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I feel the same way. I liked the episode and thought it was a great "season" finale. I thought it was a HORRIBLE "series" finale. All that we saw on the island was totally irrelevant to "what the show was really about".

Do you think so? I think everything that happened on the island was exactly what it was about. Then they finally got off the island, and it was over. I'm not so sure if I see how the show was really about anything else.

I personally don't care for how things turned out - having some spiritual meaning etc. This I don't agree with though. I think it was clear that if Jacob's brother won, there would be an end to it all - including the afterlife

Really? What leads you to that conclusion?

Which, to me, makes a lot more sense. Having read so many comments regarding the sideways timelines as metaphors for purgatory, I'm inclined more to the entire Lost scenario being a figment of Jacks dying mind.

Or rather, the flash sideways is all in Jack's mind. The island actually happened, but Jack experiences the FS at the moment of death, which is why he's smiling.

Thats right. It was a character show. If you watched for the characters first, you should be happy.

Even though we didn't actually get to know what happened to the characters? Hurley, Ben, Kate, Sawyer... What a nice character show that doesn't tell the story of the main characters...

The more I think about it, the more I realize this was the only fitting way to end the show.

I disagree. The purgatory thing was a cheap cop-out.

I have never seen a show use so many of peoples favourite plot devices like time travel and alternate timelines so effectively.

I'd say this is on par with the Six Feet Under finale. That finale wouldn't have been as powerful without the music anways. :p The Lost finale was a brief 'wait what?' moment followed by a series of realizations of the past 6 years which have been intricately woven stories of epic proportions all culminating to a satisfyingly complete conclusion.

Even though we didn't actually get to know what happened to the characters? Hurley, Ben, Kate, Sawyer... What a nice character show that doesn't tell the story of the main characters...

I don't think most people really want an ending that goes "After escaping the island... Kate married and settled on a small farm somewhere, had three kids, and died of old age at 89."

They got off the island, Jack found purpose in life, Ben and Hurley got to run the island. It all worked out.

They didn't really answer the mysteries about the island, but did anyone really expect them to?

Michael is a tortured soul roaming the island and Walt isnt dead.

So Michael is in a third state, between life and purgatory?

Who actually built the statue

Not really that big of a mystery, considering that Jacob had brought lots of people there through the years. I do agree that there was a lot of focus on the statue, so it seemed like it was important.

- How could the plane with kate, miles, lapidus, sawyer,.. 'just' fly home when there's clearly no way of leaving the island?

Because it was Jacob that decided they couldn't. Jack/Hurley changed the rules.

This was definitely a shocker to me. Even about midway through the finale when Jin said "See you there" to Sawyer, I totally figured that everyone on the Island would die and all the Losties in the alternate timeline would get on a plane and crash there, effectively starting the whole thing over again.

I really didn't expect this conclusion, but that being said, I cried through the whole thing and was very happy with the conclusion. The scene with Jack and Vincent, OMG I couldnt stop the waterworks.

Did the island then eventually REALLY sink as seen in the beginning of season 6? After Hurley & Ben died? Or..?

That was just the island in the purgatory. It was of no relevance.

I don't think most people really want an ending that goes "After escaping the island... Kate married and settled on a small farm somewhere, had three kids, and died of old age at 89."

Ok, so it isn't a character-driven show after all, then.

They didn't really answer the mysteries about the island, but did anyone really expect them to?

Not after they said they wouldn't, no. But for six seasons, they were stringing people along with marvelous mysteries that we were led to believe we would know the answer to. No go.

So Michael is in a third state, between life and purgatory?

Not really that big of a mystery, considering that Jacob had brought lots of people there through the years. I do agree that there was a lot of focus on the statue, so it seemed like it was important.

Because it was Jacob that decided they couldn't. Jack/Hurley changed the rules.

Except that Dharma could move freely back forth as much as they wanted.

They can't make everybody happy with answers. It's not that kind of show and it never was. If they wanted to they could have gave Jack a tricorder to run some scans and detect gamma particles from the core of the island causing stronger electromagnetic fields which resulted in certain elements of the islands composition to emit photons and radiation which knocked our Losties out of temporal cohesion temporarly throwing them through time until their constant anchored them back in a fixed point in the space time continuum. They could go on for half a dozen more seasons doing sci fi stuff like that.

