The day after the L O S T finale, Mark sent me a post he came across on the internet that divided L O S T fans into two ideal types: the "journey" and "destination" fans. You can probably extrapolate the characteristics of both fan types from the titles: the "journey" fan enjoyed the series for its characters, while the "destination" fan, in contrast, was intrigued by the overarching mysteries of the island. Although that bifurcation does a decent job of explaining the polarized reactions to the finale (if you were a "destination" fan looking for answers you were no doubt left fuming), like all dichotomies, it glosses over those of us who fall somewhere in the middle.
I have been a L O S T apologist since the beginning. I stuck with the show during the abysmal six episode Hydra Station story-arc that started Season 3 and I endured the final two seasons as the series bafflingly (and, as it turns out, inconsequentially) embraced time-travel and die ex machina. Unfortunately, I found the L O S T finale to be pleasant, but ultimately hollow and unrewarding.
To claim, as that post does, that L O S T is a character-driven show first and a mystery show second is disingenuous. The show, by and large, ran out of directions to take the characters around the second and third season: the flashbacks started to feel pointless because they failed to unearth any revelatory backstory (the show didn't answer every question, but luckily we know the origins of Jack's tattoos!) and character development was jettisoned just to momentarily inject drama (Dark Charlie relapsing and kidnapping Sun; Sawyer reclaiming his role as "Sheriff"). The flash-forwards temporarily solved this problem by transforming the Oceanic Six in intriguing ways (007 Sayid, for one), but these changes were almost entirely forgotten once the Ajira Losties returned to the island (after becoming a complete badass, Sun spent the last season and a half doing nothing but asking characters if they had seen her husband). Without any clear direction to take the original cast, the writers kept introducing more characters and developing an increasingly byzantine (ironically the only cultural semiology they didn't pilfer from) mythology to fill the void.
I will admit to getting a bit misty-eyed during the finale nostalgia carousel, but the flashbacks epiphanies painfully underscored just how few meaningful character moments L O S T had in its final seasons. Besides the Juliet and Sawyer romance (one of the few highlights of the fifth season), all of the flashbacks were scenes from the first few seasons. And the non-denominational Purgatory church, while touching, had the writers whitewashing the characters' histories just for the sake of a tidy narrative.
Why would John Locke be linked with the other members of Oceanic Flight in the afterlife? He abandoned them to become the leader of the Others. When he returned to the mainland, he became so despondent when everybody ignored his please to return to the island that he tried to commit suicide. He only failed in his attempt because Ben stopped him… only to then kill him. To add insult to injury, nobody attended his funeral but Jack. Out of all the characters, I find it hardest to believe that Locke would have any spiritual connection with the other Survivors --- let alone that he would forgive Ben (but I guess bygones are bygones in the afterlife -- unless you are Michael and stuck on the island forever). Actually, Rose and Bernard are probably the least likely candidates: they purposefully lived alone and avoided contact with the other characters for the past two seasons. Even Lapidus would have been a better candidate (unless, as internet rumors have suggested, he is immortal).
And poor Sayid. Not only was he woefully mistreated in the final season (drowned in a temple pool, reanimated (!?) as a dark version of himself, and unceremoniously sacrificed only to have his thunder stolen by the deaths of negligent parents Jin and Sun), but he is stuck with Shannon in the afterlife. Shannon is his eternal soulmate after he spent a lifetime searching for Nadia - a quest which saw him kill a superior officer, endure a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and convince a dear friend to become a suicide bomber? Weak. But I guess the writers wanted to reunite the entire cast of the first season -- except Walt, which is simply baffling and inexcusable. I thought the entire flashforward gambit was just a brilliant sleight of hand to reintroduce a teenage Walt into the plot. Instead, the flashforward storyline seems to have served no purpose except to stretch out the storyline.
I mentioned before the finale aired that I didn't care whether or not Abrams knew all the answers when he originally wrote the pilot, but I do think it is unforgivable that Cuse and Lindelof did not have the rest of the story mapped out when they set the end date for the series. With only 48 episodes in which to resolve the storyline, the writers should have been able to craft a taut and densely plotted final three seasons. Instead we got a half season with the Dharma Initiative culminating with The Incident, of which I still do not know the consequence or purpose (Cuse and Lindelof claimed the time travel narrative of season five was designed to let us "see" the past events unfold instead of simply "hearing" about them, which makes no sense in a show whose main narrative device was the flashback). The purgatory storyline was a fine if completely incongruent resolution to the series, but it took them an entire season to set up. Meanwhile, back on the island, the writers had to stall for sixteen episodes to save the inevitable Jack vs. Man in Black showdown for the series finale -- which would have been so much better for "journey" fans if it was actually Locke instead of some nameless villain introduced in the 11th hour (and perhaps for "destination" fans as well if it was more closely tied to Rousseau's "Sickness").
The show runners explained in interviews that they did not want to provide explanations for everything because they were afraid of ruining some of the core mythology the way Lucas did when he introduced midichlorians into the Star Wars universe. Unfortunately, this was a false analogy: the Star Wars trilogy was never built around the central mystery of the Force. It was simply a supposition that had no need to be explained in any technical way. L O S T, in contrast, ended its pilot with Charlie asking "Where are we?" The mystery of the island was intrinsically woven into the fabric of the story. The island heals people? Fine. At least give me some peusdo-metaphysical explanation that I can interrupt in multiple ways (.ie. The Force is an energy field). But the writers gave us practically nothing. Worse still: with the introduction of the Dharma Initiative and Daniel Faraday, they feigned liked we were going to get at least a vague scientific understanding of the island. Even the Smoke Monster with its industrial clicks always seemed like it would have a mechanical explanation (it was, after all, described as a security system for the first five seasons). Instead all we saw was it emerging out of a cave of light, which I can't even make sense of in metaphorical terms.
And that is ultimately the problem with the mythological side of L O S T: I can't even create a plausible narrative cipher because many of the events are either too piecemeal (Jacob's Cabin and ash) or internally incoherent (Don't say that the Oceanic Survivor needed to recreate "the circumstances that brought [them] there in the first place" with Ajira Flight 316, only to have Widmore and Desmond arrive with seemingly no trouble via submarine a season later) for me to interpret. None of this would be so frustrating if the mythology was just vacuous window-dressing, but for the past two seasons it has been the primary driving force of the plot. Show me a "journey" fan that would honestly want to rewatch the Dogen/Lennon Temple story arc that started the final season.
In the end, I have no regrets about the time I spent watching L O S T, but I also have little desire to revisit large swaths of the series, which to me is the biggest disappointment with the finale.
