Lost: The Hallucinogenic End

I watched the series finale for #Lost last night, and then tossed and turned all night thinking about it. Hallucinating? Really? I can’t get the plot line out of my thoughts. Was it all a dream or hallucination as Jack faded away amongst the bamboo? Did it really happen? Were they all dead from episode one?

My first thought compared the story to Anne Hathaway’s in “Passengers.” Sorry to be the spoiler for that one if you haven’t seen it, but everyone’s dead and coming to grips with their situation before they pass on to what’s next. But Lost is too complex and we’re far too involved for that.

Then I thought, maybe it’s more like “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” where a soldier is about to be hung for sabotage during the Civil War, and is suddenly saved when the rope breaks. Again, a spoiler alert, it turns out that his fortune, escape, and subsequent happenings all were a fantasy that happened between the drop and the snapping of his neck. The rope doesn’t break.

This morning, I crawled around the blogs and news feeds for commentary about what it all meant. Consider that a plea for help, if you will.

Most of the commentary seems to be on the side that the island was real. That seems to neatly tidy up the loose ends, except for all the sci-fi stuff. The biggest deliveries last night were from Hurley and Ben talking about each other being a good #1 and a good #2, and then Jack’s dad, Christian Shepherd, telling his son that they’re all dead and some died before Jack, while some died later. In addition, Christian Shepherd said that they had created this place so that they could find each other before they left to what’s next. The sideways flash was the purgatory where they all lived and waited until they found each other again, trapped in time waiting until everyone was ready.

That latter is the ending that makes me feel the best about watching every episode, plus a run through every episode on Netflix in 2009. Unfortunately, I believe the simplest solution is the most likely. That would be that there were no survivors of the plane crash. There wasn’t even necessarily an island.

I’m going to miss the show.