LOST ENDING REVEALED

 Binge watching and streaming services has all but killed the long, episodic American television series.  Darling series like Squid Game, a 9 episode kill-fest, keeps Netflix rolling with content. LOST also had its Battle Royale elements with the Others and the Smoke Monster, but not in a concentrated form like SG.

Nonetheless, SG won international fans for the Korean horror-action-game series. One major point was that in the end - - - there was an end! A winner! A clear conclusion!

In the early century, LOST and the Sopranos did something highly unusual: infuriate long time fans with strange endings. LOST's last season sideways arc will always be debated as a bad re-set by writers who wrote themselves into a corner with no way out. LOST never got the clear ending that now another show.

The Sopranos ended with a jarring, sudden cut to black screen.

The crime family was having dinner in a small restaurant when the door opens. Boom - -  no noise, no clue, just a black screen. The End. Fans debated for years what it meant. Did Tony did whacked? Did the family break up? Did nothing happen? Did the creators not know how to end the show?

Show runner David Chase recently spoke to Hollywood Reporter about the show and its ending. Chase said that 2 years before the ending, he was driving from NYC to New Jersey as Tony Soprano often did in the series. He saw a small road side diner. In his head, he thought that would make a good location for Tony's final demise. Yes, Chase always thought that Tony was going to die in the finale. It was just when and where. 

The article stated:

"Because the scene I had in my mind was not that scene. Nor did I think of cutting to black. I had a scene in which Tony comes back from a meeting in New York in his car. At the beginning of every show, he came from New York into New Jersey, and the last scene could be him coming from New Jersey back into New York for a meeting at which he was going to be killed. Yeah. But I think I had this notion—I was driving on Ocean Park Boulevard near the airport and I saw a little restaurant. It was kind of like a shack that served breakfast. And for some reason I thought, “Tony should get it in a place like that.” Why? I don’t know. That was, like, two years before."

Chase said, "I had no idea it would cause that much—I mean, I forget what was going on in Iraq or someplace; London had been bombed! Nobody was talking about that; they were talking about The Sopranos. It was kind of incredible to me. But I had no idea it would be that much of an uproar. And was it annoying? What was annoying was how many people wanted to see Tony killed. That bothered me."

WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?

 AN OUT-OF THE BLUE QUESTION:

WHAT IN LOST WOULD YOU HAVE CHANGED?

 There were plenty of unanswered questions, plenty of angst about the final seasons direction, and curses about the Ending. But generally, what would you as a loyal viewer want to have changed in the original series?

PLOT ELEMENTS? 

Did the show have to have its start as a plane crash survival story? Could have it been set in a different location such as hospital, mental institution, a secluded university campus or secret military base?

Did the show have to have a mixed genre premise? Could it have been a straight drama? Or could it have been a straight action-mystery?

Did the show need to have unclear time travel rules and supernatural smoke monster elements? If you took away the Jacob and the Island story line, would LOST still have delivered on its character goals?

CHARACTERS?

Would you have pared down the ensemble cast into a smaller focus group? Would you have eliminated the Tailies from consideration? Would you have changed the Others from its Ben's cult status to something else (like pagan, primitive natives with special powers such as worshipping the smoke monster)?

Would you have not used flash backs and flash forwards to give us the main characters pre-island stories? Would you have given the broken characters a new chance to live out their lives in their set, reality pain (such as Locke and his paralysis)?

Would you have given a secondary character a bigger role in the main story? Would the Others been better served under Patchy? What if the pilot survived to take control away from Jack? 

THE ENDING?

What did you really want to see in the final episode? Did you need a happy ending or could you have lived with a bitter island bloodbath? Did you need to see a post-island epilogue of the final survivors trying to cope back in the real world (such as Sawyer maybe uniting with his daughter)?

Would you have wanted to erase the flash sideways world in its entirety? Would you like the island stories to end, in context, on the island?

Would you have wanted one last twist - - - such as Hurley in the mental institution playing with an island snow globe?  

Would you have accepted a Sopranos style ending (sudden end to black) which was considered by the show runners?

THREE AND OUT

Yahoo News reported on LOST's back story from one of its co-creators.

LOST launched a television phenomenon by creating mysteries and Easter egg hunts like the numbers, the hatch, and The Others.  It had high ratings from the 2004 pilot right up until the finale in 2010.

A common debate has been when the series jumped the rails to go out into filler tangents and story line dead ends. Some believe the middle seasons were merely filler episodes which distracted from the original intent of the show.

Co-creator Damon Lindelof  all but admitted it when he recently said the original outline for the ABC series was a three-season run.

“There were all of these compelling mysteries and so we were saying, ‘We wanna have this stuff answered by the end of Season 1, this stuff answered by the end of Season 2, and then the show basically ends after about three years,’” Lindelof told Collider. “That was the initial pitch.”

“[ABC] were not even hearing it… they were just like, ‘Do you understand how hard it is to make a show that people want to watch? And people like the show? So why would we end it? You don’t end shows that people are watching.’”

