No, They're Not All Dead: Lost Finale

So I did a radio interview this morning that started with the host saying, “So, after six years it all came to an end, and the answer was... they all died in the plane crash and have been dead all along. So on the line we have Nikki Stafford to talk to us about whether or not that was a satisfying end to the show.”

I think one of the pervading ideas out there is that they all died in the plane crash and the entire series was one giant cosmic dream or something. Apparently much of this is due to a final credit sequence of images of the fuselage lying on the beach, which look much, much worse for wear than it did back in season 1. But see, in Canada, where CTV only cares about the broadcast itself and doesn’t actually run the end credits the way you see them (full screen on black) but instead created their own so they can hawk Grey’s Anatomy or create their own lame promos for next week’s Lost episode, we didn’t actually SEE the wreckage. I had NO IDEA what people were talking about when I was being asked this question the next day, and the first time I heard about it was during a live interview where I just played along and came up with an answer for it, all the while thinking, “Huh?”

So I put out a note in the comments and asked if anyone had pics, and humanebean sent some through to me so I could see them (thank you, humanebean!!) So here, for the Canucks who didn’t get to see it, are the pics of the wreckage that Americans saw, causing some of them to think the final moment was an indication they’d all died in the plane crash:







So what is this? Proof that the plane actually crashed in 2004 and was obliterated on the island, killing everyone on board? No. They wouldn’t have spent six years building to one final image only to make it the penultimate image, followed by this. I think this is the wreckage as it sits on the island now: rusted and old. The fuselage that looks like it’s been burned WAS burned when the survivors lit it on fire. All of that stuff didn’t simply disappear: they used a lot of it for their huts, and then the rest of it just continued to sit on the beach. They couldn’t exactly carry a jet engine off and plop it in the woods to get it out of the way.

No. I believe that everything that happened on the island was 100% real. Everything we saw from Jack opening his eye in the pilot to Jack closing it in the final scene was real. Jack met those people, saved those people, interacted with those people, and lost some of those people. He really did leave the island a few months later, he really did return three years after that, he really did go to 1977, and everything actually happened. Christian said to him as he spoke to Jack in that scene near the end that it was real, that everything that happened to him was real. He said, “The most important part of your life was the time that you spent with these people.” The key word here was “LIFE.” Not the most important part of your limbo existence or of your afterlife. Of your LIFE. Those people helped shape Jack and ultimately led him to his own redemption. He believed in them, and they believed in him.

In the weeks and months to come we’ll debate what really happened then on that island, who Jacob really was, and why Widmore and Ben had that lifelong antagonism. But for now, all I have to say is that the island was real.

The sideways world wasn’t the afterlife, and it wasn’t real (Daniel referred to that in “Happily Ever After” when he actually explicitly said that world wasn’t real). It was a limbo world where, after death, they had to reflect upon their lives (remembering them first!) and realize what they’d learned, what was really important to them in the greater scheme of things... and why they were here. Kate says to Desmond at the beginning, “Why am I here?” And Desmond replies, “No one can tell you why you’re here, Kate.” Only she can come to that understanding. Desmond can help lead her to that place, but she needs to see for herself what happened.

That limbo place was one where each individual character went at some point after their deaths. They all died at different times – Kate probably lived to be a senior citizen, as did Sawyer... Hurely and Ben possibly lived for centuries – but when they died, they ended up in this place, spanning time, across time. Those moments of “seeing” that each one of them had? Those were personal and real to each one of them. Hurley had his revelation, Charlie had his, Sun had hers. Those happened to each one of them. But that scene at the very end (and this is my opinion, I really need to stress that, because if you took something different away from that scene then your take on it is just as valid as mine was) was the gathering of everyone to wave goodbye to Jack, to accompany him to his afterlife, his eternal existence. All of those people in the church were there for Jack because they meant something to him. If it were really all of them passing into the afterlife, then different people would be there (I mean, honestly, if Hurley were about to head through those doors, they would be held open by his beloved Ma, who would have said, “I love you, my Oogo” and given him a loving smack as he passed through). Kate was wearing a black dress on her way to the church, but once Jack opened the doors into the actual room, she was wearing an entirely different outfit. This is how she appears to him for eternity: the Kate he knew on the island, young, fresh-faced, and beautiful, the way she looked the last time he saw her before he left her on those flats with Sawyer. The people surrounding Jack in the church were there with him the day the plane crashed and changed his life forever. Maybe THAT is why Ana Lucia and Ben weren’t in there – simply because they were not on the beach when he first emerged and took those first few steps to the rest of his life, so to speak. (And I repeat: Walt was simply a technicality because the actor was too old to appear here as the kid Jack knew. UPDATE A few people have posted in the comments asking about Bernard and Penny. I think those are the two exceptions because Rose was the first person on the island that Jack had a long talk with, the first one who expressed this deep belief in something he thought was impossible, and Bernard is her constant, so it's important they're both there. And Desmond was the last person who led Jack to where he ended up, and Penny was his constant, so she had to be there, too.)

They didn’t all die in the plane crash. Some did, some died soon after, some died long after Jack, but in this final moment we saw Jack moving on. It was a moment that was being built up to from the very beginning. In season 1 when the Others hanged Charlie and Jack began punching on his stomach to revive him, Kate screamed at him to let it go. At the beginning of season 3 when Jack was in the Hydra cage and the faulty intercom button started crackling, he heard Christian’s voice saying, “Let it go, Jack.” And at the beginning of this season, when the plane hit turbulence in the sideways world and DIDN’T crash, Rose looked at Jack and said, “You can let go now.” And after finally giving up his hard-won guardianship of the island, and accepting that some people can help themselves and he’s done all he can, Jack stumbled out into the bamboo, lay down, and finally let go. And in that extraordinary moment he finally moved through those church doors into eternity, one that we can only imagine at this point, but one where he has finally found peace.

And THAT is why I loved the end of this episode.