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Lost Rewatch Week: The Old Men in Charge

By James Poniewozik | @poniewozik | August 25, 2010 | +

Note: I’m on vacation this week. While I’m gone, I’ve set up a week of discussion posts revisiting the Lost finale in time for the Lost series DVD set, out Aug. 24. In other words, this is a recording; you cannot press 0 to speak to a real live person.

After Desmond descends into the pit in the Lost finale, “The End,” we see Smokey (in the form of Locke) and Jack looking down into the hole—a shot that ingeniously recreates Jack and Locke looking down into the hatch. Then Smokey kind of kills the moment, by telling us that it looks just like the scene of Jack and Locke looking down into the hatch. Jack cuts him off: “You’re not John Locke.”

The problem is, Jack is right. Which gets to an issue I had with the whole of season 6: centering the action on Jacob and Locke, two figures we only met at the end of season 5, and who barely even actual people with personalities so much as they are gods or natural forces.*

*[I should make clear here, as when I complain about the red-herring use of the Flash Sideways throughout season 6: I do not have a better idea. My puny brain could never have conceived of something like Lost to begin with; all I can try to do is pinpoint things I loved and hated about it. As for solutions, just call me Kenan Thompson: Fix it!]

I was a broken record about this throughout season 6, so I’ll keep it brief. But in a nutshell, it’s easier to become fully invested in a villain (or a hero), when he or she is a character—someone with psychology, conflicts, an original voice. “Across the Sea” tried to retrofit Jacob and MIB’s characters, but even without the Greek-tragedy weirdness, it would have been too late. Smokey is a compelling monster, but not so much a classic nemesis. It’s the same reason that, in the Star Wars original trilogy, Darth Vader is a more memorable antagonist than The Emperor.

I would like to say that that is the last time that I will ever analogize Lost to Star Wars, but we would both know it was a lie. Anyway: did anyone leave the finale liking Jacob and MIB better?

Related Topics: Lost, lost discussion group, robo-james, Uncategorized

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  • Dave

    I had touched on this in last week’s discussion, but it seems appropriate here. I think that they intentionally made season 6 the way they did as a setup for the finale. If they had revealed the alternate universe for what it was earlier, they probably could have presented the whole season in a way that was more appealing to a broader fan base. The finale still would have been good and moving and touching, but it wouldn’t have been as powerful.

    As for Jacob and Smokey, that was part of it too. So many of us were frustrated that the Big Puzzle of Lost was apparently ending up being Jacob and Smokey, with everything else being pieces of the puzzle. In the end, the Big Puzzle of Lost wasn’t much of a puzzle: it was just the story of a man and his friends. Jacob and Smokey were just pieces of the puzzle. Heck, what we thought was the puzzle (the mystery, the story, etc.) were just parts of the real puzzle.

    Part of me thinks this should be assumed, but I’ll say it anyway, since people get so passionate about Lost (and about being right): the reason Darlton were so vague about so many things was because they wanted us to fill in the blanks in a fulfilling way for ourselves. The above is how I fill in the blanks (and it’s totally the right way :) ), but I’d love to hear how others fill them in.

  • dodonna

    And I’d argue that some of the puzzle parts weren’t even part of the puzzle. Fans treated every tiny detail as if it was a vital clue, long after it had become obvious that a great many were either red herrings or window dressing.

    For example, the polar bears. Their role in the show was to say, “hey, something is weird about this island.” (And also, possibly, to suggest that something was weird about Walt, thereby serving as both window dressing *and* red herring.)

    “Why are there polar bears on the island?” was essentially resolved at the beginning of season 3 once we were introduced to the Hydra station. Yet people kept going on about the bears to the very end. And so, precious moments of the all-too-brief epilogue were squandered on a question that had already been answered.

    Much the same applied to the mysterious numbers. “What do the numbers mean?” was a frequent refrain. I’d argue that the numbers not only never meant anything, they were never meant to mean anything. Their sole significance was to connect these characters together in a fashion that defied mere coincidence. The alleged solutions for the mystery of the numbers–the Valenzetti equation from The Lost Experience or the markings on the wall of Jacob’s cave–were no more “The Answer” than were the kids’ jerseys at the airport or any of the hundred other iterations with which Darlton teased us.

    As you say, ultimately the puzzle wasn’t much of a puzzle at all. But it was fun putting it together!

  • denisemorris

    @Dodanna, I agree with you. One of my biggest pet peeves is people still asking about the polar bears or about island pregnancy — we got those answer millions of years ago, people! If you’re going to watch Lost, you have to pay attention!

    As for Jacob/Smokey, I think it may have been useful to introduce us to them a season earlier. I always forget that we never even actually knew that Jacob existed until the season 5 finale. It was an AWESOME finale, and I loved that beach scene opener between Jacob and Smokey, but maybe they should’ve done it at the end of season 4. That way we would have had two seasons to get more invested in those characters so that we cared that they were around or cared more that Smokey get defeated, etc. Jacob really has been around as a “character” for pretty much the entire series, but the fact that we never actually met him (and some didn’t even believe he was real), made us not as invested in him as a person.

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