I Was LOST, but Now I'm Found

***SPOLIERS, for those of you who haven’t seen the LOST finale yet…

…And–dare I say–thank God.

It seemed we were being led down a directionless path for a season or two. Every time we tried to get our bearings (much like the Losties themselves), the writers would introduce a couple of new characters, alter time frames and throw the whole scenario out of whack.

We continued to watch, frustrated and grumbling, threatening to give up on the show. But we hung in, relentlessly intrigued by the premise, the mystery, all the while wondering “what the hell is going on with these people and this supposed Island?”

Maybe Cuse and Lindelof did lose the thread for awhile, throwing proverbial stuff against the wall. Maybe not.

But, in “The End,” they delivered. And the end is all that matters on LOST. The end is what it is all about.

There were no survivors of the crash of Oceanic 815. There were the lives they had lived, lives they might have lived, and something mystical that happens in the final moment between life and death, when so much passes through human consciousness – knowledge and memory beyond rational understanding.

Everything that happened on “The Island” was a possibility implied by the intricately woven backstories of the characters on the flight from Sydney to Los Angeles. For each passenger, the Island was a “near death experience” and a portal to the resolution of classic conflicts in their lives. Passing through the Island–however many times and in however many time periods–enables them to finally “leave.”

They become free to leave not only The Island, but their very earthly existence.

Speaking as a practitioner and lover of acting and storytelling, I found the final episode eminently comprehensible and deeply moving. Not ambiguous. Not dissatisfying. Not suspicious at all. Quite the contrary. LOST has proven to be a show of epic proportions: intellectually challenging, profoundly spiritual, and deeply human.