UNHAPPINESS

I read recently a fan post trying to explain why people who were unhappy with LOST's ending. The poster said the reason was that those fans were unhappy in their own lives.

I disagree. It is disconnected conclusion. Even if fans were unhappy in their personal lives, they use entertainment like LOST as a means to escape their dreary lives. Fans who invested a great deal of time and energy in the complex story lines were promised and then expected a grand finale. If fans were disappointed by the ending, it was not because it mirrored their own personal lives. Quite to the contrary, LOST was supposed to fulfill happiness in them.

The disjointed "happy ending" that many fans enjoyed for the main characters is a throwback to some cultures were stories have to have a happy ending. Fairy tales are a good example. But dramas are not fairy tales unless things get mixed up along the way.

CHANGE: Don't just talk about it, go out there and do it. Don't just meditate about it, go out there and create it. Don't just pray about it go out there and take action; participate in the answering of your own prayer. If you want change, get out there and live it. — Steve Maraboli

Why LOST so drastically changed course on itself is a mystery. It was not answered at the 10th Anniversary Reunion or any subsequent interviews. 

We have discussed a theme of change before in reviewing LOST. One could find unhappiness in all of the main characters:

Jack: unhappy with his personal life to blame his father for everything wrong with it.
Hurley: unhappy with his personal life to blame his father's abandonment for his situation.
Locke: unhappy with his personal life to blame his father for betraying and stealing from him.
Claire: unhappy with her pregnancy because she came from a one parent home and can't handle responsibility.
Charlie: unhappy with his personal life because his band was his family unit when it broke up.
Kate: unhappy with her personal life because her mother loved an abused man more than her.
Bernard: unhappy that his wife had incurable cancer and he was desperate to find a miracle cure.
Sawyer: unhappy with his need to revenge his parents death that he turned into the man he hated all his life.

Every person has unhappiness in their lives. Life is a roller coaster, with highs and lows.

Many of the main characters did little to relieve their unhappiness. Exceptions included Kate, who blew up her house to "save" her mother. But that led to even more unhappiness and a fearful flight from justice. Also, Sawyer killed an innocent man because of his own personal demon for revenge.

Even during the series, the characters did not actively try to change their circumstances. They more often than not allowed things to happen to them. They were content to allow circumstances control them like a swift current carrying their body downstream. The merely accept where the current will take them, instead of swimming to their own shore.

And if LOST was a character driven experience of adventure, enlightenment and change, very little of that made it into the pages of the scripts. In the sideways church, they all appeared to be happy, but why? It would seem the reunion made each of them happy because they shared a common experience on the island. But for most, they never survived that experience. They never came to terms with their personal unhappiness. In the finale, all that happened was that their souls came back together in the after life. That reinforces the unhappy fact that the characters did not change at all. One could say that fate brought them all together; and fate would take them back into the light.

And that is a better reason for fan unhappiness with LOST's ending than trying to blame the fans for their own unhappiness.