(As you might have guessed, this post contains MAJOR SPOILERS concerning the television show Lost.)

Well, the Lost finale has come and gone, and it surpassed expectations. That’s not a good thing. I was worried that it was going to suck…but I had no idea just how awful it would truly be. The Lost finale was fucking terrible, and there was simply no excuse for it.

Why? Because none of Lost‘s big mysteries were explained! What was the Island? What were the Hostiles doing there? What was Widmore’s plan? What was the Heart of the Island? What was with all of the Egyptian stuff? Why were Mother and Jacob godlike? Why did Jacob’s brother turn into smoke? Why were the Candidates picked in the past? What was with all of the time travel? And so on, and so forth. The amount of stuff left unanswered could fill a page or two. (Or a clever and amusing video.)

The last time I checked, people watched Lost because the overall mystique of the Island and the events that transpired there were intriguing; in fact, that’s exactly how ABC marketed the program. Fans spent years crafting theories to explain the events on the Island. They weren’t theorizing about the happy couples reuniting at the end, but that’s all we got. Ugh.

If some of the little mysteries were left unexplained, that’s fine; Lost had a ton of material it had built up over the years, and no one was asking the impossible. But the crucial stuff? None of the big questions around which the entire series revolved were explained. The only “explanations” we got over the course of the show were ones that merely morphed into other questions; e.g., the Numbers, the Whispers, and even the Island itself. Those aren’t answers, they’re misdirection.

All we did get was the revelation that the “flash-sideways” timeline was a kind of limbo that the characters had created, so that they could meet up again after they’d died. Some died on the show, and the rest would’ve died at some point in the future after they’d lived out their lives. That whole concept didn’t bother me too much (aside from many important characters being “left out”). However, the mysteries of the Island should’ve been explained first, especially since it’s made clear that their experiences on the Island were the most important events in their lives, and that’s why they were all coming together again. And they didn’t even explain how the limbo dimension or whatever it is came about! How did the characters create it? And when?

Believe it or not, I’ve actually seen people trying to defend the finale. I’m guessing it’s a case of people trying to make themselves feel better or otherwise justify six seasons’ worth of fandom, but what the hell, I’ll bite.

The biggest defense is that the ending was good because the show was “about the characters.” Well, that claim falls apart because the characters on Lost were defined by the mysteries and how they dealt with them. For example, the Candidates were brought to the Island to replace Jacob. But why? If we don’t know why the Island and its glowy cavern are so important (other than hearsay from Mother, a mass murderer), then the Candidates’ trials and tribulations don’t mean anything. Furthermore, what about all of the other people on the Island? Without explanation, there is no context, and thus, the characters are actually cheapened, because their experiences have no relevance.

To put it in a simpler perspective: imagine reading a mystery novel where the mystery isn’t solved at the end. The final chapter just jumps ahead to a future point in time with no explanation. That would annoy any reader, yet the Lost finale pulled the same stunt.

Cripes, even Battlestar Galactica‘s shitty finale at least gave us a throwaway deus ex machina explanation, which while crappy, was at least better than nothing at all. (Though Lost‘s finale didn’t retcon the entire show as BSG‘s did.) If this is the new standard for these long-running shows, should I just give up on watching Fringe and Caprica now, as they will probably disappoint in the end as well?

Writers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof (and, to a lesser degree, J. J. Abrams) extended a gigantic middle finger to the show’s fanbase, and that’s just damned sad. Thanks a lot, fellas, for building up nearly six years of mysteries and suspense…and throwing them all out the damned window.

Ironically, the joke “alternate endings” on Jimmy Kimmel Live were far better than the real thing: