LOST but not Forgotten

SPOILER ALERT!!!

Don’t read this post if you have not yet watched the series finale.  I don’t want to ruin it for you!

I finally get it, now, almost 6 hours after the finale ended.  I can safely say that this show (both the series and the finale) is the best, most elaborately written, most moving television I have ever seen.
I was immediately touched by the show’s sentimentality–I teared up at each “awakening” the characters had.  In truth, I have always been surprised by how much this show has tugged at my heart strings–I mean it’s a TV show for crying out loud, how poignant can it be?  Turns out, very.

In my earlier post I stated that I didn’t know what kind of finale I wanted LOST to have.  I know now that I wanted it to be about the characters all along.  I cared more about these “people” than any characters in any book, movie or show that I have ever seen, and that is due both to the length of time we have known them, and the depth at which the show went to show us who these people really were.  Sure, the Dharma Initiative mysteries and the hidden “easter eggs” helped to drive the series along and kept the buzz alive, but the root of the show has always been the survivors themselves.

I want to share some of the questions I came up with initially, as well as the answers that I have since settled upon.  If I don’t answer a question you have, or if you disagree with a theory of mine, please leave it in a comment below.  I love brainstorming about this show!

What was “real” and what was “purgatory”?

Ok, so I’m pretty sure I get it that they are in purgatory at the end, and then all “move on” together.  But a burning question I had right away was, when did this purgatory begin (from a chronological, story-timeline perspective)?  Was the entire flash sideways actually purgatory?
I believe the answer is yes.  Here is my theory:  We are first presented with the “flash sideways” (the story where the plane never actually crashes) when Juliet sets off the bomb in the mineshaft, thus leading to believe there is a cause/effect relationship between the two events;  bomb goes off, eliminating the future cause of the crash, right?  That’s what they were going for, so that’s what we were led to believe happened.  But I now believe that this is not true.  What happened, happened–they crashed, that cannot be undone.  We were just cleverly misdirected, not realizing we were now viewing them in purgatory, a purgatory that exists long after Jack takes his final breath and watches the plane successfully leave the island.

In purgatory, where the hell did Jack’s teenage son come from?  Come to think of it, how is it he and Juliet were married?  Come to think of it more, why do they ALL have different histories, histories that are different even all the way back to before the crash?

If they are in purgatory, and if it a place “created by the survivors as a way to find each other again, those they love” (according to Christian at the end), then why would they have histories that are different than what actually happened in their lives?  Like Jin and Sun:  in “real” life, they were married before they got onto the plane in Sydney, yet in the flash sideways, they are not married yet.  Why would that be different?  I’m still fuzzy on this one, even after checking out some chat forums to hear others’ ideas.  I’ve heard that Jack dreamed up his son because he wanted to be the father his father was not, but there’s no real evidence to support that.  Let me know what you think, I would love to hear some ideas.

Where were Michael, Walt, Ecko, Daniel and Charlotte at the end?

This one took me a bit, but I think I have the answer.  Farraday and Charlotte had not “awakened” yet in purgatory.  Eloise asked Desmond if he was going to take her son, to which he replied he was not, though he did imply that someone else would.  That someone else could be Charlotte.  They would “realize” each other, and move on together.  Similarly, Ben decided to stay behind for Alex, to be a father to her that he never was in life, in hopes that she may accept him and they too could move on together.  Ecko, Michael and Walt were not loved by those within this group at the church, and were thus not “awakened” by them.

Why did the writers deny, early in the series, that the characters were actually dead?

Because they weren’t.  Everything that happened on the island really happened.  Again, they all died at different points in life–Jack on the island, Locke before going back to the island, and others like Kate and Sawyer sometime later in their lives.  Many fans have posted both that they hated the finale and that the writers lied when they denied the characters were dead or in purgatory.  They did not lie because, at that point, the characters were very much alive.

These were my questions and the best answers I could come up with.  What do you think?