I’ve been meaning to write a post on the finale of LOST for some time now. There seem to be two schools of thought on the totality of the show:

1) They didn’t answer many of the questions and so this show as nothing more than a giant con job.

2) They didn’t answer many of the questions but that’s okay because {fill in rationale here}.

Part of me is dumbfounded and makes me wonder if I watched the same final season as everyone else did. I have gone on record as saying that I didn’t expect them to answer all of the questions and figuring that a lot of people would be disappointed. But I was more wrong about what they did answer than I was about what they didn’t. My main questions going into the last season were:

1) What is the island and why is it special?

2) What is the smoke monster?

3) What happens to the people on the island?

4) Who is Jacob and why is he what he is?

5) What was the Dharma Initiative’s interest on the island?

Of those five questions, they answered four. I have some minor questions about the former inhabitants, how they got on the island, and in some cases how and wy they left (Charles Widmore in particular). Their record was spottier on those, but I consider those to be much smaller questions. And by and large, they were questions that I could answer any number of ways. I much prefer those kind of unanswered questions to those that are extremely difficult. When I look over that video with all of the unanswered questions of Lost, with only a couple of exceptions every question falls into one of three categories: (1) They answered that question to my satisfaction, (2) the question seems answerable any number of ways, or (3) it’s not really important. there were only two or maybe three questions that could be considered anything remotely a show-stopped (one definite, two maybes).

And unlike so many other commenters, I really think that they did have a pretty strong idea of where they were going from the outset. Matthew Baldwin suggests that they had to change course with the Jacob-Esau battle because every other possibility had been speculated upon, but when that type of thing typically happens it raises more questions than it answers and I felt like the late introduction of these characters (both of which having been alluded to or ethereally appearing earlier on) explained far more than they unsettled earlier revelations.

So in the end, I really felt like I got my money’s worth. If I don’t find myself employed soon, I may take a couple weeks and watch it from beginning to end. We’ll see if I still feel that way.