LOST Season Finale: OMGLASERBEAMSPEWPEWPEW

This might have been an intricate, literary post, full of tidbits to tickle and amuse, but I am compelled to write about the season finale of LOST.

HERE THERE BE SPOILERS.

I told myself (and I may have told some of you - I can't remember) somewhere near the middle to later end of this season that the format of the show would, inevitably, have to change. The writers were rapidly running out of backstory, and while there were a few characters as yet unexplored (Ben, Desmond, Juliet, Rousseau), we knew everything we were ever going to need to know about most of the characters we cared about. Indeed, the lack of backstory lead to a lacklustre midseason, peppered with unnecessary plot bits (Jack's tattoo, Hurley's father, Locke's growhouse days, Sayid being tortured - compelling stories on their own, but ulitmately superfluous and detrimental to the pace of the show).

Structurally, and fundamentally, the show - the flashbacks, in particular - needed to change. Ben's episode ("The Man Behind The Curtain") served to underline this: when the flashbacks revealed important information, something that influenced the central conflict on the island or revealed crucial information about a character, as they did through the first season and some of the second, they became a fiercely entertaining and addictive plot device. They're sometimes better than what's actually happening on the Island. But the third season was practically devoid of interesting flashbacks - Juliet's, Desmond's, and Ben's (and, I suppose, Locke's How-I-Broke-My-Back episode) were the only flashes of note.

But I wasn't prepared for this. Sweet Mother of God.

It's perfect. Now - and I'm assuming they're going to continue this trend of flashforwards rather than flashbacks for the last three seasons (the last 48 episodes) - we're in completely undiscovered country. We're back to season one, finding out all new and compelling things about the characters, and the story. The events on the Island are the flashbacks, and we're in a whole new place. And it helps resolve the inevitable question of what next? when they finally find their way off.

And this somewhat depressing vision of futureJack is pitch perfect for the tone of the show, and isn't the easy-way-out that they might have taken. We're not dealing with characters who get the happily ever after, whose story ends in a dramatic helicopter ride into the sunset. We're dealing with aftermath, and consequence. We're dealing with tragedy.

It tugs at the heartstrings a little, for me. Jack's one of my favourite characters - not because I think he's the most interesting, necessarily, but because he's a very true hero. He tries viciously, with everything in him, to do the right thing, at the cost of himself and against all opposition. There's something noble in that, and in a show with so many grey areas, it's inspiring to see noble. To see him, after all of his efforts, reduced to nothing - and for it to be the future, not the forgotten past for which he's atoning, but an inevitable conclusion? That's perhaps the most heartbreaking moment the show's gone through.

I'm not going to talk about everything that happened, because I'm presuming you've seen it. Here are the questions I have (and most of them are about our post-island future):

• The first and most obvious - who's in the coffin? For whose funeral is Jack the lone guest? My guess? Locke. A man who alienated himself from the rest of the survivors, who has no family or friends or life off the island, and a man for whom Jack is neither "friend" nor "family". Also, if Jack thinks Locke was right, that they shouldn't have left, then it explains why he feels so torn up about Locke's death.


• Kate: "He'll wonder where I went." Who's he? The natural assumption, as there still seems to be some tensions between her and Jack, is Sawyer. But that's exactly the sort of assumption that the LOST writers love turning over on our heads. No educated guess from me at this point.


• Is Jack's father really dead? He mentions him twice in the future - once saying that the signature on his illicit perscription is Christian's, and again, telling the new Chief of Surgery that if his father is less drunk than he is, to fire him. My guess is it's the oxycodone talking, a drug-addled semi-hallucination or half-memory, and Christian's dead and gone. But what if?


• Where are Michael and Walt? We can't deduce anything from this episode, but assuming we're in the future, where did they end up? Will we hear more from them? Walt showed up (with Ekow's hair, interestingly), but was that him projecting, or simply a vision of the island?


• Who are Naomi's people, and how did they know to look for Desmond? Is Ben telling the truth?


• Why the fuck is Mikhail basically immortal? The sonar fence puts him down, but not out, and a spear through the heart apparently can't stop him from going for a nice swim. Then, he voluntarily blows himself up for no apparent gain - he can't stop Charlie at that point, only kill him. My theory? Perhaps some of the Others - those who have been there longest - can't die, or are harder to kill. Remember how Richard apparently hasn't aged since Ben was a child? What if something similar is going on with Mikhail?
  

Alright, that's it for me.