Lost Finale: My mind is still spinning

My mind is still buzzing from last night’s Lost finale. Even after I finally shut off the TV at midnight, after six hours of Lost-saturated television, my mind still raced, keeping me awake until 2 a.m. pondering. I’m attempting to clear my mind by spilling my thoughts here. SPOILER ALERT: Duh. Don’t read on if you haven’t seen the finale yet.

I had my doubts leading up to the finale. This whole season had story lines and characters going in circles, leaving me more confused than ever. I didn’t have high expectations that all questions were going to be answered in the end. And they weren’t. But it wouldn’t be Lost if the producers didn’t leave some things open for our own interpretation.

My theory: Everything that happened on the island was real. It wasn’t hell. They weren’t dead. It wasn’t limbo. Instead, the flash sideways revealed this season was Jack’s purgatory; he entered it on the season’s first episode when the plane hit turbulence but didn’t crash. As his father told him, all his friends were at the church to meet him. They were all dead. But some died before Jack, some died long after. There is no sense of time in the afterlife. They all reunited to welcome Jack home.

But.

If Jack was in purgatory, doesn’t that mean he was dead? Doesn’t that mean he died in the plane crash along with everyone else? Maybe it was fate showing him what his life would’ve been like if the plane never crashed. Maybe it was his soul not accepting his fate yet. Maybe the flash sideways wasn’t really running parallel to the life on the island.

Why did some of the survivors get to be at the church to welcome Jack, but not others? Where was Michael? As Harold Perrineau confirmed on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Michael’s soul was stuck on the island. Why? Because he killed Libby and Anna Lucia for his own selfish reasons? But wasn’t he redeemed by trying to keep the bomb on the freighter from detonating, giving his friends time to escape on the helicopter?

I was also wondering about Mr. Eko. I thought he was a fascinating character in the earlier seasons. How come we hadn’t seen him since the smoke monster killed him?

Maybe, as Showbiz Tonight's Marquee Blog states, some of the survivors weren’t ready to “let go.” It was all about letting go in the end.

So why didn’t Ben want to let go? Why was he at the church? Maybe he was trapped in his own purgatory, and he showed up at the church to apologize to John and to give Hurley a chance to thank him. Or maybe he just wasn’t dead yet.

I jumped on Twitter and Facebook after the show ended to see everyone’s reactions. They were mixed, but mostly in favor of the show’s finale. I think it was beautifully done. My expectations weren’t set very high, so I was able to enjoy it for what it was.

Lost was a great show; smartly written, produced and acted. The complete series comes out on DVD in August. I’m thinking of getting it and watching the whole darn thing over again. Just to see what I missed.