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OPINION: It’s time we all admit the Lost finale is one of the best television finales of all time

In honour of the show’s 20th anniversary…
Group of people stand on a beach with airplane wreckage in the background, reminiscent of a survival scenario.Getty

I have long, long been a Lost apologist. 

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For the last 14 years of my life, I have defended – maybe a little too passionately – the series’ controversial finale. 

No, they were not dead the whole time. 

Yes, they did explain where the polar bear came from and what the numbers meant. 

Look, I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t somewhat biassed when it came to Lost; the show will always hold a special place in my heart because I first watched it in my formative years… 

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When the pilot episode of Lost premiered exactly 20 years ago today, my family only had one television and we all gathered round to watch it together. 

a still from lost

Sure, I was probably too young to be watching Lost at that time, but I was an extremely precocious child and I quickly became hooked.  

Every week I tuned in because I simply had to see what was happening with the ill-fated passengers of Oceanic Flight 815 – Jack Shephard, Kate Austen, John Locke, James ‘Sawyer’ Ford, Sayid Jarrah, Hugo ‘Hurley’ Reyes, Jin and Sun Kwon, Michael Dawson and his son Walt, Claire Littleton and Charlie Pace, just to name a few. 

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And aside from the compelling storyline and wonderfully diverse cast of characters, I also loved Lost as it was one of the rare things my entire family did together back then; my dad often worked night shifts and my mum was always chauffeuring me to my many extracurricular activities, which meant it was hard for all three of us to get together at the same time. 

But somehow Lost was a weekly (albeit weird) family tradition. 

And while my parents continued to watch Season 1 of Lost with me, they just weren’t as obsessed as I was. 

So, despite being nine-years-old in 2004, I would spend my computer time reading fan theories on Lost-TV.com, a now defunct online forum for the show. See what I mean about being precocious?

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a still from lost

Flashforward to the day the Lost finale aired in May 2010, and I – then 14-years-old – was very well-versed in the Lost universe. I owned Seasons 1 to 5 on DVD, had Season 6 pre-ordered, and was incredibly excited to see everything wrap up in a neat little bow. 

Which, in my opinion, it did – in a beautifully shot, well-written and phenomenally acted hour of television. 

Admittedly, I wasn’t too shocked when my dad hated the Lost finale; he’d given up about halfway through the series saying it was ‘too wacky’ for him, so I think a lot of it was lost on him – pun intended. 

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But I was absolutely dumbfounded when multiple publications heavily criticised it and many of the online Lost forums I regularly visited panned it. 

It seemed like the entire world – not just my dad – thought the final episode of Lost, titled The End, was the worst finale of all time. 

In the weeks that followed, whenever someone said something like, ‘How bad was the ending of Lost?,’ (and this happened a lot), I would get so cranky. 

a still from the show
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I desperately wanted to explain why they were wrong and then rationally convince them to rewatch it… Instead I’d just lose my cool and ramble on about how good Lost was without actually proving the point. 

But today, as a 29-year-old who’s rewatched Lost the whole way through an alarming number of times, I think I finally have the words to express why it had one of the best finales in the history of television finales. 

(Note: I won’t spoil anything if you’ve somehow never seen Lost. Plus, I’m hoping my words magically convince you to rewatch the series and I want you to go into the finale without knowing all the ins and outs). 

For starters, it wasn’t rushed. Many TV finales jampack everything into its last episode, but not Lost

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No, Lost took its time and explained the many mysteries of the island over several episodes. 

For instance, the polar bear mystery was explained in Season 3 – three whole seasons before the finale!  

a still from the lost finale

In fact, most of the mysteries of the island had been explained before the finale so the episode could instead give the epic final showdown between Jack and The Man in Black the airtime it deserved. 

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Of course, while I think not cramming everything into that final episode is a positive, I also believe it’s the main reason why many people hated the finale – these people likely had missed many episodes, tuned into the finale to get the ‘answers’ and then got mad when they didn’t get them. 

But Lost was never a sitcom that you could casually watch; from the very beginning, it was nuanced. Across all six seasons, Lost was always refined and subtle with its storytelling and not every single plot point was spoon fed to the audience… You had to use your brain! 

Watching the finale and the finale alone is not a cheat code to understand the complex story Lost told. 

I digress. 

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Another reason the finale is so wonderful – at least in my opinion – is that the core message came full circle. 

a still from the show

Lost was always fundamentally about the characters and their journeys and struggles to find purpose and redemption; all of them were lost in more ways than the literal one. 

But the finale brings the emotional “live together, die alone” arc full circle. 

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Every character comes together to – it’s a minor spoiler but doesn’t make much sense without WATCHING THE SHOW – ‘move on’. 

I think it’s also important to note that there’s not a weak link in the cast. Every actor gave it their all throughout the series but particularly in the finale. 

Especially Matthew Fox; how he never won an Emmy Award for his performance as Jack Shephard is seriously more of a mystery than what ‘4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42’ means. 

And finally, the final scenes perfectly, beautifully and poignantly mirror the opening scenes of the Lost pilot: 

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a still from the lost finale

The pilot opens with a close up of Jack’s eye opening. It then cuts to the sky before snapping back to a wide shot of Jack lying in the jungle. A labrador then runs through the trees to Jack. 

And the finale ends with a labrador – Vincent – running through the trees to Jack, who is lying in the jungle. The camera then cuts to the sky (this time with a plane flying across it) before snapping back to a close up of Jack’s eye, which then closes. 

It’s pure, glorious cinema. 

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As I mentioned earlier, today is the 20th anniversary of Lost premiering… Meaning it’s a perfect time to rewatch the series. 

If my words have swayed you to give Lost and its finale a second chance, first of all, yay! And second of all, you can stream all six seasons on Disney Plus Australia

Stream Lost on Disney+ from $13.99/mth. Subscribe here

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