League of Inveterate Poets

By Mark Traphagen on April 24, 2010

I’m already steeling myself that a lot of people are going to be angered by the series finale of the TV show LOST. Why? Because not every single question or mystery will be definitively answered. LOST producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof have been saying that since at least last summer, but I still think there are going to be a lot of disappointed or even angry viewers in a few weeks.

And that’s too bad, because I support what the producers are doing.

In a recent interview with Wired (“As Lost Ends, Creators Explain How They Did It, What’s Going On“), the LOST producers confirmed that their primary concern won’t be dotting every closeup of Jack’s eye and crossing every tea time with Eloise Hawkings.

Instead, all along they have made their first priority building a good story with excellent character development. The sci-fi and mystical elements, as fascinating as they are, are NOT the main reason for LOST. They exist to create conflict and drive the plot that forces the characters and their relationships to develop. They also exist to make the characters (and viewers) confront the big issues the show tries to raise: faith vs. science and determinism vs. purposefulness. Those are questions that never get definitive, “that settles it” answers in real life, and they won’t on the show either.

One of the most interesting reveals in the Wired interview–something I had never heard before–was that the apparent lack of interest in asking about or discussing the island’s mysteries on the part of the show’s characters in the first couple of seasons was intentional. In the second season the writers even called attention to it with little “shout out” jokes to the fan sites. When fan forums pointed out ad nauseum the anachronism of the 2007 model washer and dryer amidst the 70s-equipped hatch, a few episodes later Hurley mused aloud, “Anyone ever wonder where that washer and dryer came from?” Cuse and Lindelof have now told us that the characters’ laissez-faire attitude towards the weirdness all around them occurred so that the audience was forced to pay attention to the characters, not just the bizarre island.

But why should we be happy if LOST doesn’t answer every one of the hundreds (thousands?) of questions it has raised over its run?

Really, do any of the best fantasy stories we’ve seen or read tie up every loose end, answer every mystery? Sure we find out a lot about Harry Potter’s past and his true significance as Rowling’s series climaxed, but do we ever find out why he is so special? Who or what has determined that he should be the chosen one who would defeat Voldemort? Is there a God behind the Potter universe? Why should it even be predetermined that love should ultimately defeat evil? Why should Potter be able to come back from the dead? Any thoughtful reader should be pondering those and many other unanswered questions, but does anyone complain that HP doesn’t explain all these things?

Let me make another analogy, this time to the real world of scientific discovery. Do we get angry at articles in science journals that uncover incredible, inexplicable mysteries in our universe (such as dark matter) but offer no definitive solution as to why they should be? Of course not. We revel in the wonder and the mystery. There is something very human about being able to perceive mysteries yet find the joy of living in a universe where not everything is known and explained.

So I for one toast and admire the courage of the LOST producers as storytellers. I predict that for those of us who are content with that, the loose ends will turn out to be a gift: they will become threads we can continue to unravel in entertaining and enlightening conversations for years to come.

Let me close this with the words from one of my favorite songs from singer-songwriter Iris Dement:

Everybody’s wonderin’ what and where they all came from.
Everybody’s worryin’ ’bout where they’re gonna go when the whole thing’s done.
But no one knows for certain and so it’s all the same to me.
I think I’ll just let the mystery be.
I think I’ll just let the mystery be.

UPDATE: For those of you who still insist that ALL must be resolved, we offer this:

Video from 5Second Films.

UPDATE May 13, 2010: Interview with producers Cuse and Lindelof after the controversial Across the Sea episode supports the thesis of my essay above, and goes a long way in explaining what the creators think LOST is really about, and why they have told the story the way they have.

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