The Lost Season 5 & 6 Review - Part 2

Emilie de Ravin
(Claire Littleton)

Crazy Claire... Some people are still wondering exactly why the psychic warned Claire that her child shouldn't be raised by another. I think some people assumed that Aaron being raised by somebody else would lead to a cataclysmic chain of events. Personally, I think they're reading too much into things, because from where I'm sitting, the fact that having Aaron raised by another caused her to lose her mind and live in the jungle like a savage seems like a good enough reason to me!

Nobody makes things get dusty in the room like Jin and Sun. When those two reunited after nearly two years of real-time separation, the allergies were really starting to act up. When they died together on the submarine, I had to breathe deep and keep telling myself, "this is only a show" or I would've flat-out lost it. I don't know what it is about these two krazy Koreans, but they certainly know how to tug on a man's heart strings.

But before we move on...

I get the fact that Jin and Sun dying together was all tragically beautiful and everything, but shouldn't have Jin left to take care of the baby???  Intentionally dying when you have a child is just a wee bit irresponsible, don't you think?

Terry O'Quinn
(John Locke / The Smoke Monster)

Six years ago, if you showed me a preview of the final fight scene where Jack and Locke were battling to the death on the cliffs, it would have blown my mind. The man of science vs. the man of faith going at it like rabid animals... unreal!  It would've been cool if they could've somehow worked that into the beginning of the series to really mess with our minds and make us think that Jack and Locke were eventually going to go at it for real. Of course, we all know that it wasn't really John Locke who Jack was fighting, but The Smoke Monster, which would've been a really cool twist.

Overall, there's not much to say about John Locke in Seasons 5 and 6, mostly because he was dead for the majority of them. However, the writers deserve a nice tip of the cap by figuring out a way to keep Terry O'Quinn on the show despite the death of his original character.

If there was one major "disappointment" with Lost, it's that they never really got a solid love story going with the main characters. I don't know if it was Kate's overall toughness and that hindered her ability to play the damsel in distress, or if things just got too off-course with the Jack/Sawyer love triangle, but she just never really took with either of the lead men. As I've been saying for years, I was never a big fan of her chemistry with Jack, but felt her and Sawyer made a good match. Had the Sawyer/Juliet fling never happened and Kate and Sawyer fled off into the sunset while Jack saved the island, it might have made for a more satisfying ending. Instead, you had Jack and Kate separate at the end and Kate basically went on to live the rest of her life without Jack, and Sawyer without Juliet. Maybe that lack of "storybook" ending helped make the overall ending more poignant, but part of me can't help but feel that it didn't play out just right.

Jorge Garcia
(Hugo "Hurley" Reyes)

I always knew there was something special about Hurley. I didn't know exactly what his purpose in the show was, but I knew it was something big. It turns out that the most unlikely of our Heroes found his destiny as the protector of the island. He spent the rest of his days with his #2 sidekick, Ben. What happened from there, we'll never know. At some point though, Hurley must've found a replacement of his own as he eventually died and joined the rest of his friends in the Sideways world.

Josh Holloway
(James Ford, a.k.a. "Sawyer")

Despite the fact that I loved it when Sawyer turned "heel", sappy Sawyer ultimately ended up winning out in the end. For a while there, with Juliet dead and Sawyer furious with Jack, I thought I saw us heading towards an unforgettable ending...

You have Jacob, who believes that humans can be good. You have ol' Smokey who believes they are inherently selfish and dangerous. Before they fully fleshed-out the whole Jacob/Man in Black dynamic, I was thinking that they were both looking for a replacement so that they could be set free and leave the island. For a while, I thought a really cool ending would be something where Kate dies in the last episode and then you have Jack taking Jacob's place and a very bitter Sawyer taking the smoke monster's place. The final shot of the series would be Jack and Sawyer sitting on the beach starting the whole Jacob/Smoke Monster dynamic over again. Sawyer would tell Jack, "I'm gonna kill you one of these days" just like the Man in Black said to Jacob. And then Jack would, in turn, reply "If you do, somebody will replace me". End scene.

Overall, I'm happier with the actual, "happier" ending, but I thought this would've been a cool "darker" ending.

Matthew Fox
(Dr. Jack Shephard)

Lost began with Jack's eye opening. It ended with Jack's eye closing. And so my series of Lost reviews will also both begin and end with Jack. Without question, no character was more compelling over the past six years than Jack Shepard. When we first met him, he was a man of science, obsessed with the need to fix things. By the end, he had found faith and learned to wait and trust others. Once he had finally grasped that concept, he was then given the task by Jacob to "fix" the island once and for all. He vanquished the Smoke Monster and saved the island. In doing so, he reunited his sister with her child and saved "the love of his life". As he took his final steps and collapsed on the ground, he saw his friends safely fly away. And then, in a move that reeked of cheesiness, but somehow was so fitting, Vincent the dog laid by his side, so that he didn't have to die alone.

We're used to seeing the hero die at the end. Braveheart, Gladiator, Armageddon... Those are just a few classic movies that end that way. However, in those situations, we're usually invested in the characters for two hours. With Jack, we had been invested for six years. In some ways, it was incredibly difficult to watch, knowing that it was the final scene of such an epic story. Yet at the same time, it all came together so perfectly.

Throughout the finale, as people in the Sideways world were "awakened" with flashes of the past, I couldn't help but think back over the past six years and all that's happened both on the show and in my actual life. Six years ago, I was fresh out of college, feeling in over my head in medical school, and Wednesday nights at 9pmwas the time when I would watch this "new" show, Lost, with my friend. As I sat there watching the final moments of the show, I could hardly believe where I was. I was now a doctor. That friend I began watching the show with was now my wife and she was carrying our child. Everything that had seemed so chaotic six years ago had come together beautifully. Like Kate, and Sawyer, and Hurley, and Jin, and Sun, and Charlie, and John Locke, and Jack, I was Found.