NFL
By: Rick
LOST was one of the greatest shows of all time, with one of the most discussed endings ever. Maybe it’s the people who wanted to be right all along or maybe enough people wanted the show to mean more than it did. The answer is clear no matter which side of the fence you’re on. No, they were not dead the whole time, and plenty of evidence supports it.
While there are breadcrumbs that led people to speculate that the passengers of Oceanic Flight 815 died and were sitting in some sort of purgatory the whole time, this can’t be further from the truth. You don’t just need the backup of the showrunners who claimed the island was a real place and these people weren’t dead the whole time. That should be enough, but since most people take that as a cop-out and their mystery was spoiled early on, lets dive into the details of LOST.
You didn’t need to be a hardcore fan diving into all the Easter eggs and water cooler theories to see the main point of this show. There is one prevailing theme that lasted the entirety of the six-season run.
Science vs Religion
That’s it, that’s the premise of the entire show. Sure, there were cool smoke monsters, the Dharma Initiative, and time travel but all of those tie into the same concept. LOST used the island as a real place to challenge their views and provoke reflection on both. If they were dead the whole time, none of the show would make sense, which is why people claim that in the first place.
There are two prominent principles on the creation of man and life itself that are echoed on the show. There’s the scientific principle that all life can be traced back to a specific spot and then migrated outward. Then there’s the religious view that God created man from Adam and Eve etc.
So what does it have to do with LOST? Everything. If you were to go back and rewatch you’ll see both of these echoed throughout the show. Just watch the final season and you’ll see the two “Adam and Eve” skeletons found in the cave. In the finale scene where Jack has to protect the island and save this one specific magical spot as if it were the place where life itself was created.
Even if that is too much of a stretch for you. Consider the island’s two main inhabitants before Oceanic Flight 815., the Others and the Dharma Initiative. What was the Dharma Initiative doing on the island? Oh just conducting science experiments on time travel and equations to stop the end of humanity. The place where all life began seems like the proper place to prevent life from coming to an end.
The Others? They were just worshiping a savior on the island and reminding people that “God loves you, as he loved Jacob.” Can you think of any other religious figure whose name starts with J who was thought to be a savior and died for man’s sins? His counterpart too had demons that tried to drag people down to the depths the same way the smoke monster tried to drag Jack underground.
Now that we’ve established the major plot points most people missed on LOST, how the heck does it wrap up to them not being dead the whole time? If you pay close enough attention you’ll see everyone who died on the island sacrificed themselves to save someone or all of the survivors.
Boone died trying to get out of the distress call. Charlie died warning the others of “Not Penny’s Boat.” Jin would die trying to save his wife. With the exception of a handful of characters who were written off for various reasons, most of the characters would die saving someone else. Since they say that sacrifice is the ultimate redemption, it would make sense that their sacrifice would forgive all their transgressions and sins allowing them to meet in the church in the end. Who was the one character who never redeemed himself? Ben. Who didn’t join the others in the end? Ben.
If the passengers were dead the whole time in some sort of purgatory, there would be no way for these characters to redeem themselves and have their sins forgiven. Furthermore, season 6 gave us that purgatory-like story with their “flash sideways” showing these characters’ lives being significantly better than the one they lived as if they had been redeemed.
If you watched this show and missed all the religion and science-based plot points, yeah it’s easy to jump to the characters being dead the whole time. However, the writers of LOST used brilliant stories of redemption to challenge what the audience thought about science and faith. They only packaged it as a sci-fi/mystery or no one would’ve watched.