Eventually, ABC allegedly agreed to set an end date for the show – but on its own terms: 10 seasons.

That never came to pass, as Lindelof eventually reached a compromise during negotiations around Lost’s third season.

Lindelof was set on a longer fourth season to wrap the story up which still involved “a number of the characters” getting off the island and later returning for the final run. When ABC offered just nine episodes, the two parties settled on slightly shorter seasons up to season six, a marked departure compared to the 20-plus episode seasons we got in the show’s first two years.

Despite the apparent directional conflict with the network, LOST moved forward, with all its flaws, to the controversial finale. Would have a concentrated LOST series have been better? Would more mysteries been solved? Would the End be different?

 Let's look back at the first three seasons as a guide with the help of lostpedia:

Season 1 concentrated on the middle-section survivors and their fight for survival and rescue. This was the modern update of the Robinson Caruso shipwreck story. It is a classic premise to hook viewers with a familiar story told in a new way.

Major plot points included:

Finding a suitable camp location.
Half the survivors, including Kate, Sawyer, and Sayid settled on a beach near the crash site.
The rest, led by Jack, chose to live in the caves which are located in the jungle, near a source of fresh water.
Investigating the Island (searching for food and water, discovering the caves, and learning about the Black Rock).
Confrontations with The Monster.
Getting to know and trust each other (see especially Kate, Locke, Sawyer, and Jin).
There is a relatively long-standing animosity between Michael and Jin: the latter attacked the former in order to get his watch back, which Michael had found in the wreckage of the plane.
The survivors (especially Jack and Shannon) begin to question Locke's intentions due to his lie about Boone's injury and consequent death.
Trying to leave the island.
Building and launching the raft.
Hunting for Claire, after she was taken by the Others.
Opening the Hatch found by Locke and Boone.
Started to tell the survivors' story by introducing and using Flashbacks.

The early story was basic survival: food, shelter and water. Also, a means of rescue.
But the survival group was not unified so individuals personal instincts were more important than uniting around  common leader. This was the early character conflict between those who thought they would lead.

The mysteries were unusual: the Black Rock ship found in the middle of the island; the Smoke Monster, the Others and the Hatch.  The story pivoted from basic survival to danger from Monster, the Others and the Island itself.




Season 1 Finale: As the castaways brace themselves for an attack, Claire's baby is kidnapped, leading Charlie and Sayid on a dangerous chase into the jungle. While the threat of the Others bears down on the castaways, the raft crew continues their flight from the island - but when the hope of rescue appears on the horizon, they will soon learn that appearances can be deceiving. Charlie and Sayid stumble into a trap as they race to confront the kidnapper. Jack and Locke argue as they prepare to blow open the hatch. The raft crew is overjoyed to be discovered by a passing ship, but their elation is short-lived when they realize things are not what they appear. The hatch is opened, and what is inside it stuns the survivors.
 

Season Two focused on the Hatch. To find something scientific and out of the ordinary on the Island filled the castaways with hope (and food and protection) but also doubt (what was its purpose on the island). The writers were praised for effectively using flashbacks to flesh out the secrets of the characters.

Major plot points included:

The Swan, the Numbers, and pressing the button, all of which appeared to have been resolved by the end of the season.
The tail-section survivors, whose stories began and ended in the season, with the exception of Eko and Bernard.
The Others, including Tom, Goodwin, Klugh, and the fake Henry Gale (Ben).
The DHARMA Initiative stations/
Continued to tell the survivors' story by using flashbacks

Finale: Live Together, Die Alone: After discovering something odd just offshore, Jack and Sayid come up with a plan to confront "The Others" and hopefully get Walt back. Meanwhile, Eko and Locke come to blows as Locke makes a potentially cataclysmic decision regarding the "button" and the Hatch.

Season 3 mainly focused on the Others who had become the biggest danger to the castaways survival.

Major plot points included:

The Others (including Juliet Burke, Tom Friendly, Ben Linus and Richard Alpert), who they are, why they are on the Island, the way they live their lives and who leads them.
Contact with the outside world, including Penny; the Flame and Galaga being destroyed.
Desmond's future-telling powers, going back in time and Charlie's imminent death, and to a lesser extent, time.
The mysteries of the island, mainly pregnancy issues and the healing properties (see Mikhail).
The arrival of Naomi and the freighter.
Continued to use Flashbacks and during the final episode of the Season 3 they first introduced the Flash-forward idea that was used throughout all of Season 4.

Finale: Through the Looking Glass:  Jack and the castaways begin their efforts to make contact with Naomi's rescue ship.

"Through the Looking Glass" means where nothing is quite what it seems. In Lewis Carroll's book, it can mean clocks that work backwards or "... a poor sort of memory that only works backwards."
Alice again enters a fantastical world, this time by climbing through a mirror into the world that she can see beyond it. There she finds that, just like a reflection, everything is reversed, including logic (e.g. running helps you remain stationary, walking away from something brings you towards it, chessmen are alive, nursery rhyme characters exist, etc.).

At the end of Season 3, current reflection shows series turned to pure fantasy and not reality.


But by the end of Season 3, LOST could have wrapped up its main stories without jumping the shark (literally and figuratively) with the entire Jacob Temple worship story which attempted to merge ancient religions with an old Greek surreal tale of sibling rivalry.


A three season run would have boiled the LOST story universe into easily absorbed plots:

1. The conflict and tension in the 815 survivors camp on leadership and direction for survival. A passenger class struggle between the middle section and the tail section who had more contact and suspicions about the Others.
2. The external conflict and combat with the Others who claim the Island and its magical properties as their own. The story would have concentrated more on the science cult's obsession with time, pregnancy and mental experiments (which could have easily explained the Monster as being the physical manifestation of mentally ill minds through the Island's unique electromagnetic fields). In other words, the Smoke Monster would have been the island Frankenstein, roaming the island after breaking out of its captivity.
3. The realization that the only way to leave the Island was through the Others assets (boats, communications, etc.) or through rebellion (the freighter coming back to dethrone Ben as the island leader.) It could have been an interesting dynamic on whether Widmore would be as evil as Ben or whether he would have rescued the 815ers then restore the "real" original research of the Island. This would have been a cleaner and more logical ending to the series as it avoids the pitfalls of supernatural beings and clear evidence of a purgatory premise. The main characters would be given an opportunity to "go home" on the freighter or "stay" to live a new life on the Island.

THE END REVEALED BY A SLIP OF THE TONGUE

When the Sopranos ended its television run, it did so in such a fashion that it had its fandom up-in-arms, cursing and wondering what the hell happened to their favorite show. It ended with a hard cut to black. No one knew what would have happened next even though the episode built up to a climatic ending. Boom, without warning, the series ended.

With this type of controversial ending now possible, LOST fans worried that its show runners would also try to pull a large "fake out" to avoid answering the calls of diehard fans for answers to the key mysteries.

The writers did try to get out of years of story layers when they thrust upon us the flashforward universe, where the characters were living different lives but apparently in the same island time frame. It began to call into question whether the flashbacks were actually truthful portrayals of the characters prior to the crash landing on the island. For if the flashforwards were not "real" in the sense that that universe was merely a holding world until the souls of the friends could reunite in the after life, then the same could have been true of the flashbacks (which contained some serious medical and legal errors). If the flashbacks were a dream state, what was the island? A collective dream state or purgatory as speculated by some season one viewers.

LOST viewers never got the clarity from the producers about the last season. We were merely told that the show was always "character focused" so they did not have to answer the complaints.

After many years of debate, Soprano fans got their answer. From recent NY Post article:

The Sopranos” creator David Chase accidentally spoiled the finale during a leaked interview for  his book celebrating the Emmy-winning HBO mob drama.

At the end of 2007’s final episode, titled “Made in America,” Tony Soprano (played by the late James Gandolfini) is eating out with his family amid a turf war between the New Jersey and New York Mafia families while an enemy hit man waits in their midst.

The screen then fades to black as Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” blares on the soundtrack, leaving it ambiguous whether the show’s star gets whacked — until now.

Spoiler alert: In the roundtable discussion, co-author Alan Sepinwall asked Chase, “When you said there was an end point, you don’t mean Tony at Holsten’s [the diner], you just meant, ‘I think I have two more years’ worth of stories left in me.’ ”

Then Chase, 74, dropped the bombshell: “Yes, I think I had that death scene around two years before the end … But we didn’t do that.”

Noticing his epic leak, co-author Matt Zoller Seitz chimed in: “You realize, of course, that you just referred to that as a death scene.”

“F - - k you guys,” replied Chase upon realizing his blunder.

THE END GAME

The Sopranos, the crime family drama, is having its 20th anniversary. Some reports state that there may be a sequel in the form of a prequel that begins where the original show ended (in a diner with a jolting, quick fade to black).

It was that ending that inspired other creative types (writers and show runners) to mess with their audience. One of the prime directives of a writer is to tell a compelling and interesting story through characters and their actions. There is a beginning introduction, a middle part of conflict and options for resolution, and a climatic ending to resolve the main plot points of the show. Usually, the ending involves the main character learning a valuable lesson or makes a statement on social commentary. In essence, that is the unwritten entertainment contract between show and its viewers. But the Sopranos ending changed that covenant.

The show just . . .  abruptly ended.

It left the world to scratch their heads in disbelief. What just happened? Something was about to happen. What was going to happen?

Then a simmering vent of anger; WTF?

Because viewers spent a lot of time on getting to know the characters, follow the story, "experience" the events shown to them, they felt entitled to a proper ending. That is not to say they are guaranteed a "good" ending.

Viewers fumed because they thought they were "played" by the writers. Or that the writers "copped" out on wrapping up the loose ends of the plot lines so they just decided to leave everyone, including the characters, hanging in limbo.

Hollywood creative types loved the idea of an ambiguous ending. Instead of offending one group of viewers with a creative choice, you can confuse all the viewers with no choice at all.

It gave other shows the license and cover to not wrap up story lines. In a complex, tangential world of LOST, that is how the writers got out of the corner they painted themselves in. Instead of answering the big questions, they punted with a side world reboot to give the main characters a happy ending (or so it seemed). But that made many viewers madder than a hornet. They felt let down, betrayed by a series that they embraced and discussed in minute detail with friends and other fans.

It was like reading a great novel, only to find out that the last chapter is missing.

In today's more fragmented entertainment consumption model (on demand, binge watching), shows probably cannot get away with this type of shocking ending.

NEW ENDING

Author Maria Robinson wrote, “Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.”

It is very difficult today to do a show like LOST: a large cast, remote location shooting outside Hollywood studio gates, and a long run to develop and execute a complex story structure. Today's audience is not as patient. We live in a world of instant gratification and quick swipe destruction.

Traditional American TV networks (CBS, NBC and ABC) have lost their grip on the vast majority of viewers. Current network shows are recycled sit coms and spot dramas from the 1980s and 1990s (medical, cop shows, family comedies like Roseanne). Networks do not have the time or resources to re-invent their shows towards a younger audience.

The younger audience does not sit in front of a television set in the family living room. They are mobile, independent loners. With an internet connection, they can search and find their own amusement. The top landing spot is YouTube, where people nearly their own age have their personal channels doing goofy things teens would do if they actually went outside and played in the school yard.

As the networks got bulldozed by cable operators offering a hundred diverse channels, cable itself has also run its course. You may have a hundred channels ported into your cable box, but the choice is becoming more limited as specialty channels can no longer find sponsors. And channels co-owned or operated by major media conglomerates have started to run the UHF business model of re-runs of very old shows to fill time slots.

Cable operators last gasp was the rebellious nature of original programming at HBO or Showtime. But those outlets have now been muscled out of critic's circles by the economic power of the new platform: the streamers like Netflix and Amazon whom are pouring billions into their own original shows. Netflix's model is to run a new series maybe for a season or two, then it vanishes. The idea is to keep subscribers tuned in to "new" shows and movies. It is a disposal approach for a growing disposable society.

Just as LOST was unable to get a syndication deal because each episode was not a stand alone story, current creators have to maximize revenue streams in order to survive the next pitch meeting. It is doubtful that a show like LOST today would be green lit for no more than 12 episodes. Could LOST have been compressed into a 12 episode season? Perhaps, as the tangential filler would have to be discarded and a clearer, tighter premise on the science fiction part of the program would have been the foundation for climax and conclusion. It would have been less character driven and more story driven series. For example, Jack could have been killed off in the pilot (as the original pilot script called for), but he could have appeared throughout the show as a trapped ghost (like Michael at the end). But that presupposes that the show runners would actually make a decision on whether the island was purgatory or time-space pocket of abnormality.

But even in today's smartphone world, YouTube content creators are yesterday's news when SNS feeds are the way to get more followers that social media marketers covet. Twitter and Instagram are the current hot platforms for quasi-entertainment (or more apt, time killing). It seems there is more ambiguous to celebrity wannabe status on those feeds which must strike a chord with Millennials.

If you are a studio head or even a guy sitting in his basement with his laptop, you have to wonder what is the next bit that will be a long term trend. It is like chasing a cat in a cornfield. There will be more misses than hits. But in the current climate, some viewers really do not care. And that could be the end of highly complex fictional storytelling.

CRACKED UP

Cracked had an article trying to answer the great unsolved mysteries of television.

Of course, LOST was one of those TV enigmas.

This is how it summed up the series and its ending:

What The Hell, Lost?

It begins with the basic premise question:  were the characters time-travelers, incompetent aliens, sexy magicians or spirits in the afterlife? Was everyone on the show dead? Was it all the dream of an autistic child?

Their  Explanation:

It's not the afterlife, and the island is magic. As for every other question, some were answered in an epilogue on the Season 6 DVD set, though they too can easily be summed as everything was an experiment by DHARMA.

Some DVD question and answers were referenced as support of their argument:

"What's with that giant bird from Seasons 1 and 2?" DHARMA experimented on animals!

"Why do women have pregnancy problems on the Island?" It's the electromagnetism!

"What was that weird thing in Room 23 that looked like a brainwashing video?" A brainwashing video! DHARMA used it to erase memories!

"Where did the food drops come from?" A warehouse in Guam!

"Why polar bears?" They were good candidates for testing!

>>>> Except, what about the elements not tied to the Dharma folks. Namely, all the island inhabitants, including the immortal guardians Crazy Mom and Jacob?  Does the island magic come from these immortals trapped on the island (for what reason?)? See, the question within the question madness?!

Sure, one can logically state that something out of the ordinary would seem to be "magic" to a primitive culture. For example, an isolated  island tribe with no contact with modern, western civilization could consider a helicopter as "magic" since they have never seen aircraft. But the pilot could "explain" to the tribe the basic principles of flight. In LOST, the explanation of "magic" has no basic principle in which viewers could believe. It is purely used in this context as a broad brush for a fantasy story (which intentionally did not want to explain its elements).

QUEEN OF MYSTERY

Recently, a Korean television mystery-drama did the unthinkable - - - it fooled its fans with a crazy bad ending.

Queen of Mystery was a standard 16-episode drama. It had typical elements of a standard police drama: an unhappy police officer trying to solve a personal mystery, a civilian wrought by the murders of her parents, power brokers who manipulate the system for their advantage and a spider web of connections between the parties.

SPOILERS ahead for those who want to watch the program.

The police officer was born into a rich and powerful family. However, he sheds his status to become a police officer in order to find the true killer of his girlfriend who was murdered 17 years earlier. The murder was pinned on man with a snake tattoo by a working class cab driver, but the police officer, Wan-seung does not believe the official reports.

Seol-ok, a housewife of a local prosecutor, has turned into a mystery solving sleuth. She uses her deductive skills like Angela Lansbury's character in Murder She Wrote.  However, Seol-ok is really trying to track down the real killer of her parents. She was left an orphan who was taken in my a well-off family, eventually marrying their eldest son. His family does not treat her well, but Seol-ok is such a kind person she lets it all go.

Wan-seung was studying to be an actor. He was in a theater troupe where he met Hyun-soo. He fell in love with her. They planned to spend the rest of their lives together. But Wan-seung's powerful lawyer father did not approve. He wanted his son to join and run the family law firm. But Wan-seung does not care about power or privilege, just Hyn-soo. Then one night, she is abducted and killed. Wan-seung never believes that she is dead - - - that she was forced to leave Korea because she found out something bad about someone in power. Even though the police and prosecutors have closed the case file, Wan-seung is convinced that she is alive (her body was not found).

Wan-seung and Seol-ok cross paths to begin an uneasy partnership in solving other crimes. In one respect, they are both outsiders in both their professional and personal lives.

Throughout the series, their mysteries begin to intertwine. Seok-ok's father was the one who reported the man who killed Wan-seung's girlfriend. As the key witness, he and his wife were killed and their case was never solved. Seok-ok's husband had told her that he would look into it, but he never did. We would learn later that he may be part of a cover-up, orchestrated by Wan-seung's own father.

Whenever they get close to solving it, something blocks them. When Wan-seung finally tracks down the tattoo killer, who asks to meet him to tell all, he finds the perp already dead on the ground. Then Wan-seung is quickly arrested by Detective Go for murdering him. It was a classic trap. In order to get his freedom, Wan-seung has to surrender to his father's will to leave the police force and take over the family law practice. He leaves to study abroad then returns to Korea to begin what it seems to be a new life.

But in reality, he is still trying to track down all those responsible for Hyun-soo's death. His little band of detectives, including Seol-ok, have an off-the-grid command post to try to connect the dots.

Near the end, we see the diligence of the sleuths working together to unravel the conspiracy. Finally, they smoke out another police detective as Hyun-soo's murderer. Detective Go knows he is in trouble when the great "fixer," Mr. Kim contacts him asking to see her body. Go claims that he buried her with his own two hands. But Kim's benefactor wants DNA evidence (not available at the time of the crime) to confirm that Hyun-soo is dead. The benefactor is Wan-seung's father. They all met in the forest where Go has uncovered a shallow grave of human bones. As they take samples, the forest bursts of police officers. They arrest everyone for conspiracy.

Wan-seung goes to the grave to see the engagement ring still on the finger of the victim. He breaks down and cries while Seol-ok watches from the ridge.

It would seem that the two mysteries were wrapped up by the arrest of Wan-seung's father and his associates for the cover up of several murders.

But in the last moments of the last episode, the mysterious Mr. Kim is walking down a hallway when a young woman passes him then stops to ask him if he was looking for her. Kim is confused. Then the woman smirks that she is Hyun-soo. Bam. End of series.

Viewers were stunned by the twist. So much so, that they were angry. Several days later, the producers had to make a statement about the show. They claim they did the ending in such a manner because they were planning on a second season.

Reviewers were quick to point out that K-dramas rarely have second seasons. They are usually 16-20 episodic features (and long run series can go up to 52 episodes). And in the case of Queen of Mystery, the network had not ordered or committed to having a second season.

Viewers felt betrayed by the writers. How can you do a complete 180 degree turn of the story line at the end of the series. Wan-seung found the remains of his long, lost love. (DNA would prove the identity of the body - - - but it was clear that the ring was enough for Wan-seung). Who is this new mystery woman claiming to be the dead Hyun-soo? No one knows why she was killed in the first place. Wan-seung's powerful father is in jail but it appears that he was merely a fixer like Mr. Kim. And why did this mystery woman come after Mr. Kim? Who is he working for? 