Wasn't it said early on in the series that we may not even see the 4 toed statue again? People loved that part so they worked it in and people end up complaining that it wasn't enough.

Hurley, Ben, Desmond, Rose, Bernard, Vincent, Cindy and kids? are still on the island. They can answer some of island mysteries, show how Hurley and Ben protected the island and how they die. They need to bring candidates to the island and choose the next protector and even with Hurley running the island you will have people opposed with the way he is doing it, so you will have new enemies.

What they could have done was to tie the ending to the actual island and the island's powers. So Hurley could have used his Jacob-ness to create the alternative timeline, where he would let people live their lives, and eventually get all their memories back so that they are "returned from the dead". And when he's done with his time on the island, he joins his old friends.

When they talked about "leaving", I thought it was in the physical sense. That perhaps the alternate timeline was just there to get everyone back together in order to return to the island alive or something. And I looked forward to seeing how they would do that. That might be why I was so disappointed when they did the cheap purgatory cop-out.

After all, the repeated sentence "see you in another life" alluded to another life being created rather than it all being about a purgatory.

Do you think so? I think everything that happened on the island was exactly what it was about. Then they finally got off the island, and it was over. I'm not so sure if I see how the show was really about anything else.

The point is that what happened through the whole show has no real relevance to the ending. It could have been anything. It was just so amazingly random.

The island was full of mystery for everybody, most who thought that they found meaning had it all thrown back in their face the next day, in the end none of it mattered apart from their connections to each other.

Really! If those connections were so darn important, why did the show basically ignore them towards the end? How did Kate and Sawyer suddenly go completely out of character, and happily ditched their friends on the island by flying off without them? What happened after they left? What happened to everyone except Jack?

Character connections my backside.

The biggest parody being that even though it was all spelt out to us, we still need to know what it was all about, move on, it's over!

Wait, so because a bunch of writers who had to resort to a cheap cop-out of an ending tells us that we shouldn't care about something, we should just stop caring about it? Right...

Yes, that is how they do it - not why they are able to do it.

They did it because they stumbled upon it, and then figured out how to get there.

They all died in the plane crash, but needed this to move on. Thats why Jacks father was there from the beginning and the end.

also why Jack was shown as the last survivor on the Island, and breathing a sigh of relief when he sees the plane go overhead. Jack, who wants to fix everything..

The plane didn't crash. It probably landed safely. And they all lived normal lives. Then they died, and ended up in (ugh) purgatory/limbo.

The problem with this, of course, is the obvious contradiction from the authors: They said people want to see what happened to the characters they love. Yeah, we saw Jack die. But what about everyone else? We did not see what happened to them. The characters. Even though the writers said that was what really matters.

****.

So what worked? They would have come together anyway. Unless MIB had to be dead for it to happen, but there's no

I think what troubles me is that what happened on the island has no real relevance to the ending. Jack could have won. Smokey could have won. Eventually they would all die, and they would end up in this purgatory thing anyway. The island is just irrelevant to that.

So the ending didn't really affect the island, whereas I would expect the island to be at least relevant, seeing as it's what we've been looking at for six damn seasons.

Yeah, I think that's one of the things that trouble me about the ending.

This. Really disappointing. To think We've all spent pretty much 6 years wondering what the island is, what it's all about, the destiny tie-ins with all the characters, why Jacob chose them...and it doesn't matter? Cheated.

They all died in the plane crash, but needed this to move on. Thats why Jacks father was there from the beginning and the end.

also why Jack was shown as the last survivor on the Island, and breathing a sigh of relief when he sees the plane go overhead. Jack, who wants to fix everything..

In what crash? the original 815 crash? No they didnt die! everything was real.

I just read that lost ended kind of the same way as titanic.

After everybody died (like, rose dying), they meet in afterlife. The end.

xD

Really! If those connections were so darn important, why did the show basically ignore them towards the end? How did Kate and Sawyer suddenly go completely out of character, and happily ditched their friends on the island by flying off without them? What happened after they left? What happened to everyone except Jack?

Character connections my backside.

Wait, so because a bunch of writers who had to resort to a cheap cop-out of an ending tells us that we shouldn't care about something, we should just stop caring about it? Right...

They did it because they stumbled upon it, and then figured out how to get there.

I mean why they are able to do it in spite of Jacob's "rule" that nobody can leave. Unless of course, Jacob never actually had that power to enforce such a rule?

