Lost: Runaway plane, never coming back

Just as we drag out the box full of flip-flops and snorkels to head for the beach, island-life of a different caliber came to a screeching halt.
We're not talking Aruba or the Bahamas here, but rather the Island that fans of ABC's juggernaut television series LOST have become utterly perplexed with over the course of six seasons. That's right: it's over, and the conclusion proved to be fiercely polarizing for a large chunk of the viewership.
By now, most Losties have come to terms with the half-baked series wrap-up, but others are adamantly sticking the finale with the 'cop-out' label, feeling especially let down that their favourite sidewinder plot-line went unanswered entirely.
But, you can't blame the naysayers, really. I mean, (SPOILER ALERT!) they're all dead? This is the same series that knocked us on our collective backs in season three by revealing that there is a fully-thriving community of Others living in the depths of the jungle, who play touch football and hold weekly book clubs merely miles away from the beach that the crash survivors had savagely lived on for months. The same series that turned our expectations on their ears when we watched Oxycodone-addicted Jack's downward spiral, as he drove around blaring Nirvana and clutching a clipped newspaper obituary, only to learn that the flashback narrative device had morphed into a post-plane-crash, post-Island flash-forward.
While creators Damien Lindelof and Carlton Cuse claim to have envisioned the series conclusion all-along, finding out the grand scheme that didn't feel that grand at all, pinned our favourite characters as dead-on-arrival at the church that housed the closing sequence of the series. Needless to say, it left casual and diehard viewers alike having a hard time digesting the all-too-glossy finish that LOST writers fed to them.
Now, it could be a matter of series masterminds biting off more Dharma fish-biscuit than they could chew, but at the root of the viewer malaise lies two glaring issues that need to be addressed. First, what we were expecting was far greater than what we received. The hype surrounding the LOST series was practically moving at locomotive intervals before the survivors even pulled their rugged selves from the wreckage. It was only a matter of time before a surplus of online discussion forums, and wiki pages propelled the LOST saga to a level of bona fide Trekkie status.
Consequently, this meant that these hotbeds for theorizing and hotly debating the many twists and turns of the series, were coming up with some pretty galvanized theories regarding what the finale had in store. For a fan-base that compulsively cross-examined weekly literary references and deeply invested in stockpiling recurrences of underlying Man of Science vs. Man of Faith type motifs, an ending that pitted Jack and company against a bright, heavenly light seemed, simply put, too easy. Which brings us to the second issue at stake that will ultimately plague the series as long as popular memory will allow.
Constructing the final bookend for a series of LOST stature was surely no less than difficult. It needed to stand up on its own. It needed to appeal to the aforementioned fanbase and keep the beach fire alive. It needed to be timeless, bittersweet, and able to render the series to a category all its own. The only way to satisfy all interested parties would be to dream up a conclusion that is overtly ambiguous and left open for countless years of interpretation. Unfortunately, the appeal to all these facets relegated what could have been a remarkable piece of modern, pop-fantasy literature, to something that reads more like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure novel.
When Christian Shephard tells Jack that all the people and events we have witnessed are, in-fact, real, it is hard to decode the precise definition of 'real' that is actually being employed here. Although left a little murky, it seems we are to understand that the Island did physically exist at some point or another, but it may be posited that the entire series was a construction within the minds of our dieing heroes.
They created one another to help one another. Could it be possible that each individual character was a projection of ideal personhood, to which they must come to terms with before they pass over into the final stage of their lives? The ideal self. The ideal companion. The ideal father.
Maybe this is exactly what the series writers were probing at - anyone's interpretation is accurate within the scope of their own unique worldview. See what I mean? Its all a little hairy.
Agency is one thing, but a deliberate plea to the the blowing winds is another. If you have found peace in the finale, you are a man among men, but if by any stroke of logic you find yourself still desiring more, please turn to page 226, now.
- Graham Thompson