And So It Ends...

...as it began. With Jack's eye in a field of bamboo.

Only this time, the eye wasn't opening, it was closing.

I have to say, that after six years of religiously watching "LOST," the ending to me was absolutely fantastic. We may not have gotten every single answer that we always wanted (why couldn't women have kids on The Island, how did Walt have super powers, what exactly was The Island?") but I think that's actually a good thing. It lets you form your own ideas and opinions on what the place actually was and go from there. An underlying theme in "LOST" has always been about choices, and here in a roundabout way they have given the audience an opportunity to make a choice about the answers to questions.

What we did get, however, was absolute closure to our beloved characters.

We know The Island was left in good hands...Hurley and Ben should make an excellent team to replace Jacob and Richard.

We know that Kate, Sawyer, Lapidus, Miles, and Richard safely made it off The Island.

We know that Jack died to save The Island.

Most importantly, we know that everyone ends up together in the end...to move on to whatever place it is they go to next.

I think it was absolutely fantastic the direction that they closed the Flash-Sideways out in. Over the years, many people have said that they felt that The Island was a kind of Purgatory. They said that the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 all died when the plane crashed, and that The Island was where they were at while they waited to move on to the afterlife. Yet the show's creators have ALWAYS said this wasn't the case. In a pretty good "we told you so," the Flash-Sideways that we've been watching all season turned out to be the actual Purgatory. Everything on The Island was real...and everything in the Flash-Sideways was a place where our characters waited for each other before they could move on.

I will admit, when the show first ended, I thought "You mean they've been dead this whole time??" But a few moments of thinking killed that idea.

Hurley told Ben "You were always a good Number Two." To which Ben responded: "You were always a GREAT Number One." This led me to believe that Ben and Hurley looked after The Island for quite some time after Jack died and the others left.

Christian Shephard also told Jack that "some died before you, some died after you" which made me realize that the people in the Flash-Sideways were all there together...regardless of how long they lived or when they died. For example, Boone died before Jack and they were both in the Flash-Sideways. Jack died before the people that were alive at the end, but they are all in the Flash-Sideways together.

Christian Shephard also told Jack "There is no 'now.'" That says to me that in the Flash-Sideways, time didn't really exist...once a person died in real life, they entered the world that the Flash-Sideways were in and fell immediately in place as if nothing had happened.

All it took was everyone remembering their lives for them all to be able to move on.

I will miss this show. I don't know what I'll do for my weekly "must watch" TV show from now on. I don't really know how anything will come close to "LOST" for me.

But, if it has to be gone...at least it went out on a good note. I loved the Series Finale. Amazing stuff.