They all died in the plane crash, but needed this to move on. Thats why Jacks father was there from the beginning and the end.

They did not die in the plane crash. What happened on the island actually happened. Sure, all the previous seasons had **** all to do with the actual ending, but what happened, did happen. The island was not just flashes before a dying man's eyes. (The purgatory thing could be, though.)

Jack's father wasn't Jack's father. It was Smokey trying to get people to do stuff.

I think the island had more significance than people are saying. It is what brought them all together and gave them their time with each other in life. They had all been chasing after something in life until the island brought for each one of them what they needed to realize in death that what they had was far more precious than anything they had fabricated for themselves in the sideways.

What Juliet meant by it worked was exactly what had happened. They were the very incident which set forth the chain of events to set up the first 5 seasons of the show. The incident also set in motion the chain of events which allowed the final season to happen.

Without Dharma/Ben becoming what it was Juliet may never have been brought to Dharma, played her Dharma shtick and eventually meeting and having a relationship Sawyer in the 70's. It worked because the incident set forth the events which led to their life together and led to their eureka moments in death.

I think the island had more significance than people are saying. It is what brought them all together and gave them their time with each other in life. They had all been chasing after something in life until the island brought for each one of them what they needed to realize in death that what they had was far more precious than anything they had fabricated for themselves in the sideways.

But it's still so amazingly random. What happened on the island wasn't really relevant. It just happened to be some stuff that happened. They would have died and gone to heaven or whatever anyway.

What Juliet meant by it worked was exactly what had happened. They were the very incident which set forth the chain of events to set up the first 5 seasons of the show. The incident also set in motion the chain of events which allowed the final season to happen.

Or she saw herself giving the candy bar to Sawyer in the FS, and what "worked" was unplugging the vending machine.

Nobody died on 815. Everything on the island is real, everything happened. Here is the best summary I found over at DarkUFO.

It seems like a lot of people are confused about the ending, I was not, assuming I am correct about it, here is an easy explanation.

Season 1 - They all crashed. All the characters we knew and loved the last 6 years DID NOT DIE HERE! I repeat, they did not die here.

Season 2 - Stuff happened

Season 3 - Stuff happened

Season 4 - Stuff happened

Season 5 - Stuff happened

Amongst this stuff, lots of people died!

Season 6 - Let's ignore the alt. universe.

More people died. At the end, the Hurley is the new Jacob, the new protector of the island. He may be there for thousands of years, but eventually he will die. Ben is his sidekick, the new Richard, he may be there for thousands of years, and eventually he will die. Desmond is with them, but Hurley will get him off the island, he is the new Jacob, he has powers. Eventually he will die.

Jack died (with Vincent, Matthew Fox's dog in real life, laying next to him, so ****ing sad). Kate, Claire, Sawyer, Lapidus, Miles, and Richard all flew off the island. Let's assume they lived happily ever after, but eventually, they all died too. Everyone dies! That's life for ya, death and taxes are the only two sure things.

Now this is where the opening of Season 6 starts, once everyone is dead. They are all in purgatory. It all begins in the plane because this is where the most important part of their lives began, where they met the most important people they would ever meet, Oceanic Flight 815.

Problem though is, they are dead but not at peace. They all can't move on. They all miss each other. There are too many stones yet unturned. Too many sins not atoned for.

Charlie tried to kill himself, but he couldn't die, he was already dead! When he saw this, he then had a flash of what meant most to him while he was alive . . . Claire. He opens the door for Desmond, and Desmond opened the door for everyone else. Every person had to realize what they all had been through, the giant adventure. They had to see all the sacrifices they made, all the things they did, the HELL they went through, and they had to see it together. Jack was just the last one to figure it out in the afterlife.

Ben couldn't move on just yet. Having Hurley give him a thumbs up and Locke forgiving him wasn't enough. He killed his dad, he killed his daughter, he killed all of Dharmaville! He wasn't ready yet, he needed to atone.

Everyone else though, they were sitting in the church, much like passengers in the plane, and the two most important people, Jack and Locke, were in the front row, on a flight to their ultimate peace.

That was the tv show LOST! It was an adventure about a group of people who were alone, they had no one, they were dubbed a tremendous responsibility, and they were all LOST. In the end, after they saved the world, after they made sacrifices, they were all together in the end, no longer alone, no longer LOST.

