Bon's Mots

Up un­til last night, I was a LOST junkie. I prob­a­bly will be for a few more days. Then my ad­dic­tion will sub­side un­til they is­sue the com­plete DVD col­lec­tion. Anyways, I would ven­ture to say that there are some who are dis­ap­pointed by the se­ries fi­nale. And those who never watched the show (or aban­doned it early on) will say I wasted the last six years of my life. To which I say, go eff your­self. Until you’ve watched every episode, you have no say. Besides, I never lived it 24 – 7; it only took up a cou­ple of hours of one night a week of my life. But what a night that was.

LOST was a truly unique show — it made you ques­tion your be­liefs on life, death and re­demp­tion. LOST was also a smart show — it in­cor­po­rated time travel and physics, and lit­er­a­ture that stretched the imag­i­na­tion. It made you want to search out the au­thors it ref­er­enced, whether it was through the char­ac­ters’ names (John Locke and David [Desmond] Hume, who were philoso­phers) or the books it would ref­er­ence through care­fully placed cover shots (Watership Down, any­one?)

The best thing about LOST was that it was open to in­ter­pre­ta­tion. The fi­nale gen­er­ated many dif­fer­ent the­o­ries, and all of them will be right be­cause they are per­sonal. They re­flect our own be­liefs in death and re­demp­tion. And since no one is ab­solutely cor­rect in their as­sump­tions of the af­ter­life (be­cause let’s face it — you’ll only know for sure once you’re dead, all re­li­gious texts be damned), then all the­o­ries are valid.

Here’s mine, for what it’s worth.

The World of LOST According to Bonnie:

The Island is a real, mys­ti­cal en­tity. The sur­vivors were brought there by Jacob as can­di­dates to pro­tect the Island. But the true rea­son, the over­reach­ing cos­mic rea­son, was they were all bro­ken and needed to be “fixed” — by Jack. This was ul­ti­mately Jack’s story. But be­fore he could fix them he had to be fixed him­self, through sal­va­tion. He had to choose faith over reason.

The sur­vivors were not dead all along, as some crit­ics have posited. Some died on the Island (Boone), some died off the Island (Locke).

Sideways world was pur­ga­tory, or a “wait­ing room”, that the sur­vivors cre­ated to wait for each other. That is why the Island is un­der­neath the ocean — while it was the cat­a­lyst to their sal­va­tion, would you want to be re­minded of it? The sur­vivors wanted to have the same con­nec­tions in the Sideways world that they had on the Island, but with­out the same ex­pe­ri­ences. Because for some, those ex­pe­ri­ences were too painful.

There is no time line in the Sideways world. Some died early on (Charlie); oth­ers died later (Penny). The sur­vivors in the church were there be­cause their ex­pe­ri­ences on the Island, and the love they found for each other, left such as in­deli­ble mark on their lives that they bonded like a fam­ily and chose to wait for each other af­ter­life. Since Desmond was there, so was Penny. Since Hurley was there, so was Libby. Locke and Boone be­came like fa­ther and son on the island.

(Libby, Boone, Shannon — I also be­lieve that if you died on the Island, it was the last thing you ex­pe­ri­enced, which is why they were all to­gether. The Island was where they “loved” for the last time. The group was the last thing they had be­fore death and be­came their last fam­ily. This was es­pe­cially true for Shannon and Boone.)

Michael be­trayed the group early on and is stuck on the Island — he can’t move on. Walt grew up and prob­a­bly for­got about the is­land, or it oc­cu­pies a small space in his memories.

Once you “let go” of what­ever is­sues you had, or be­came en­light­ened (by love), you went into the church and then on to “heaven”. (I use the term loosely here. This goes be­yond re­li­gion and in­volves the hope we all have — to see our loved ones in the af­ter­life, what­ever that is. And be­cause there is no heaven, there is no “hell”. Each per­son ex­pe­ri­ence their own ver­sion of hell. For ex­am­ple, Ben sits out­side the church, un­able to en­ter, be­cause he is trapped by his guilt over his ac­tions on the Island. In time, he will find re­demp­tion and will en­ter the church. Locke’s for­give­ness is the first step.) Christian Shepherd was the first death, so he was the one who gath­ered all the souls. Jack was the last — they were all wait­ing for him.

Other peo­ple weren’t there be­cause they have their own “wait­ing room”. Richard prob­a­bly has one with his wife. (Which is why he was happy when Miles showed him his gray hair. He was mor­tal again and would fi­nally join his wife in the afterlife.)

The Sideways Eloise knows about the na­ture of the Sideways world, but she didn’t think the sur­vivors were ready to move on. Desmond is the one who ac­tu­ally kick-starts everyone’s en­light­en­ment — he speeds it up, much to Eloise’s dis­may. She wants Daniel to stay with her in Sideway’s world (be­cause she did kill him on the Island when the Island was mov­ing through time) so that’s why she was wor­ried Desmond would take him from her.

The Jacob/Man In Black (MIB) plot was real, and was just a back­ground story to get Jack to find faith. However, things weren’t as black and white as the MIB be­lieved — there are shades of grey. There is no “good” or “evil”; what­ever it is you did in real life, you can re­deem your­self in the af­ter­life (re­fer to my the­ory on “hell”). Once you do, you can move on. Ben isn’t ready to come to terms with the things he did, so he didn’t go into the church. (Here’s an­other mini-theory: the MIB be­lieved he would be re­leased if the Island was de­stroyed. He was — but not in the way he ex­pected. I think the MIB’s soul was re­leased and was able to move on, i.e. go into the afterlife.)

Hurley and Ben be­came the Island pro­tec­tors and met the group in the church af­ter they even­tu­ally died. Which is why there was that fa­mil­iar­ity be­tween them at the church (Hurley: “You were a good Number 2″). Again, there is no time line in Sideways world.

Jack took a long time to be­come en­light­ened be­cause he was a man who al­ways grap­pled be­tween be­tween science/reason and faith (note the stab wound in his side — he was the doubt­ing Thomas). It was only af­ter he “saved” the is­land, or fi­nally be­lieved, and then over­came his Daddy is­sues (via his “son”, who didn’t re­ally ex­ist), that he was able to “move on” and join his friends.

There are many ques­tions that re­main unan­swered — what hap­pened to Widmore? Who were the Others? I don’t think they have to be an­swered. They were sim­ply plot lines that moved the story along and pro­vided the ba­sis by which the sur­vivors could de­velop and bond with each other. In the end, they are in­con­se­quen­tial to the main point you should take away from LOST, which is this:

No man is an is­land — the sur­vivors were lost and, only with each other’s help, they were able to find them­selves. When you live to­gether, you don’t die alone.