The Ending of LOST Explained

I originally posted this on Quora in December 2018 as an answer to the question "Who will explain the ending of the Lost TV series?" At the time, having watched the show in its entirety at least five times, and having spent countless hours analyzing, reading, and discussing it in detail, I felt qualified to offer a reasonably accurate explanation of Lost's conclusion. I was then, and am still, committed to dispelling some of the common misconceptions about the show, such as the complaint that it failed to resolve most of its mysteries, or the belief that the Island was a kind of purgatory and the characters were therefore dead the whole time. Thus, the main purpose of this essay was not to interpret themes and meanings (although it does a bit of that) but to demonstrate that the answers to most questions can indeed be found through careful viewing.

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Although some viewers weren’t satisfied with the ending of Lost, to say everything was left unexplained is untrue. Many things may be open to some interpretation, but that can be said of much good storytelling. The writers gave us more than enough information in the final season and the seasons prior to understand the whole series.

Spoilers ahead, obviously.

First, the Island is not purgatory. It is a physical place that exists in the fictional world of the show. But the Island has many extraordinary properties; chief among them is a watery cave of golden light that is the source of all life, death, and rebirth everywhere. Due to these powerful properties, the Island needs protecting from greedy humans who want to exploit it. That job has been held for at least a couple thousand years by a man named Jacob and by his adoptive mother before him. During that same period, Jacob’s brother, the Man in Black, has been trapped on the Island in a form that can take the shape of a person or sometimes a deadly black column of smoke. The Man in Black desperately wants to leave the Island, but if he does, the Island’s light will go out, which will cause the “light” to go out everywhere. That may be metaphorical and open to interpretation, but any metaphor that involves the world going dark seems like a good thing to prevent, so Jacob keeps his brother trapped.

Island Protectors are endowed with immortality and other super-human abilities to run things the way they want. Jacob was in the habit of bringing people to the Island as candidates to replace him as Island Protector, a long-term plan to counter the Man in Black’s own long-term plan to find a “loophole” allowing him to get off the Island.

After many centuries of people coming to the Island, some brought by Jacob, others trying to exploit its properties — most of them ultimately killing each other — finally, in 2004 both Jacob’s replacement and the Man In Black’s loophole arrive with the crash of Oceanic flight 815. Survivor Jack Shephard just happens to arrive with a casket containing the body of his father, as well as a a belief in science over faith, and a heart full of daddy issues. Jack’s fellow survivor John Locke is disabled due to a paralyzing spinal injury, but unlike Jack, he has faith in the mystical and a deep belief that he is meant for something more. This belief is greatly strengthened when the Island restores Locke’s ability to walk.

Jacob takes a special interest in Jack and some of the other survivors as potential candidates, while the Man in Black uses his special powers to trick Locke and others into unwittingly advancing his own agenda. At times the Man in Black even manipulates Jack by appearing in the form of his dead father (one of the Man in Black’s abilities is to appear in the form of people who have died).

Along the way, Locke is murdered by one of the Man in Black’s unwitting puppets, Ben Linus. The Man in Black then takes Locke’s form and manipulates Ben into killing Jacob. This sets in motion the Man in Black’s endgame of getting off the Island.

After everything Jack and the remaining Oceanic passengers have seen and survived, the ghost of Jacob is finally able to convince them what the Island is, and their potential roles in protecting it. Jack volunteers to be Island Protector, leading to a battle in which the Island’s source is “unplugged,” allowing its power to drain out with the water and the Man in Black to attempt escape.

However, the Island’s power being disabled also makes the Man in Black mortal, so Jack’s group (specifically Kate, with her rifle) is able to kill him. Jack is mortally wounded in the fight, so he stays behind to “re-cork” the Island’s source as the others escape in another plane (long story, see season 5). Jack makes Hurley the new Island Protector, then goes into the cave to reactivate the light. Jack succeeds, saving the Island and the world, then staggers to the same bamboo forest where we first met him at the beginning of the series. He sees the plane fly over, his friends finally getting off the Island, and Vincent the dog joins Jack by his side as Jack dies.

All of that happened in the “real world” of the story.

The rest of season 6, the “flash sideways,” takes place in a metaphysical plane of existence where Oceanic 815 seemingly never crashed. It is an afterlife, where time doesn’t exist, and where they all end up no matter when they died. Some died on the Island, some died long after the events depicted on the show, but they all ended up together in the unnamed place of the flash sideways. It’s a place Jack’s father tells him that Jack and many of the people he knew from his time on the Island made to find each other, remember their time together, and move on.

To what? That, I’ll grant, is never explained. What explanation would be satisfying? Of all the mysteries on the show, this seems the best one to leave unexplained. They walk out of a church and into a golden light. The end.