they were like northern stars
I cried more during that episode than I did for the whole series combined, I think.
Here's a text exchange I just had:
me: Oh my god did you see the finale?
friend: Yes. And now i am completely confused.
me: I loved it and I absolutely BAWLED.
friend: Well u are seriously going to have to explain it to me then. I am totally thrown by the whole dead thing. Whats real and not real? Is the whole series just bs?
me: I think they purposefully left it nebulous, but yeah, I think maybe the island was actually purgatory after all? Except I don't know what that means for Hugo and Ben? But I think the way they meant for the audience to take it was that the time on the island was about letting go and working through issues? But I don't know what that means for Widmore and Richard? But I loved the spirit of the episode. It wasn't perfect - what series finale is? - but its heart was in the right place, if you know what I mean. I thought it was beautiful.
eta: halowrites set me straight on the sideways-reality being purgatory in her pithy comment below!
And I DID think it was beautiful. I honestly completely loved how all the couples got a happy ending. I even loved the cheesy way they all said each others' names when they remembered the island. I thought the acting was actually really superb, especially Jin and Sun, and Jack and Jack's dad at the end. Matthew Fox really blew me away with this episode. They were all better than batting average, but Matthew Fox and Jorge Garcia and Josh Holloway and Daniel Dae-Kim and Yunjin Kim and fucking Michael Emerson! I felt so badly for Ben! And I liked Locke! The purgatory universe was spiritually beautiful, I really really thought so.
The Stephen King stuff. If you're reading this cut-tag, you probably watched Lost, and maybe in that case you know that Stephen King was a big Lost fan, and that the writers incorporated a lot of the Dark Tower series references (like how Nozz-A-La Cola was a sponsor of Henry Gale's hot air balloon, for example). What Jack's dad said at the end, about the people with whom Jack spent the most important time of his life (ooh, that makes me think that maybe the island was real? I don't know!!!) and how they found each other and needed each other - that was straight-up ka-tet. And it made me cry when I realized it, because I think the idea of ka-tet is beautiful. (In the Dark Tower series, "ka-tet" is the term for a group of people bound together by fate in any universe.) I mean, I have a Dark Tower quote tattooed on my forearm. "There are other worlds than these" and that's what I think the writers wanted us to take away from Lost, at the end. Maybe they didn't always have that plan, but that's how it ended, and I'm happy with it.
But what WAS the island? And where did it come from? And why all the Egyptian mythology? And who was Allison Janney? And what was the man in black's name? Like I said, it wasn't a perfect ending. No television series ends perfectly. Six Feet Under probably came the closest. But yeah, lots of still unanswered questions, and I'm sure many people are going to be like "that finale sucked!" and many people are going to be like "that finale was awesome!" It satisfied me and left me happy, and after six years, that's all I can really ask for.
And now to plot my epic Lost series tribute fanvid set to Rascal Flatts' "Bless The Broken Road"! It'll make sense when you see it.
I'm going to finish The West Wing, and then I'm going to rewatch Arrested Development, and then I'm going to watch The Wire, and then I'm going to rewatch Lost. And then I'm going to watch something new (suggestions? Smallville? The Vampire Diaries?) and then I'm going to rewatch Angel. I love television, I love television, I love television. I love television.