We knew this was coming, but that still doesn't make it any easier. ""Lost,"" possibly the most cultishly obsessed about show in television history, is over. And as many people feared, when we left our final close-up of Matthew Fox's twitchy eyeball, numerous questions had not been answered. What exactly is the bright light at the center of the island? Why do people like Walt and Miles have mystical powers? How exactly does the sideways world relate to anything at all?
These lingering mysteries angered many people. Fans marched into the streets and burned figures of Nikki and Paulo in effigy, previous devotees of John Locke started reading Thomas Hobbes, cats and dogs living together, it was madness! The people of ""Lost"" nation were pissed, for they believed that the writers of their beloved serialized show had wasted the last six years of their lives by failing to tie up the series neatly, instead choosing to leave viewers puzzled and adrift.
Yes, much of the ""Lost"" fanbase was, and still is, very angry. But much of the ""Lost"" fanbase is also very stupid.
Perhaps this is as much my fault as it is theirs. I, too, was an ardent fan of ""Lost,"" one who loved discussing the show at any opportunity with other ""Lost"" devotees. I loved trying to figure out what the whispers were, how it was Richard Alpert never aged and why the hell that Egyptian statue had only four toes. For the past six years, ""Lost"" has effectively been my television equivalent of meth (which probably makes it all the more fitting that as ""Lost"" was winding down I found myself increasingly hooked on ""Breaking Bad"").
I was so fond of the show and the community that went with it that I probably gave most of my fellow ""Lost"" fans a little too much credit. Considering so much of ""Lost"" revolved around speculation, contemplation and prognostication, one would think its fans would be capable of a little thinking. One would think ""Lost"" fans would exhibit at least a hint of intellectual curiosity.
Sadly, this wasn't the case. Despite the fact that ""Lost"" had never tried to position itself as an easy show to grasp, fans were seemingly dumbfounded that the series finale did not wrap up every little loose end with a straightforward, easily digestible conclusion. Yet at no point had ""Lost"" been a straightforward, easily digestible show. ""Lost"" was told completely non-linearly. In fact, by the end of the show, the timeline was so convoluted that linearity practically lost all meaning. It piled mythology upon mythology. Remember when we were still trying to figure out who the enigmatic Others were? Anybody think that would lead to a pair of magic twin brothers from Roman times with a hell of a lot of mommy issues?
For the series finale to simply provide answer after answer to every question, then finish things off with a clean-cut final scene would simply have been disingenuous to the entire ""Lost"" experience. ""Lost"" has never been about understanding, ""Lost"" has always been about interactivity. And never has this been more true than when the show actually did provide answers. When the writers finally got around to handing out some satisfactory explanations in the final season, such as what the creepy whispers were or the identities of the Adam and Eve figures from the caves, ""Lost"" seemed to grind to a halt. The dialogue became clumsy and the revelations were always underwhelming.
Perhaps it goes back to an old adage of Alfred Hitchcock's. Hitchcock, likely the foremost artist in the field of suspense that film and television will ever see, often compared his scenes to a bomb under a table. When the bomb goes off, you get a thrill. However, thrills dissipate as quickly as they appear. But if you leave the bomb under the table and nobody knows when it's going to go off, that is suspense, and that is a feeling that will stick with you long afterward.
The ""Lost"" writers should be applauded for having the cajones to end the show without letting the bomb explode. Sure, they let off a few firecrackers, but it's not like they set off a nuclear device or anything (Juliet already did that anyway). To do so would have been to ruin everything that was great about ""Lost"" for six seasons: The endless theorizing about the island's past, the constant debates about how the mythology came to be and, most importantly, the entire mystique of never quite knowing what is going on. Sometimes, you just need to embrace being lost.
Did Todd just call everybody who hated the ""Lost"" finale stupid? Yes, indeed he did. Feel free to call him stupid at ststevens@wisc.edu.
