From its very first episode, Lost made no
attempt to hide its fondness for perplexing mysteries. True to form, the series finale left audiences
absolutely baffled. So if you want to know what really happened
on that island, get ready for a deep dive into the ending of Lost. For much of Lost's run, fans worried that
the show would end with a "they were dead the whole time" twist. Creator J.J. Abrams and showrunners Damon
Lindelof and Carlton Cuse repeatedly denied speculation that the characters died in the
crash and that the island was a form of purgatory. Nevertheless, some viewers thought the finale's
church-set ending confirmed that they had been lying the whole time, and that the entire
show had taken place in the afterlife. This interpretation was also supported by
the footage of the original plane crash and empty beaches that aired over the closing
credits, which some fans thought meant there had been no survivors. But it turns out that the crash footage at
the end was never meant to be considered part of the finale proper. Instead, as an ABC spokesperson later explained,
it was included so that fans could, quote, "decompress before heading into the news." The network never imagined that viewers would
consider this part of the show's narrative. Furthermore, "The End" takes pains to explicitly
clarify that all the events that took place on the island were, in fact, real. "The most important part of your life was
the time that you spent with these people." After five seasons filled with flashbacks
and then flash-forwards, the first episode of season six included something Lost fans
were totally unprepared for: a flash-sideways, exploring an alternate reality in which Oceanic
Flight 815 doesn't crash, instead landing safely at LAX. And that's not the only thing different about
the two realities. Instead of being a con man, Sawyer is a cop. Instead of the strained marriage they had
in the pilot, Jin and Sun are secret lovers. And the childless Jack suddenly has a teenage
son whose mother is none other than Juliet, a woman he met on the island. Was this all a dream? Or was it perhaps a parallel dimension created
by the wonky powers of the island? Or was this the true timeline, and maybe the
island is just an elaborate "what if" scenario? In "The End," the flash-sideways is revealed
to be the afterlife, where all the Oceanic survivors are brought back together following
their deaths. In a way, it is a sort of purgatory where
they each have to make peace with the struggles of their lives before they can recognize one
another and move on together. This is where the Lost finale tripped up many
of its viewers, who reasonably assumed that in order for all of the characters on the
show to have arrived in the afterlife at the same time, they must've died at the same time. But as logical as this reasoning appears at
first glance, it doesn't hold up under close scrutiny. Not only does it fail to explain the presence
of characters like Juliet and Ben, who weren't on board Oceanic 815, it also doesn't account
for all of the shared memories they recover once they recognize each other. After all, if they all died in the crash,
how would Kate remember delivering Claire's baby, or how could Sayid recall falling in
love with Shannon? The explanation given in "The End" is that
they all died at different times, some way back in season one, and others many years
after the end of season six. But time works differently in the afterlife. To the characters, it feels as though they
all arrived around the same time, even if their actual deaths were many decades apart. The only thing they all had in common was
that none of the characters in the flash-sideways died during the plane crash. We would be here all day if we tried to list
every death that ever occurred on Lost, but here's what we do know about the deaths of
the people in the church. Boone dies in season one, succumbing to his
injuries after a fall. Shannon dies early in season two after being
accidentally shot by Ana Lucia, and Libby dies toward the end of the second
season after being shot by Michael. Charlie dies in season three, drowning after
warning Desmond that the boat outside is "not Penny's boat." Locke is strangled by Ben in season five. Juliet dies at the beginning of season six
after falling down a shaft and detonating a bomb. Sayid dies midway through season six saving
his friends from a bomb, and Sun and Jin die later in the same episode, drowning together
in a sinking submarine. And Jack dies at the end of the series finale,
after being stabbed by the Man in Black. Then there are all the deaths that are left
up to our imaginations. Kate, Rose, Bernard, Sawyer, Desmond, Penny,
and Claire all survive the finale, and presumably die at some point in the years afterward. And as the new protectors of the island, Hurley
and Ben likely outlive the other survivors by quite a bit, but at some point, they must
eventually die as well. A significant portion of the finale focuses
on the question of who will fill Jacob's role as the protector of the Heart of the Island,
which turns out to be a magical, glowing pool at the island's center. This is supposedly the source of all life,
death, and rebirth, and according to Jacob, it's the cork holding back a malevolent force
that could destroy the world. In the finale, this is revealed to be a literal
cork, which Desmond pulls to drain the pool, nearly getting everyone killed. The Heart of the Island also emits a strong
electromagnetic field and can manipulate space and time, as evidenced by the relocation of
the island and the time travel in earlier episodes. It's also implied to have a form of consciousness,
or at least self-preservation, granting immortality to the humans who are willing to take on the
responsibility of keeping it safe. While some of the earlier mysteries of Lost
were revealed to have at least moderately plausible sci-fi explanations, the Heart of
