Lostagia

It's been a while since I posted but I (mostly) have an excuse in that my PC picked up a bug that took a number of weeks to install. During that time, Lost ended and the show already feels like a distant memory. So, how did it conclude?

Emotionally, I thought it ended really well. A few surprises in with some anticipated moments but ultimately, the climactic cutting between the flash-sideways church, Jack watching the plane fly overhead and his closing eye ending the series worked really well. The last minute arrival of Vincent to keep Jack company at the end was also another touch that helped lift the ending up from being too depressing.

However, while I liked the way that they managed to keep the island mysterious even to the end, they should have answered more questions for their loyal audience. Remembering all the details from Lost is a nightmare, but I still wonder about:

1. Walt: what was all that stuff about his powers in the first season? As Michael's spirit cannot leave the island, I assume Walt found happiness when he returned home so didn't need the other survivors to move on as he had more important experiences/people in his life later on...

2. Aaron: early on, wasn't it suggested that Aaron what destroy the world or something?

3. What was the island then? It had weird electro magnetic pockets, the ability to resurrect the dead, trap the spirits of the dead and a suggestion of intelligence. While we didn't need to see the full origin of the island, finding out it's nature would have been nice...

4. Was the Man In Black/Smokemonster/HemLocke really Jacob's brother? CJ told them not to go into the illuminated cave or they would suffer something worse than death, though Jack and Desmond seemed unaffected. As Jacob's brother was already dead when he floated into the cave, was he transformed into the monster or did he merely release it?

5. They still never explained the Anubis temple: people had been going to the island for ages so was this just to suggest that these visits had been happening since as far back as the ancient Egyptians?

6. How did the Dharama initiative come about?

7. How did Jacob use the numbers and magic lighthouse thingy to select and manipulate candidates into boarding the same Oceanic flight?

I'm sure there are other questions but while these niggle, overall the bittersweet finale to Lost was a rewarding conclusion to a gripping series: though the plotlines' weak or absent resolutions were probably not worth the 6-year wait...