Television Review: The End (Lost, S6X17/S6X18, 2010)

The End (S6X17(S6X18)

Airdate: 23 May 2010

Written by: Carlton Cuse & Damon Lindelof
Directed by: Jack Bender

Running Time: 104 minutes

Experience has taught us that watching a great television series does not guarantee a great series finale. While The Sopranos was rightfully praised for redefining television, its cut-to-black conclusion remains notoriously divisive. The ending of Game of Thrones all but ruined the series for even its most devout and forgiving fans. “The End”, the feature-length finale of Lost, is routinely thrown into the same grim pantheon of disappointing conclusions. On the other hand, while everyone who expected the last episode of Lost to match the quality of its brilliant series premiere was destined for disappointment, the sheer vehemence of the backlash was not entirely warranted. Aptly titled “The End”, the episode functions relatively well as a piece of television drama, albeit one hamstrung by the accumulated weight of its own mythology and the inherent limitations of network television storytelling.

Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof’s script maintains the narrative structure of double timelines—a device preserved for almost the entire series run—right to the very end. The episode is cleaved into two distinct segments: the regular 2007 timeline, the series’ “present”, and the mysterious alternative 2004 timeline introduced in the sixth season. This structural mirroring provides a familiar rhythm, but also highlights the episode’s central ambition: to resolve the physical conflict on the Island while simultaneously unpacking the metaphysical puzzle of the flash-sideways world.

With the characters already defined, the Island’s core mysteries ostensibly resolved, and the cast culled for a grand conflict between good and evil, the 2007 timeline keeps things simple and straightforward. The Man in Black, inhabiting the form of John Locke, believes he can finally leave the Island by exploiting the magical Heart of the Island, and to do so he needs Desmond Hume and his unique electromagnetic resilience. Jack Shephard, newly anointed as Jacob’s successor as protector of the Island, moves to confront him. A supernatural stalemate ensues; as incarnations of the Island’s fundamental forces, they cannot directly harm each other. This leads to a temporary, tense truce, allowing Desmond to descend into the Heart to “do what he is supposed to do”. The simplicity here is both a strength and a weakness. It focuses the action on character-driven choices, but it also reduces a complex, philosophical struggle to a literal race to a magical cave.

Desmond’s descent and his removal of the large stone slab—the “cork” holding the Island’s energy at bay—has unintended and catastrophic consequences. The golden light is extinguished, violent earthquakes and a storm erupt, and the Island begins to sink into the sea. Furthermore, the Man in Black realises that all the mystical protection he and Jack enjoyed is now gone. He is rendered mortal. This moment is visually spectacular and narratively pivotal, but it underscores a recurring frustration: the rules of the Island’s magic are so nebulous that this dramatic stripping of power feels less like a clever twist and more like a convenient plot device to enable a conventional showdown.

With the direct escape route closed, the Man in Black finds another option at the Hydra Island. Meanwhile, Richard Alpert and Miles Straume have rescued Frank Lapidus from the water, another survivor of the submarine disaster. In a moment of pure Lost convenience, Frank uses his preternatural ability to fix the damaged Ajira jet. As repairs continue with the literal world crumbling around them, the Man in Black rushes towards the sailboat Elizabeth, only to be stopped by Jack. Their ensuing fight is brutal and visceral, a stark contrast to their earlier mystical stand-off. The Man in Black mortally stabs Jack before being shot by Kate Austen and, lacking his supernatural protection, dying a mundane death. Kate and James “Sawyer” Ford then take the Elizabeth to Hydra Island, where they, along with a reluctant Claire Littleton, board the repaired plane and finally achieve their long-sought escape. This sequence is efficiently executed and provides cathartic closure for these characters, though it carries a whiff of logistical contrivance.

Back on the main Island, a dying Jack decides to “fix” the Heart. Accompanied by Hugo “Hurley” Reyes and Ben Linus, he returns to the cave. In a quietly profound moment, he forces Hurley to drink from the nearby stream, making him his successor as protector. Jack then replaces the stone slab, restoring the golden light and saving the Island. Hurley and Ben extract Desmond, while Jack remains behind to die. In a touching beat that speaks to the series’ heart, Hurley laments how he can protect the Island without training, to which Ben—ever the political operator, now seeking redemption—volunteers to serve as his “number two”. This transfer of power is emotionally resonant, suggesting a kinder, more benevolent future for the Island under Hurley’s rule, and it represents one of the finale’s most successful character conclusions.

The alternative 2004 timeline, in contrast, is marked by a series of emotional reunions, slowly revealing its true nature. Physician Juliet Burke (now Dr. Juliet Carlson, Jack’s ex-wife and mother of their son, David) tends to Sun-Hwa Kwon. When she shows Sun and Jin-Soo Kwon an ultrasound of their baby, the couple suddenly remember their life on the Island and begin speaking perfect English. This “remembering” becomes the timeline’s driving mechanism. Juliet meets Detective James Ford, there to guard the Korean couple, and they too recall their shared past. Hurley brings Sayid Jarrah to a street where he intervenes to protect a man and woman from thugs; the man is Boone Carlyle, the woman his stepsister Shannon Rutherford, leading to their own awakening. Kate Austen, brought to a benefit concert, witnesses Charlie Pace perform. He recognises a pregnant Claire Littleton in the audience; when Claire goes into labour, both women remember their deep connection. Even John Locke, after a successful spinal surgery by Jack, feels his legs again and remembers. This parade of reunions functions as a protracted, sentimental roll call.

