MovieChat Forums > Lost (2004) Discussion > The people who think the ending means th...

The people who think the ending means that...

posted 6 years ago by rootvegetables (1343)
22 replies | jump to latest

"they were all dead the entire time! that sucks!"

Remind me of the people who saw the movie AI and thought that [spoiler]the advanced future mecha robots at the end were space aliens.[/spoiler]

No matter how much you try to explain to them that this is not the case, was never meant to be the case and has no reason to be the case, they just insist that their interpretation is valid and that the show/movie ended on an epic fail because of it.

This, by the way, isn't about whether Lost is a good show or not. Personally, I consider it one of the great, more unique NETWORK shows. It offered us everything but the kitchen sink and did it in style. However, let's grant for a second that the show is awful and one of the worst ever made. Okay fine. But why can't we just interpret the ending for what it clearly was? We don't have to like the show's ending; but can we at least hate THIS show's ending and not some alternative non-existent ending that is not part of the show?

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[–] [deleted] 6 years ago

Nope. The island wasn't real. You need to watch the series again, and, especially the post-series epilogue "A New Man in Charge"...

[–] gregg325 (215) 6 years ago

Try again https://www.eonline.com/news/521687/lost-bosses-finally-answer-were-they-really-dead-the-whole-time-what-was-the-whole-show-about

[–] [deleted] 6 years ago

Naw, I've already seen the interview where Cuse walks back on that. It's on youtube... too lazy to look for it.

Lindeloff has consistently said it was real, I agree. Don't care. I'm pretty sure he decided that the day after the finale. Too many clues and story elements indicate otherwise. It's all been detailed in other numerous articles and blogs... again, I'm too lazy to look them up.

[–] gregg325 (215) 6 years ago

What clues? The only clue in the entire show is the flash sideways but even that is debunked by Jacks dad who literally explains that everything that happened was real. Also if they all died in the crash then the church scene in the end wouldn't even make sense. None of them would know each other so why are they together? There are just too many holes in that "they're all dead" theory. It doesn't make any sense.

[–] [deleted] 6 years ago

Nope. Okay, I don't have the time to go through the series but I'll leave you with two of the biggest hints.

i. In the final conversation between Jack and his Dad, the island is never mentioned AT ALL. Jack's Dad at no point says anything like: "Hey son, you SAVED ALL OF HUMANITY! Well done..." Which would be kind of an obvious thing to say to comfort his weeping son.

What he does say *explicitly* is that "I'm REAL, you're REAL..." And, yet at that instant both of them are *dead*and *living in the afterlife*. So the after life island adventures are "real"

The writers deliberately wrote this dialogue to be as obtuse as possible so that they had lots of wiggle room to claim that the island was a real place, or just an after life experience.

ii. From the very start of the series, the island was presented as this Oz-like place where strange things happened with time and populated with strange people and things. You could write an essay on this alone, but the result is that the island is very much like a dream place, full of magic and mystery.

The biggest giveaway that the island wasn't real that the writers tossed out was the fact that it could move through space and time (using an uncalibrated donkey wheel and a weird green light!). Islands are connected to seabeds. You can't move them without causing some major seismic and oceanographic effects.

The writers cheekily even played with this in the series epilogue "A New Man in Charge" when Linus is asked by the warehouse flunky: "How can an island move?". A real island can't move and, unsurprisingly, Linus doesn't answer the question.

It was a wink to viewers.

[–] gregg325 (215) 6 years ago

Christian doesn't mention the island because thats not what Jack's life was about. It was about the people in his life that he met there. Not the island itself. And again if they all died in the crash how do you explain them knowing each other in the "after life?" If they died then none of them know each other so how are they all there? This theory has more holes than swiss cheese...

On to your 2nd point. This is basically just an opinion. "Weird things happen on the island so it can't be real". That isn't proof.

Also let me ask you this. If the writers really intended for them to be dead the whole time then why don't they just come out and say it? Why pretend that everything on the island happened? Why continue to lie about the ending? You put in all that effort just to lie to everyone? Whats the point?

I'll say this about Lost. As much as I enjoyed the show and its ending I really wish they didn't do the whole after life stuff. All it did was confuse people and make them think the show ended in a way that wasn't intended. If they left out the flash sideways and just had Jack die on the island saving everybody nobody would even consider this ridiculous theory.

[–] [deleted] 6 years ago

I don't even believe that story about the clip of the crashed plane after the final episode. Lindeloff insists ABC did that without their knowledge. These guys were the show's producers and showrunners and, at the time, probably the most powerful ones in the industry with this monster hit. Nothing would have happened without their knowledge.

