“This is the end. Beautiful friend. This is the end. My only friend, the end. Of our elaborate plans, the end. Of everything that stands, the end. No safety or surprise, the end. I’ll never look into your eyes…again.”
And that’s true, because as Jack’s eyes closed for the final time we saw his journey come full circle and the end of our ride with LOST.
It was a journey that begun with a bumpy plane ride full of troubled souls searching for redemption, absolution and wholeness. In the end, it took a limbo medium to provide the ultimate level of oneness that allowed our Oceanic passengers to move on in their journey.
The finale provided meaning to the big question of the season: WHAT ARE THE FLASH SIDEWAYS?!?!?!?
From the episode and Christian’s summation we are to understand that the sideways world is a post-death limbo created by the friends of Oceanic to ensure that they’d all meet up and proceed into the afterlife together. We’ll get to that big picture stuff in a bit, but let’s deconstruct the episode first.
In the penultimate episode we got the successor to Jacob, and it was the obvious Jack. Jack, the man without a purpose, except that he thought everything constantly needed his fixing. The role of island protector represented the perfect task for him, as it was a job that he would never complete and would live longer than him. It was Man in Locke (MiL), who put this all in context for the viewers, when he characterized the transition as predictable. Sawyer gave us the first, albeit brief analysis of the move, which was that it would feed Jack’s god complex. And so what if it did? Now Jack had a task worthy of his religious devotion to fixing.
As the new Jacob, Jack only knows that he needs to stop MiL at all costs. He is vaguely aware of the precise nature of the stakes, but he recognizes their potent meaning. In the first half of the episode, this manifests itself primarily in grandiose marches through the jungle accompanied by the swooping score of LOST. (I would go on hikes if someone would pipe this stuff in throughout the mountain. Seriously, I would charge up mountains with the purpose of saving the island or fighting The Others.) But the marching isn’t without purpose, as Jack has taken his task quite literally. His role as protector of the island’s light means that he will guard it like a goalie, and essentially set up camp in front of it.
This idea is sidetracked by the presence of Desmond, who represents the wild card. He may be a tool for MiL or the saving grace for the castaways. MiL and Jack both believe that Desmond is a weapon for their side, which is why they each have no problem utilizing Desmond.
As the weapon, Desmond is the third variable in this equation. Luckily, he too is fully committed to playing things out. His belief stems from the fact that he is aware of the sideways world.
DESMOND HAS SEEN THE FLASHES!!!!
Desmond is keenly aware of what awaits the castaways. In the aftermath of his exposure to the light by Widmore, Desmond caught a glimpse of the sideways world. Unfortunately for Desmond, he thought this world was the product of his actions.
To be fair to Desmond, he’d been told constantly that the he was special and that the island wasn’t done with him.
It makes sense that he would have inferred his purpose as the creator of the sideways world. His confidence was based in strong logic, since he’d experience the sideways world not once, but twice. Yeah, that’s what I said. And here’s why…
So yeah, I’ve been preaching the importance of the season three episode, “Flashes Before Your Eyes,” for a while now. Remember the episode? In the aftermath of Desmond blowing up the hatch, and letting out a lot of light, he woke up in a world where he didn’t belong. Why didn’t he belong? Because he wasn’t dead!
Ok, so I was a little misleading, because I don’t think Desmond was actually in the sideways world we saw in season 6. I think we were seeing a Desmond-centric sideways world in that brief exposure (we’ll get to the Jack-centric sideways world in a bit). In Desmond’s flash he is able to relive the most important time for him, which was the evolution of his relationship with Penny. In this reality he was poised to make Penny his wife, a momentous step that he’d flubbed the first time around. If he had been able to pull this alternate future off he would have moved on too early, which is why Eloise cautioned him against bucking his future. She was basically ensuring that he wouldn’t move on too early.
The other important aspect of this episode is that it lends credence to the idea that the season 6 flashes were a product of “the incident.” If we think about the explosion of the bomb, we know that Jack blew it up to erase the past. He wanted to create a world where the departed wouldn’t have died on the island and all the bad experiences could have been avoided. Turns out Jack couldn’t make all of that happen, at least not in terms of his understand. But, and this is an important but (like J-Lo’s butt) he succeeded in this goal.
JACK REUNITED EVERYONE!?!?!??!
So yeah, Jack may not have saved everyone in their actual lives, but by detonating Jughead he created the sideways world and ensured that everyone would be reunited and have a chance to avoid the bad things of the island. He made sure that Oceanic did land, even if it was in a separate reality.
My belief in this idea stems from the fact that Desmond’s reality was the product of an explosion of light. With “the incident” we had a larger version of Desmond’s explosion, so it’s fair to believe that we could see amplified effects.
Don’t believe me? Well dead Juliet believed me. She said, “it worked.”
Ok, so it didn’t work in recreating the timeline, but the goals of the bomb detonation were achieved. Everyone was united and our castaways were given a new lease on life.
MORE TO COME....
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