And that is why it is the greatest show ever.

In what crash? the original 815 crash? No they didnt die! everything was real.

I just read that lost ended kind of the same way as titanic.

After everybody died (like, rose dying), they meet in afterlife. The end.

xD

I OWN THIS SITE WHICH MAKES ME RIGHT I AM RIIIIIGHHHHTTTT!

K i'll take my pills now

They did not die in the plane crash. What happened on the island actually happened. Sure, all the previous seasons had **** all to do with the actual ending, but what happened, did happen. The island was not just flashes before a dying man's eyes. (The purgatory thing could be, though.)

Jack's father wasn't Jack's father. It was Smokey trying to get people to do stuff.

You're mistaking something. The end of the show is Jack saving the island. The FSW is how they told the story of what came after.

Yes, it happens later timewise, but that doesn't mean its the ending of the narrative. Lost was about the characters and the island and being lost in their lives. That ended on the island.

One thing about that DarkUFO quote: Vincent isn't Matt Fox's dog.

I mean why they are able to do it in spite of Jacob's "rule" that nobody can leave. Unless of course, Jacob never actually had that power to enforce such a rule?

People could of left at any time, just had to be on a certain bearing.

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You don’t have to worry about this with a public instance, as search engines never see your IP address. The main privacy benefit of using SearXNG is that it isolates your identity from the underlying engines that it’s capable of searching, such as Google and Bing. These search engines will only see requests coming from a generic server, so they can’t profile you and create a bubble filter that influences what results you see. This also ensures that your search engine doesn’t turn into an echo chamber that prevents you from reading alternative points of view. As a free software project, you are allowed to inspect SearXNG to make sure there are no negative features bundled inside. This sets it apart from the privacy search engines mentioned earlier because you can’t check their source code. As a meta search engine, you are not restricted to getting results from one source. Due to the fact that it scrapes content from other websites, your SearXNG instance will periodically get blocked from different providers, so it’s good to select a range of sources as a backup. While enabling all of the services will give you great results, this can make searching slower. I am personally happy with slower searches for the best results, but you can always check which providers are slowing down your search from the search results page and disable them to speed things up. If you want decent results quickly, enable the main search providers such as Google, Brave, DuckDuckGo, Qwant, Bing, and Yahoo. This way, you get wide coverage without the latency. On the Engines tab in Preferences, do note that there are different tabs, such as General, Images, and Videos, with their own providers that can be toggled and are not covered by "Enable all" while on the General tab, so be sure to dig into each. Just a note, if you want to enable everything, press "Enable all" in one tab, then hit save at the bottom of the page, then do the next tab, and so on. If you press "Enable all", then do that in each tab, and then save, nothing will stick. When I had just some of the search engines enabled, I searched “define nefarious” and results came back with the definition of “define” - obviously that was a sucky result. However, when I had everything enabled, it found dictionary pages for the word “nefarious” and even had an inline definition on the sidebar, which is quite nice too - that was delivered by WolframAlpha for anyone wondering! Probably the worst thing about this meta search engine is that the engines you select are saved with a cookie, so you must enable them on every new device you use SearXNG on, including if you decide to go into incognito mode with your web browser. Honestly, I would say this is the most annoying aspect, and perhaps if your browser lets you choose a separate private browsing search engine, then it would be best to use DuckDuckGo for this portion of your browsing. Another weakness of SearXNG is the random blocking of it by search providers. When you are on the results page, expand the “Response time” box, and it will show things like “Suspended: too many requests” or “access denied”. This is why it is good to enable several providers so that there is always a fallback to get results from. I won’t pretend SearXNG will be for everyone, however, if you enable all of the providers and put up with the slower response time, the results can be really amazing. Even if you don’t want to use it as your daily driver, keeping a bookmark handy that links to it is a good idea if you ever feel like doing a deep dive into a niche topic where other search engines are just failing to bring up any good result, due to the amount of sources it looks on. If you’re interested in radical user control over the software you use, installing SearXNG locally can also be a good idea, but be prepared to be temporarily blocked from sites if you trigger bot sensors without a VPN. Personally, I’ve opted to use a public instance, rather than install it myself. If you want to use it via a public instance, head over to searx.space to find a provider. Let us know in the comments if you have used SearXNG or its predecessor, Searx. What do you think about the quality of the results?
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