On its 10th anniversary, it’s time to give Lost’s finale the praise it deserves

It’s been 10 years since the final episode of Lost aired, and it’s still known as one of the most polarizing series finales in television history.

The year is 2010. “Tik Tok” is the number one song in the nation. Apple has just released the first generation of its newest gadget, the iPad. Fans are eagerly awaiting the releases of the next Harry Potter and Twilight movies. And on May 23, 13.5 million people tune into the most anticipated television series finale of the decade: Lost.

I was not one of those people. I was 13 years old, almost definitely playing Farmville on my newly created Facebook account that my parents finally allowed me to get, and was years away from stepping into my prime as a self-proclaimed television critic. In fact, I wouldn’t come to watch Lost until nine years later when my friend Robyn — who, I must note, is the world’s the number one Lost activist (check out her podcast all about it) — finally got me on her couch and told me we were going to watch the first four episodes together. Needless to say, based on this piece and my entire brand as a person, the rest is history.

I always had a very limited, peripheral knowledge of Lost. My family watched it live, and if asked to do some word association, I probably would’ve said “plane crash,” “island,” and “polar bear.” That was the extent of what I knew, until the months and years after the finale aired when I learned that the phrase “they were dead the whole time” I’d hear in social settings and referenced to in pop culture was also a nod to Lost.

“Wow, that’s a bummer,” I remember thinking to myself. “So, nothing that happened even mattered? Guess I won’t be watching that show.” Oh, Casey, you sweet summer child. You had so much to learn.

If anyone can convince you to watch a show, it’s Robyn. You can try and resist, as I did, but either by force or by unyielding persuasion, she will wear you down. When I expressed my reservations about starting the series — mainly of the “what’s the point of watching if I know how it ends?” variety — she assured me that no, they were not dead the whole time, and if that’s all I knew, I actually knew nothing about how it ends. And boy, was she right.

To reduce Lost to “the show where a plane crashes on an island with polar bears” or “the show where they were dead the whole time” is to disregard six seasons of masterful storytelling and unparalleled character writing that other shows can only dream of replicating. It is also wildly untrue.

Okay, yes. A plane taking off from Australia crash-lands on a mysterious island in the south Pacific that somehow has polar bears on it — but that is far from where the story ends. If you keep watching, you’ll learn that the polar bears were brought to the island by a research initiative studying the island’s electromagnetic properties. You’ll also learn that this research initiative wasn’t the first group of people to inhabit the island, and it certainly wasn’t the last. And if you continue to tag along for the journey, you’ll learn that every person who has ever stepped foot on that island was brought there for a specific purpose far greater than any of them could have imagined.

The search for that purpose is the very heartbeat of the show that awakens in that first episode and pulses through the series until its final moments — which brings us to that polarizing finale episode, “The End.” And, for the life of me, I genuinely don’t understand why this isn’t the most celebrated series finale in television history.

I don’t think there will ever again be an ending as viscerally cathartic and emotionally satisfying as the finale of Lost. The dark force that presided over the island is extinguished, and the light is restored. Our hero makes the ultimate sacrifice to save the people he loves. And we bid farewell to our favorite characters as this special found family finds each other once more to reunite in the afterlife. There is little more you could ask for from a show that was always, to its very core, about this group of characters and what they meant to one another — especially considering the fact they were super alive the entire time.

Though it was theorized in season six with the introduction of the flash-sideways that perhaps the island was some sort of purgatory or afterlife, the finale definitively rejects that theory and explicitly states in Jack’s final conversation with his father that everything that happened, happened.

"Jack: Are you real?Christian: I should hope so. Yeah, I’m real. You’re real, everything that’s ever happened to you is real. All those people in the church … they’re real too.Jack: They’re all … they’re all dead?Christian: Everyone dies sometime, kiddo. Some of them before you, some long after you.Jack: But why are they all here now?Christian: Well, there is no “now” here.Jack: Where are we, dad?Christian: This is the place that you … that you all made together, so that you could find one another. The most important part of your life was the time that you spent with these people. That’s why all of you are here. Nobody does it alone Jack. You needed all of them, and they needed you."

Everything that happened to Jack on the island was real. The crash, the hatch, Dharma, Jacob … all of it. He dies when he sacrifices himself for the island — but his friends survive. Kate, Sawyer, Claire, Miles, Richard, and Lapidus take off in the plane Jack watches soar overhead; Hurley and Ben become the caretakers of the island. The only people who were, actually, dead the whole time were Christian Shephard and those who died in the crash of Oceanic flight 815.

So, then, what’s the deal with the flash-sideways that seemed to have half of the audience convinced that nothing on the island was real? They were glimpses into a world these characters created for themselves to wait for each other so that, after they all had passed away, they could find one another and move on to whatever came next together.

It was a place that existed beyond time, meaning that even though everyone was there for Jack when he arrived, they did not all die at the same time. Boone, for example, died long before Jack, and Hurley, we can hope, died long after. But they reunite before transitioning to what lies beyond the church in this spiritual waiting room they manifested as a result of the bonds they formed.

As it turns out, most of the critiques of Lost’s finale are a result of people just not getting the answers they wanted or simply not paying attention. Those who were left frustrated that the show didn’t answer its own questions about polar bears, smoke monsters, and time-traveling islands (which, for the record, it did) or who didn’t understand the ending missed what the show had always been about: the characters. Sure, the mystery kept the story going, but what made the story worth following was this group of messy, flawed, complicated, morally grey characters who learned to heal, grow, love, and let go together.

Lost never claimed to have all the answers. It was more interested in asking questions and considering the way these questions shaped, divided, frustrated, and motivated the characters and the audience alike. Those who wanted a different ending — something more conclusive that spoon-fed answers to the audience — were asking the show to be something it never sought out to be.

Whatever path Lost chose to take for its final episode, it was never going to satisfy everyone. But the way pop culture history has both misremembered and misrepresented the legacy of Lost is genuinely disheartening. Because, regardless of how you may have felt about the finale, the value of Lost as a show does not dwindle down to a single episode. Its value is found in the sum of its parts, in a story that began with a handful of strangers who were as emotionally lost and they were physically and ends with them finding their way by finding each other.

This show broke barriers, pushed the envelope, and challenged the rules of storytelling like no other before it. Lost didn’t only redefine science-fiction; it redefined television. It developed an entirely new roadmap for constructing narrative with time jumps, flashbacks, and flash-forwards. It restructured how we watch shows by breaking away from the mold of procedural television. It risked everything by asking the audience to be patient and trust the story, because if they could hang in for the long haul, their questions would be answered. So, if you enjoy modern TV, you can thank Lost.

Maybe it’s because Lost came into my life at the exact moment I needed it, or maybe it’s because it really is the greatest television series of our time, but I believe in this show and its power to teach us things about ourselves we didn’t know we needed to learn. I know my unabashed love for the series can’t singlehandedly change someone’s opinion of it, but I hope, if nothing else, it can help you appreciate Lost for what it was and what it continues to be for the new generations of people who discover it: a story about a group of people who are made better by knowing each other.

What did you think of the Lost series finale? What about the series as a whole? Share your thoughts in the comments below!