the Island requires viewers to accept some elements of the supernatural as well. No details are ever given about its origins,
but it's said that a piece of its light is inside every living thing, and if it goes
out, so do we. "What's down there?" "Life, death, rebirth. It's the source, the heart of the island." Throughout the series, it's revealed that
many of the characters have some sort of connection before ever boarding the plane, implying that
they were always predestined to board the same doomed flight and end up on the island
together. In the final season, we learn that Jacob has
been pulling strings for years. He travelled around the world in order to
bring a group of potential "candidates" to the island, in the hopes of finding someone
capable of taking over for him as the island's protector. He knew that his brother, the Man in Black,
was searching for a way to kill him and would eventually succeed. So Jacob sought to find a successor before
that happened. Jacob chose people who reminded him of himself. They were individuals who were alone and flawed,
and who'd come to depend on the island as much as it would rely on them to keep it safe. All of the Oceanic 815 survivors fit this
criteria, and as the series progressed and Jacob was able to observe their interactions
on the island, he slowly whittled down his list of candidates. None of the connections we saw between the
characters were accidental. They were all engineered by Jacob. One of Lost's most enduring mysteries is the
nature of the smoke monster, a seemingly sentient column of black smoke that occasionally attacks
and even kills people on the island. It turns out that the smoke monster is another
form of the Man in Black, who transformed when Jacob threw him into the Heart of the
Island after the Man in Black killed their mother. For the next 2000 years, Jacob and the Man
in Black oppose one another, as the Man in Black searches for a way around the supernatural
law that keeps him from killing Jacob. "One of these days, sooner or later, I'm going
to find a loophole, my friend." "Well, when you do, I'll be right here." As the smoke monster, he can't be killed,
but he also can't leave. Over the years, he assumes his smoke form
in order to kill the candidates Jacob brings to the island, hoping that if Jacob dies and
leaves no successor, the Man in Black can finally leave. Ultimately, though, the Man in Black's immortality
is linked to the Heart of the Island, so when Desmond temporarily shuts it down in the finale,
he's made mortal and killed by Kate and Jack, ending the smoke monster forever. The DHARMA Initiative first came to the island
in the 1970s, with the objective of studying the island's unique properties and harnessing
them in the name of scientific advancement. While DHARMA conducted research across all
fields, attempting to uncover the island's secrets, they never fully understood what
they were dealing with when it came to the supernatural Heart of the Island. But that didn't stop them from trying, and
they constructed stations all over the island in an attempt to make sense of the bizarre
phenomena they were witnessing. DHARMA was eventually wiped out by a group
of people living on the island who were devoted to Jacob, known to the Oceanic 815 survivors
as "the Others." By the time Oceanic 815 crashed, DHARMA was
long gone, leading the survivors to wonder whether DHARMA might've been responsible for
some of the strange happenings on the island. But DHARMA didn't create any of the island's
powers. Those already existed long before the scientists
showed up, and were in fact the reason why they came in the first place. At the end of the finale, after the main characters
have regained their memories of their time together on the island, they make their way
to a church, where they see the symbols of a number of different faiths. Christian Shephard then explains to his son
Jack that the flash-sideways were constructed by and for the Oceanic 815 survivors. "This is a place that you all made together
so that you could find one another." According to Christian, once they were all
ready to do so, they each showed up at the church, one by one. When Jack first arrives at the church, he
sees his father's coffin, and seems to think he's there for his funeral. But the coffin is empty, and the funeral that
he'd expected is replaced by a reunion with his loved ones and hope for a new future together. The church seems to symbolize that all the
characters have said their goodbyes to their past lives, and they're finally ready to be
at peace with one another. When Christian opens the doors at the end
of the episode and light floods the church, it's safe to assume that signifies "moving
on," whatever that means. Even though Ben Linus's presence in the flash-sideways
seems to indicate that the Oceanic survivors were the most significant people in his life,
he elects not to enter the church with them. "You know, you were a real good number two." "You were a great number one, Hugo." This exchange between Ben and Hurley seems
to indicate that they worked together on the island for a long time after the events of
the finale. That Ben was drawn to the church with the
rest of them may be an indication that, cosmically at least, his service to the island was enough
to redeem him for the horrible things he'd done in life, and that he could move on with
the others. However, Ben opting not to enter the church
could mean that he isn't ready to move on yet. Perhaps he still has more people to find in
the afterlife before he can let go, or maybe, despite having been forgiven by some of the
people he wronged, he still has to come to terms with what he did. It's never clarified what happens to Ben after
he decides to stay outside, but we can only hope that, eventually, he finds peace. And hopefully, after nearly a decade, all
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