It was a mean trick to play on the viewers. If writers give us mystery plot lines and clues, it is their responsibility to provide conclusive answers to those mysteries. Queen of Mystery's ending was actually worse than LOST's. LOST may have not answered all the burning fan questions about the island, its powers, the afterlife, etc. But Queen of Mystery threw the entire series in chaos with a massive new mystery in the last seconds of the show.

FLASH OF LIFE

One of the mysteries of The End was the last flash of light when Christian opened the doors in the sideways church.

What was that flash of light supposed to represent?

We were told that the characters were "moving on." To what? Where? How? and Why?

A wild yet intriguing science article could shed some "light" on the ending.

Scientists at Northwestern University have found that human life begins in bright flash of light as a sperm meets an egg. This flash is caused by a sudden release of zinc when the egg is fertilized which causes light to be seen under the microscope.

The reports state that an explosion of tiny sparks erupts from the egg at the exact moment of conception.

Scientists had seen the phenomenon occur in other animals but it is the first time is has been also shown to happen in humans.

“To see the zinc radiate out in a burst from each human egg was breathtaking, ”

Professor Teresa Woodruff, Northwestern University said in a Telegraph (UK) article.

Researchers noticed that some of the eggs burn brighter than others, showing that they are more likely to produce a healthy baby.

 

One of the early issues in the series was the theme of the island stopping conception or babies being born. We were never told why the island with alleged "healing" powers (such as seen to Rose for cancer and Locke for paralysis) could abort a fetus. 

What could be the possible symbols for light? Light is energy in a pure form. Light is a positive influence. Light can be representative of god in many religious contexts. Light can represent life. It could represent a soul. And now science adds conception to the list of possible symbols for life.

When a egg is fertilized, the human DNA of two people merges to create a new life. 

Was the fact that both Claire and Sun birthed their children for the second time in the sideways world, a clue that the characters were precursors to conception? 

It is possible when the show writers grappled with their big question, what is life and death, that they masked the symbolism too tightly in reality.

Each of us carries the genetic material of our parents. That genetic material is code. Code that creates the complex biochemical factory called the human body. Code that is similar to that of a computer operating system. 

Many fans thought LOST was merely a computer video game with the characters being avatars of the players. But instead of looking at the show as an illusion of a video game, look at it as symbolic embodiment of the genetic material of each characters' parents. For example, Jack was not Jack a human being. Jack was the collective code of his father and mother's life, traits, predication, personality, faults, emotions and intelligence. Jack was a double helix compiling his parents data into his own data set just prior to "conception" with another double helix (specifically Kate's ancestry).

Other scientific studies indicate that many people are predisposed for disease, alcoholism, illness or athletic because of genetic disorders hard wired in a person's DNA. Each of the main characters traits and characteristics could represent a genetic pattern for that future human being.

The idea that the sideways church is merely a vessel for the fully developed sperm and egg DNA of ancestors reaching puberty (the waxing and waning of hormones) is an interesting concept. The last flash of bright light in the final episode could have marked the real beginning of the story.

X-FILES LOST FINALE

In the world of nostalgic reboots, X-Files would have been an easy choice. It was a network cult sci-fi series. The original creator was on board. The original cast was on board. But this 6 episode miniseries was totally overboard.

Instead of one continuous six hour plot, it had a shotgun approach of several desperate stories which in themselves had no climax or interwove connections. The last two episodes were a trial balloon for a younger spin-off series starring agents Miller and Einstein, younger clones of Mulder and Scully.

As a result, the charm, the humor and intensity of the original series was lost. Only one episode that dealt with werewolves had any resemblance to the old series.

In the rapid fire finale, science snapped its finger to make an alleged miracle vaccine in a matter of minutes, then a desperate race by Scully to find a dying Mulder. But the big questions of why the pandemic started and how was behind it were left in the darkness of the viewer's confused imagination.

But worse was the LOST ending, where the light from above followed the camera directly into Agent Scully's right eye. Cut to black. Sopranos-style open ended ending. Terrible.

You don't know who is commanding the space ship. You don't know if they are present to help or hurt Mulder or Scully. You don't know whether they are aliens or the government.

As consumers of popular entertainment, viewers are entitled to a story that contains a beginning, a middle and an end.

A cliffhanger is a literary cop-out by the writer-creator. It is horrible trend that needs to put out to pasture just as this miniseries has done with the X-Files franchise.

WHO DESERVES A HAPPY ENDING?

There are some stories that deserve a happy ending. But there are some stories where characters do not require one.

I was troubled by this season of Doctor Who. The showrunner was keen on giving two companion characters major send-offs. It was one of those "they deserved their moment in the limelight." But it does dilute the main character's role as a super-intelligent, time traveling alien who always viewed himself as above the more primitive human race.

Part of the problem was that after the Doctor's current companion, Clara, died because she tried to be as clever as the Doctor himself. That was a pretty solid finish for a character that really did not take a back seat in her last season. She did not play the secondary damsel in distress role; she was a co-worker in solving problems. But the show brought her back in a weird Time Lord trope of pulling her back a second before her death so she could further humanize the Doctor. I don't think that worked at all especially since Clara is no longer dead, and running around with another immortal in their very own time machine.

