The long weekend allowed me to finally catch up and watch the season finale of Lost. I thought it was impressive, not only in the elaborate head-trip they managed to pull, but in the way it provides, like the last two finales, not just a wrap-up of the prior season, but as a setup for the next. I also liked the way the ending had echoes of the last finale. Before I go on, I must warn: MEGA-EPIC SPOILERS AHEAD.
The ending made me think of the nature of surprise in narrative. I mean, I didn’t see the whole “John Locke is really dead” angle, even when I figured out they had a body in that container. But in retrospect, it makes so much sense. After all, dead folks have been showing up the entire series (along with one not-so-dead) and it’s been pretty clear that the dead people have not been quite what they appeared— in fact they’ve been tied to the smoke monster, and in large part seem to be the same spirit/creature/entity. Also the apparitions have been, at best, ambiguous. Combine that with Ben and Richard’s insistence that this had never happened before, and it seems obvious in retrospect that the Locke of this season is an epic fraud.
That’s the way to do surprise in fiction. By the time you get to the reveal, you have all the groundwork set as to why it all makes sense. There are so many movies that have this kind of turn (oh noes, my boss is in league with the villain) where is simply does not work because there’s no basis for the reveal. Many times, in fact, the reveal renders the character’s prior actions idiotic. (He was working fer the terrorists, so why’d he order the special agents into Tripoli, where his terrorist allies were stationed when he could have sent them to Dubai and the movie never happens?) In the case of Lost, it is clear that the nature of Locke in this season was known at the outset.
In fact, it was probably known beforehand. If you follow Lost at all, you might remember that they filmed a number of different endings for the big reveal at the end of last season, with different people in the coffin. How would that work? Well if the resurrectee was a fraud, it could— in terms of the arc of the big plot— have been anyone. If you look at how the series is structured, it has two levels. One is the character drama which can go all over the map, with storylines weaving in and out of the big picture at a whim. The second, is the big story of the island, and I believe that was mapped out from day one. The genius here is that they really can kill off anyone. They know how this is going to end. They just may not know precisely who will survive to get there.