The purpose of this “flash-sideways” is fully revealed when Jack, informed his father’s coffin has been recovered, attends a church service. Locke, seeing Ben outside, offers forgiveness. Ben, overwhelmed, refuses Hurley’s invitation to enter, telling him, “You were a great number one,” while Hurley tells “You were a great number two.” Inside the church, Jack finds the coffin empty before his father, Christian Shephard, appears. He delivers the exposition that defines the entire construct: this place is not an alternate timeline but a “place you all made together” to find each other after death, a waystation “outside of time” where they gathered to help one another “move on”. The protagonists assemble in the pews before the church doors open, engulfing them in a bright, white light. This revelation is the finale’s most controversial gambit. For some, it retroactively transforms the sixth season’s intriguing mystery into a sentimental cop-out, a means to deliver a “happy ending” unearned by the narrative’s often brutal events. For others, it provides a deeply emotional, spiritual conclusion that prioritises the characters’ connections over cold plot resolution.

The series ends almost exactly as it began, with a mortally wounded Jack stumbling onto the beach. He collapses on the same stretch of sand where he first awoke in 2004, is comforted by the dog Vincent, and watches as the Ajira aeroplane—carrying his friends to freedom—flies overhead. He closes his eyes. This full-circle moment is a beautifully executed, strong emotional button for Jack’s journey from man of science to man of faith. However, its power was undermined for many by the silent end credits that followed, which featured footage of the original Oceanic 815 wreckage on the beach. This post-script, a creative decision imposed by the ABC network reportedly to soothe audiences, created a disastrous ambiguity, suggesting the entire story might have been a “they were dead all along” purgatory—a misinterpretation the writers had explicitly denied for years. It was a catastrophic piece of network interference that poisoned the well for a significant portion of the audience.

Lost was praised for its innovative, novelistic approach, yet until the very end it remained constrained by broadcast television conventions. While feature-length finales are now the norm in the streaming era, they were not uncommon for major network events. The End, originally aired as a single two-and-a-half-hour block, was later split into two episodes (S6E17 & E18) and shortened for syndication. Even more egregiously, truncated versions were initially streamed on Netflix, creating an uproar among fans before the error was corrected. This chopping and changing speaks to a fundamental disrespect for the episode’s pacing and a reminder that, for all its ambition, Lost was always a network product subject to commercial compromises.

Despite these structural limitations, The End functions adequately as a season finale. It brings closure to several long-running character arcs—most notably Jack’s, who in the original series conception was to die in the pilot, finally fulfils his destiny of sacrificial heroism. Good, in a broad sense, defeats Evil. The Island is left in the capable, gentle hands of Hurley. Those who wished to leave finally do so. On these basic narrative promises, the episode delivers.

The flash-sideways segment, which reveals the alternate universe as a collective afterlife, functions emotionally despite justifiable criticism that it is a cop-out and filler. It serves as a graceful, if overly sentimental, way to say goodbye to a vast ensemble. The deceased characters’ flash memories operate as a classy, integrated clip show, allowing the series to match years of violence, tragedy, and darkness with a measure of light and peace. In this sense, the segment can be interpreted as glorified fan service, but it is fan service executed with a genuine, tearful affection for the characters and their journeys.

Ultimately, the finale, for all its emotional impact, feels rushed and leaves a disquieting number of questions unanswered, betraying its creative limitations. Important characters one might expect in the church scene—most notably Walt Lloyd, Mr. Eko, and Daniel Faraday—are absent, largely due to real-life casting and business issues. Their omission highlights the show’s struggle to manage its sprawling narrative and cast. There are simply too many unanswered questions, from the precise nature of the Island’s energy to the details of the Dharma Initiative’s fate. Cuse and Lindelof have admitted they began the series without a clear endgame, and even after committing to a six-season arc, many threads were left dangling. Lost therefore feels unfinished, and to those who invested deeply in its pseudoscientific and mystical mysteries, profoundly unsatisfying.

Fan disappointment was likely exacerbated by the series’ own tonal seriousness and ABC’s decision to reschedule the finale’s airing to 23 May 2010—only five days after the previous episode—simply to align with the number 23, a recurring element in the show’s mythology. This artificial, hype-inflating move raised expectations to an impossible degree, framing the finale as a revelatory event rather than a narrative conclusion.

Aware of these criticisms, Cuse and Lindelof later provided a small piece of fan service in the form of a short epilogue, The New Man in Charge, released three months after the finale. Featuring Ben and Hurley visiting Dharma Initiative remnants and answering a few lingering questions about the Island’s logistics, this vignette offered the “red meat” of explanation many craved. Its inclusion within The End itself would have smoothed some of the finale’s rougher edges and made the conclusion feel more comprehensive.

The End is a flawed but not entirely failed endeavour. It succeeds as a character-driven emotional finale, providing poignant closure for the core relationships that were always the show’s true engine. It fails as a mythological puzzle-box solution, leaving too many pieces on the table. Its legacy is thus split, much like the timelines it portrays. For the character-oriented viewer, it offers a moving, spiritual farewell. For the mystery-oriented viewer, it remains a testament to the perils of building a labyrinth without a definitive map. Lost’s finale did not ruin the series, but it forever cemented the show’s reputation as a journey where the questions were infinitely more compelling than the answers. In that, perhaps, it was the only ending it could ever have had.

RATING: 6/10 (++)

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