Then for the annual Christmas special, the Indiana Jonesian character, River Song, had her grand send-off. Again, this plot seemed too forced and out of character. The Doctor has always been cast as a loner who always needed an innocent human companion to balance his potentially unchecked desire to create chaos and destruction. To have one last caper is one thing; but to push the tangential story line that the Doctor and River Song were timelessly in love (even through a re-generation) further weakened the Doctor's character.

 Did Clara and River Song require a happy ending? No. It would have been more powerful if they had bad or heroic endings since that would have been key points in the Doctor's future decision making process (wrestling with guilt, shame, loss).

This same type of forced happy ending put a sour taste in many fans. The final season was a mess of character show reel type plots. One example was the back story episode for Alpert. The only thing that episode did was add evidence that the island was not purgatory, but Hell.

LOST could have ended well at the end of Season 5. Yes, there would have been many loose ends not tied up - - - but that was said when the series finally concluded in the sideways church and then some more plot issues. Was the sideways post-death limbo just a device to force a happy ending for Jack? It would appear so, but it was not executed well because once Jack awakened, he did not seem very happy. More confused than happy.

Other characters, such as Ben, got a happier conclusion than they really deserved. Ben was an alleged mass murdering, abusive psychopath who really did not pay any penalty for his sins. Was that all immaterial when Ben got to choose to stay in the sideways existence to find his missing family life with Rousseau and Alex?

Kate was very happy to see Jack once she awakened from her island slumber. But that happiness was contrary to the reality of their past relationship. In the O6 world, Kate's relationship with Jack soured quickly. On the island, Kate chose Sawyer over Jack. When Jack was in the depths of alcohol/drug depression, Kate turned his back on him. And when Jack was injured on the island, Kate did not stay by his side but instead left the island with Sawyer. It made no sense for Kate to come back in the after life to be Jack's main love interest, his soul mate.

But then again, in the final scene two characters in the church apparently had no happy ending: Locke and Boone. They had no one special with them to share the next level of existence. Both died in the island time frame in brutal and senseless deaths. And in the subsequent story lines, they were not truly mourned by their friends. Was it enough just to have these two loners be a part of a larger group?

Fans probably like the idea of happy endings because they had invested so much time and thought into their favorite characters. But sometimes forced happy endings are the worst thing a show can do.

HOW LOST IS PERCEIVED TODAY

In the top of some search news pages, there is usually generalized questions and "answers."

Recently, during a scroll down the page the headline "7 Worst TV Show Endings of All Time."

Of course it was click bait, but the first item on the slide show was LOST:

The Answer stated:

After six seasons of intricate plot build-up and a never-ending series of loose ends and questions about the true nature of the island and its inhabitants, the writers revealed they had written themselves into somewhat of a corner.

Instead of answering the audience's questions, the two hour finale "The End" ended up smoothing over most of the show's most important and unresolved problems by explaining that they all were in purgatory, though if they had really been there the whole time, no one knew.

Ask a "Lost" fan about the finale and you're sure to summon rage and frustration years later.

CLOSURE

Some things end.  Some things end when you least expect them to end; friendships and relationships.

How they end may be as important as why they ended.

When one person breaks off a friendship or relationship cold turkey, this may lead the other person bewildered, confused, and in shock. If that person does not know what he or she did wrong, the pain of loss is intensified by the lack of closure.

Closure is the act or process of closing something in the a sense of resolution or conclusion at the end of an artistic work or  a feeling that an emotional or traumatic experience has been resolved.

The LOST experience mirrors real life in many ways. For die hard fans, the characters in the show were their weekly friends. They bonded with their stories, hopes and dreams. They were so involved in their lives that they took to the internet to debate, defend and marvel in their characters attributes and stories. So many people were going to take it hard when LOST ended just as any bond of friendship or affection ends in real life.

At least in the series, the producers were given the opportunity to wrap up what they considered the important loose ends to give the main characters a send off to the heavens.  More fans than not accepted the finale as being the resolution they wanted for their characters, their friends and themselves. The journey was not a waste of time. It was just a sad reminder that the six years together was over. Only memories remain.

In real life, some people do not get the opportunity to say goodbye in a relationship. Suddenly, a person is taken away by an accident or sudden death. Sometimes friendships fade away from neglect or fear that they may become too serious for one person. Sometimes relationships end in a heated way that leaves the parties bitter and hurt. Sometimes the pain lingers because one person in a relationship does not have the opportunity to say "I'm sorry," or even "goodbye." The lack of closure takes a greater toll than the known or unknown reason for the break-up.

Even fans who hated LOST's ending can still feel that the series and their relationship to the show ended with real closure. They know how things ended. They know the characters got together as part of their bonds of friendship. Certain characters found their true loves. It may have been overly sweet and cliche ending, but none the less, an ending.