I think the writers didn't know what to do with the end of the show, so they kept things as open ended as possible to pick an ending after-the-fact.

If you want to believe otherwise and it works for you, that's fine.

I'll show myself out...

[–] gregg325 (215) 6 years ago

Lindelof never said he didn't know about the final clip after the finale. He just said it was never intended to be how it was perceived. They just wanted a bit of a moment of silence after Jack died instead of an abrupt "NEXT ON ABC" after a touching moment to end the series. Thats why they did that.

[–] [deleted] 6 years ago

Its not clear to me wether you are saying that "they were all dead the entire time! that sucks!" was or is or isnt what happened. no , wait , im getting that youre sying that not the story , but a lot of people think it is. I dont know how clear they made it because i quit the show at the start of the last season after catching a rumour of just that.

"this is not the case, was never meant to be the case and has no reason to be the case,"
Those are three good markers by which any other show can be judged. you know - having a comprehensible storyline and such , but with Lost that means fuck all .

Nothing is or isnt the case
Nothing was or wasnt meant to be the case
Nothing has any reason to be or not be the case

The writers were makjing the whole thing up as they went along ,so why shouldnt we?
The ending can be whatever you want .
You know what im gonna pick this week: - It was all a hallucination in (lets say Charlie's) mind induced by Aliens that that had kidnapped him and were probing his ass.

[–] rootvegetables (1343) 6 years ago

The writers were makjing the whole thing up as they went along ,so why shouldnt we?

I tend to believe this (that they were making things up as they went along). But this is true for most shows. Either each season is mapped out ahead of time; or each season is made up as it goes along. Rarely is a show ever mapped up in its entirety ahead of time.
But that being established, I think that once the writers make up something and put it into their show, we should kinda accept that its canon to the show. Doesn't mean we have to like what they did.

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[–] [deleted] 6 years ago

"Rarely is a show ever mapped up in its entirety ahead of time."

In this case, the show runners were given an end date by ABC at THEIR request. They had two seasons to wrap it up, a luxury never before given a show that I'm aware of.

The fact that they couldn't wrap up all the dead ends, sidebars, mysteries, etc. when they had so much time to do suggests to me they were either: i. grossly incompetent storytellers; or ii. just didn't give a s**t.

Either way, they cashed in all their good will with most fans which is why nobody is clamouring for a LOST sequel/prequel/spin-off when so many other series such as X-Files, Prison Break, Heroes, etc have been resurrected.

[–] Arghhhh (804) 6 years ago

And just to add to your good points most shows aren't pulling mysteries out of their arse and promising answers. It's one thing to make up where your story is going it's another to have to make up where it's going *and* where it came from (which might as well be called the 'Abrams' method seeing as he's now used it to ruin Star Wars).

And yes - it is interesting that the ending was so bad given the time they had. It was apparent half way through season two they were making it up as they went but to give them credit they did do a good job at that, they're obviously talented people... so why couldn't they come up with a decent ending, or even seem to attempt to? Arrogance is probably the answer.

[–] [deleted] 6 years ago

theres no way in hell they could have wrapped up all the stories , unless they used a catch all like
"and it was all adream..." Dallas style
"they were dead all along"
"er , aliens dunnit"

so there was no point having 2 seasons to do it , they could do that in 1 episode.

I get that most shows may not know the end before they start , but anything the "make up" as they go along is consistent with the story so far - not new bullshit that will need t o be explained. Did they even explain a single thing ever?

Its like after a certain point, maybe 1/2 through S2 they thought "Fuck it! writers binge party! do whatever you want " there is no tomorrow! were just gonna party till they wont give us anymore episodes and just put the cool stuff in , no story! no ending needed! go crazy! "

[–] rootvegetables (1343) 6 years ago

I can't say that the ratio of questions to answers wasn't frustrating to me at any point, because it was. Especially in S3 when Jack is in a cage and he asks a former tail section survivor why she is outside the cage watching him and she just replies that she's watching and he gets mad and I get pissed off and I someone to explain something instead of speaking in riddles.
HOWEVER... I really do feel that you guys are exaggerating. I think the writers explained most if not all of the mysteries. It is clear to me that these explanations were controversial at best and that not all viewers were happy with these answers. But to claim that the writers never or hardly ever resolved their mysteries is not being fair.

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[–] [deleted] 6 years ago

I think the writers explained most if not all of the mysteries. It is clear to me that these explanations were controversial at best and that not all viewers were happy with these answers.

