If only life was that simple with everything explained on a plate for us, fundamentally the ending is how each of us envisages it. We all construe each scenario differently so why should the ending be any different?

This thread makes me pleased I gave up on Season 2 and never came back to it.

That's just a cop out. They had no idea from the start and didn't bother. I was watching it as a mystery show, which it claimed to be, but clearly wasn't. You wouldn't watch an episode of CSI without a resolution, nor read a Sherlock Holmes story without any explanation.

I've read books and seen films that have left you thinking wtf, then as you think more about it your imagination takes over and all sorts of scenarios start playing out. Isn’t that exactly the point of the whole experience?

The frustration is wanting a quick fix, sorted, done and dusted lets move on and forget…. LOST was never about that.

The show was written by other humans, they were making it up as they went along, it is of no importance that the things are 'explained', it was purely a cynical excericse in revenue generation, all the actors are in on it, the directors, the producers. The interviews they give are all lies, they couldn't give a [LIFTED] about the ending, they just care about the cheque arriving on their doorstep.

For [LIFTED] Sake.

Here endeth what I want to tell all the people on my Facebook who have expressed an interest in 'The Finale', I fully realise that I'm just being grumpy. However it was clear form the outset that this would not be a conventional story, rather an exericse in seeing how far they could go drip-feeding people with cliched, deus ex machina cliffhangers before they realised that it was all pointless bollocks.

If only life was that simple with everything explained on a plate for us, fundamentally the ending is how each of us envisages it. We all construe each scenario differently so why should the ending be any different?

Edit - we all have different ideas about death and what happens next right?

The show was written by other humans, they were making it up as they went along, it is of no importance that the things are 'explained', it was purely a cynical excericse in revenue generation, all the actors are in on it, the directors, the producers. The interviews they give are all lies, they couldn't give a [LIFTED] about the ending, they just care about the cheque arriving on their doorstep.

For [LIFTED] Sake.

Here endeth what I want to tell all the people on my Facebook who have expressed an interest in 'The Finale', I fully realise that I'm just being grumpy. However it was clear form the outset that this would not be a conventional story, rather an exericse in seeing how far they could go drip-feeding people with cliched, deus ex machina cliffhangers before they realised that it was all pointless bollocks.

Did they all die in the crash? Nope. The island was real, and it wasn't purgatory. Rather, Season 6's sideways world was heaven's holding pen. Ben's reluctance to enter the church suggests he wasn't finished atoning for his misdeeds. His chat with Hurley also indicated they had cared for the island for a while.

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What was the island, and why did it need protecting? Still sort of a mystery. If you believe the mother of Jacob and the Man in Black, it was the spiritual and physical nuclear power plant for the Earth. Hence, "if the light goes out here, it goes out everywhere."

What was the Smoke Monster? Jacob created Smokey by tossing his brother, the MiB, into the cave. He knew the outcome would be bad — though not how bad — and his protection of the island was a part of his guilt trip. But why a sonic fence (or ash, or for that matter, the ocean) would keep Smokey at bay, we never learned.

What were the numbers? They were the numbers of our castaway "candidates" for island protector-to-be. The dial at Jacob's lighthouse had names assigned to each degree mark; turning it to 23 allowed Jacob to observe Jack as he grew up. Had he not smashed the mirrors, Hurley might have seen his house or Mr. Clucks when it was turned to 8 degrees. But the sequence's significance in the Dharma computer and on the roofs of police cruisers? Who knows?

Why couldn't babies conceived on the island survive to term? Fertility had been a major plotline since Ethan kidnapped Claire in Season 1 so the Others could study her. Ethan himself gave us the most plausible answer: His safe birth in 1977 indicated that the prenatal problems were likely caused by the Incident, when the Swan station construction crew drilled into the energy pocket, requiring the discharge of electromagnetic energy every 108 minutes.

What was the Ben-Widmore beef? Soon after the Dharma purge, Ben ousted Widmore as leader of the Others. His sins? Leaving the island regularly and fathering a child with an outsider. Ben also believed Widmore sought to exploit the island's healing properties for financial gain. Their chess game went to the next level when Widmore's thug Keamy shot Ben's daughter.

Why did Widmore bring Desmond back? Desmond's ability to withstand all the electromagnetic energy that resulted from turning the hatch's failsafe key made Widmore realize that his son-in-law could be a failsafe himself. By turning out the island lights, Desmond made UnLocke mortal — and vulnerable.

Where was Waaaaaaaaalt? Reality probably made his return impossible; as Jimmy Kimmel pointed out, Malcolm David Kelley is like 8 feet tall now. Yes, we would have liked to know what made him so special (cue the polar bear), but that mattered a lot more in Season 2.

How did Hurley stay so heavy? Remember, the Losties were on the island only four months at first, during which he claimed to have dropped a couple of belt notches. Once home, he continued emotional eating to assuage his guilt about the Oceanic Six's lie. And back on the island, he ran the kitchen as Dharma chef.

be nihilistic about everything in life including this show and continue your pointless meatsack life on this tiny spec of a rock devoid of any meaning whatsoever.

human emotions and the ways in which people express those emotions, that's all the meaning we need to lead a full life.

'Lost' exclusive: ABC sets the record straight about the series finale's plane crash images
May 25, 2010 | 3:09 pm

You know those Oceanic 815 plane crash images that ran after Jack's (Matthew Fox) eye closed and the "Lost" logo appeared on our TV screens? Some "Lost" fans and TV critics have wondered if they were a last Easter egg from the producers, a clue meant to lead us to conclude that no one survived Oceanic 815's crash landing — and therefore everything we've seen over the last six years never really happened.

Well, ABC wants to clear the air: Those photographs were not part of the "Lost" story at all. The network added them to soften the transition from the moving ending of the series to the 11 p.m. news and never considered that it would confuse viewers about the actual ending of the show.

"The images shown during the end credits of the 'Lost' finale, which included shots of Oceanic 815 on a deserted beach, were not part of the final story but were a visual aid to allow the viewer to decompress before heading into the news," an ABC spokesperson wrote in an e-mail Tuesday.

That means, Losties, that we were not supposed to think that Christian Shepherd (John Terry) is a liar. What Christian told his son, when they were reunited at the church, should serve as guidance for our interpretation of the series' ending.

So let's review: Christian told Jack that he was dead and everyone else in the church was too — some had died before Jack, as we already knew, and some died long after. The sideways flashes then were a step in everyone's after-lives, a way to reconnect before moving on permanently. While there still may be unanswered questions related to that religious and spiritual conclusion to the "Lost" story, the photographs were really just a nostalgic, transitional touch added by ABC executives — and not executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse.

Love or hate it, that's the final answer.