meteordust | "What happened happened. It all matters."

A little over five years ago, I sat in the summer heat with a group of friends, watching the pilot episode of a show called Lost. And six seasons later, in the autumn rains, after a long and unimaginable journey, we come to the finale.

It's kind of strange to think of everything that's happened since then, in my own life as well as on the show. And so many people I know have quit watching along the way - not surprising, since Season 1 was brilliant, but Seasons 2 and 3 dragged, and I almost quit myself. But then the word came down that it had been decided, the show was going to be six seasons, and boom, with an endpoint in mind, everything started falling into place. Seasons 4, 5 and 6 were payoff after payoff for all the setup that had taken place before, and towards the end, the impact of six seasons of setup is one hell of a spear behind the spearpoint.

I love how the show was not afraid to turn the universe upside down, to redefine the paradigm as easily as other shows change their opening titles. On most shows, the struggle of the plane crash survivors to get off the island would encompass the entire series. But on Lost, they *do* get off the island, only halfway through the series, and things just get more complicated from there. We are thrown from flashbacks and into flashforwards, and then everyone gets thrown thirty years into the past to live out history, and then we flashsideways into an alternate universe and start running with two parallel timelines. And all through it, everything links together in a web I can't even begin to imagine plotting, and whoever wrote this, I wish I could eat their brains.

A few musings on unexpected character developments:

* I never would have thought I would get so sick of Jack. He was awesome in the pilot, an active and focused leader, the best protagonist ever. But he got too many episodes, too many flashbacks, too much angst and drinking and control issues and father issues, always running in the same circles. It was only towards the end that it seemed he could start to let go of having to be the hero all the time. (And then not, actually, but ah well.)

* I never would have thought my favourite character would be Sawyer. The moment it clicked for me was the Season 1 finale, when the Others were trying to convince the raft crew to hand over Walt, and Sawyer just stood there, his face getting darker and darker, and you knew he was going to do something drastic and heroic. And he pulled his gun on them, and they shot him, and whoa, that was *it* for me. Of course, his Big Damn Hero moment was in the Season 4 finale, where he leapt out of an overloaded helicopter and into the sea to save everyone else aboard. Justifiably included in the TV Tropes Crowning Moment of Awesome list.

* I never would have thought Ben would become such a fascinating character to watch. He creeped me out as the ambiguous Henry Gale in Season 2 and I loathed him as the tyrannical leader of the Others in Season 3. But then, falling from power, losing his daughter, being manipulated by the smoke monster, switching allegiances - he became a total wildcard, riveting to watch, because you had no idea what he was going to do next, except it would probably be *interesting*. His name always topped the list of characters who would probably not survive to the end of the show - too much blood on his hands and too many bullets with his name on them. I never would have expected him to find redemption or salvation. But hey, surprise.

I could run through all the characters like this, but it's impossible to sum up in one entry just what this show was. I don't even know if I can talk properly about the finale itself, except to say that Lost has been such a brilliant show for the past few seasons that I've been well satisfied with what I've seen, and while the finale was slightly different from what I would have chosen, it's not an unfitting end.

And while I've loved watching Lost, I've also been wanting it to end. I've never seen Babylon 5 or The Wire, so for me, Lost, above any other show I've seen, is one long and continuous story, that needs an ending to make it whole. I believe in what Stephen King said, speaking about the end of Harry Potter, but also about all stories:

"But there's comfort. There are always more good stories, and now and then there are great stories. They come along if you wait for them. And here's something I believe in my heart: No story can be great without closure. There must be closure, because it's the human condition."

Yes. And yes.