Desmond was under the false impression that the Flash Sideways World was a place where the others could escape the island, when in fact it was a meeting place for them after death.[/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”238″ img_size=”full” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]

Did you get all that? It can be a lot to digest, but I think, at its core, the introduction of the Flash Sideways World was intended to emphasize the importance of the show’s characters, as opposed to the various mysteries that surrounded them. The writers were focused on resolving the characters because, in the end, it is the connections viewers had to those character that kept them coming back for more. Still confused? Let me know in the comments! I love a good discussion about Lost (obviously). I realize that the Flash Sideways World is only one aspect of the final season, but I’ll leave the discussion of Jacob, the Man In Black, and the Heart of the Island for another time and a different post. (For what it’s worth, I loved it!)

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