It wasn't so much unhappiness with the answers as how banal and trivial they turned out to be after so much build up. It was the cinematic equivalent of a 'shaggy dog story'.

The whispers, the three-toed statue, the ship in the middle of the jungle, the polar bear skeleton in the desert, the mysterious repeating numbers... all of them turned out to be nothing at all after a lot of dramatic build up.

Meanwhile the biggest mysteries went unanswered. What was the origin of the island? We're told repeatedly that if the Man in Black escapes the island, it's the end of all life on earth. Why? How? No answer.

Where was Jacob for the first five seasons? He pops up as a giant deus ex machina in the final season as does the MIB.

In the final conversation, dead-Christian tells dead-Jack that the most important time in his life was the time he spent with his dead-friends. I would think it was that time that Jack saved the ENTIRE HUMAN RACE FROM DOOM WITH THAT SUPERMAN PUNCH. But, the island is never even mentioned.

There are many, many more examples I could throw out there.

A show with a great start and an abysmal ending...

[–] Arghhhh (804) 6 years ago

"Its like after a certain point, maybe 1/2 through S2 they thought "Fuck it! writers binge party! do whatever you want " there is no tomorrow! were just gonna party till they wont give us anymore episodes and just put the cool stuff in , no story! no ending needed! go crazy!"

I think they thought that half way through season 1. And I admit I fell for it. In my defence I think it's easy to forget now how huge Lost was, it was an event. They had a massive marketing campaign, trailers in cinemas (which I had never seen before for a TV show), the most expensive TV pilot in history... so I naively thought, well fuck, they've spent so much money on it, it must all be built on something, they have to know where this is going right? They wouldn't spend millions of dollars on a story they just pulled out of their arse?

Ha!

[–] Arghhhh (804) 6 years ago

I agree with you partly: they're only in purgatory after the events on the island have taken place.

But...

I wouldn't blame anyone on being confused. Chiefly because the 6th season is utter bollocks. That 'flash sideways' crap? And then they actual ending... trying to have it both ways, pull the 'it was all a dream' twist but have it still all be real simultaneously. So everyone who was on the island ends up in the church together... but why? What was the point of that? You could end any story with all the characters meeting up in the afterlife! And it's abundantly clear that 'they're in hell/heaven/purgatory' was one of the stories they were aiming for but got cold feet after so many fans guessed that so they decided to switch it up by going 'aha, only *some* bits are in purgatory, the rest is real' which just makes it even more of a mess.

Lost had some fantastic moments over the years but it was the TV equivalent of a pyramid investment scheme, every promised payoff was just a hook that lead to an even bigger payoff than never existed until the whole thing collapsed in on itself.

[–] Truthtalker (1870) 6 years ago

What proof is there the aliens wasn't aliens?

[–] McQualude (4231) 6 years ago

Say what you want but the show falls apart if it was all real. The only way it makes sense is if they were dead, so to me, they were dead. I don't care what the showrunners retconn a decade later. Honestly, the way the plot meandered, was filled with red herrings and loose ends, do you really think the showrunner's opinion means anything more than the viewer? You're nuts if you do. They didn't have a plan, they made it up as they went along. It is what it is.

[–] rootvegetables (1343) 6 years ago

It's not so much that they were not dead. It is that they didn't all die in the crash.
Plane crashed on an island. Some people died and some survived.
Survivors have adventures on the island. Some die.
More adventures. Some more die.
Some are rescued and some of them die.
Some return to the Island and some of them die.
People find the island and interact with the main characters. Some of these new people die as well.

Every single character dies. Either as part of the island story or simply because life, at some point, ends for us all.

And the last season features a parallel purgatory storyline in which they are all dead. Not because they all died together in a crash. But because they all died at some point in their lives and needed to hang out together before moving "on" to get some spiritual closure of some sort. Probably because their time together after the big plane crash was the most significant part of their lives.

So, yes, you're right. They were dead. Just not all at once from the beginning of the show.

Now is the above good story development? I think it is, but can appreciate that others think it is a bunch of BS. What I am at least trying to get at here is that we agree on just what it is we are disagreeing about.

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[–] McQualude (4231) 6 years ago

I choose to believe the island was the beginning of purgatory otherwise the show is nonsensical, in the sense it has no internal logic, it just doesn't work. The island was "real" makes the show a jumbled mess of random stories and images.

[–] gregg325 (215) 6 years ago

Anyone who thinks they were dead the whole time did not understand the show. I'll always say that Lost is the most misinterpreted show of all time and also the most underrated one.