Many TV shows are canceled between seasons, with a cliffhangers or characters in limbo. This is the worst type of fan purgatory - - - not knowing what was going to happen. Unless the show is rescued by a Netflix, Amazon or other secondary outlet, there will always be a "what if?" haunting question in the viewer's mind. That question is also pondered in real life. It is not a good feeling. But sociologists tell us that even the harshest questions about other people will fade over time.

MAD MAN'S REGRETS

Slate.com posted an article referencing a "find" from a writer's discussion panel that may shed light on the problems associated with getting all the loose ends of Mad Men tied up by the finale.

As Slate reports "more often than not, the most satisfying stories are those that end neatly—every plot resolved, each character’s arc completed. In this regard, Mad Men, which aired its final episode on May 17, surely frustrated many of its longtime admirers. Over the course of its seven seasons, the series accumulated more plots and characters than its creators could manage."

Many fans, including casual ones caught up in the season ending hype, found the the show’s meditative, introspective conclusion at bit baffling considering the expectations.

The writers and show runners had a full season to plan and execute their final scripts to cover as many loose ends as they wanted to cover. But many fans left the finale frustrated by its major omissions.  Entertainment Weekly’s Anthony Breznican tweeted a picture of what he described as Mad Men show runner “Matthew Weiner’s ‘Wish List’ of plot points to cover before the finale.” 

If it’s real—and Slate believes it is —the list offers insights into the creative process behind one of television’s most critically acclaimed shows.

Some open or unanswered character plots sting most for Mad Men’s fans. Weiner, too, wondered about the fate of Sal, Sterling Cooper’s art director, who is forced out of the firm after rejecting the advances of one of its most prominent clients in Season 3. For some—especially those who held out hope that the closeted Sal would find new freedom in the post-Stonewall climate of the last episodes—his failure to reappear was a major disappointment. Likewise, the list suggests that Weiner had intended to return to Sal’s tormenter, Lee Garner, Jr., though he never returned after the fourth season. Just as Mad Men denied Sal redemption, it refused to allow its viewers to witness Lee’s comeuppance.

As Slate concluded the wish list calls attention to the ways Mad Men’s closing episodes couldn’t please everyone so fans should be glad that some loose ends weren’t tied up. The theory is that in life, people come and go and get lost or forgotten. If approached with the sentimental question years after someone was gone ("what ever happened to so-and-so?") makes the story a little more real.

But these side stories are still a distraction to the main final question: what really happened to Don Draper? The biggest omission of the finale was Don's alleged return to the Advertising World to create iconic TV spots. But did Don's road trip actually change him? Or was he still conning the people close to him? The long journey of a main character has to come to some meaningful conclusion. The Mad Man finale did not do it.

BAD ENDINGS

BBC.com's Culture section had an interesting article on why so many popular television shows have crappy finales.

It is more probable than not a successful show will have a terrible end. 

 Rolling Stone critic Rob Sheffield, was quoted as saying “Series finales always suck, and everyone knows it, but TV shows still feel obliged to keep attempting them. The idea that a show needs a finale is just one of those daffy ideas America took to heart in the 2000s, like MySpace, the Zune… or the concept of Paula Abdul judging a singing contest. It was a confused time.”

There are a few conflicting concepts at play when a television series ends. First, the creator may have run out of ideas (or the show's quality has run its course). Second, the networks cancel the show prior to aligning all the story lines into one final climatic conclusion. Third, some creators are "too clever" for their own good. They try to make out--of-the-box statement pieces to cement their own TV legacy instead of being true to the show and its characters.

The bigger the show the bigger the expectation for a great ending.

The Mad Men finale was the latest foray into the show ending autopsy. While many die hard fans loved the finale, many critics found it troublesome, confusing and outright sappy bad. Shows with cult-like followings like Mad Men, which only drew 3 million viewers, want to get a big sendoff for their invested time in the series. As a result, creators and writers know that fans will over-analyse the finale on the internet for days and weeks afterwards. 

As the article points out Series finales are inherently difficult to master since long running shows have created hundreds of hours of television, aired over several years, with complex plots, conflicts and character bubbles so to merge all the elements down to one episode, one final scene is problematic.  Viewers expect more from their finales but they rarely get what they’re hoping for: closure.

Despite such confusion, there are some elements that can help finales rise to their inherent challenges, or at least survive them, with a series’ legacy intact.

The M*A*S*H finale, the most-watched broadcast of scripted television in the US ever, attracted 106 million viewers, was a terrible mess. The premise was fine; the hospital unit was being torn out as the war was winding down. But the show's sledgehammer message that "war is bad" through Hawkeye's sudden mental breakdown then his attempt to say goodbye to his colleagues was like a student rushing to the school to find that he had missed his high school graduation. 

As bad as M*A*S*H's send-off was, the Seinfeld finale make nos sense at all.  Seinfeld, the self-proclaimed "show about nothing," was a stunt that did nothing but put a resume item on all the various supporting cast members. The unbelievable premise was the main characters on trial for, essentially, being terrible people – that is, for violating a ‘Good Samaritan Law’ in a small town far from the show’s New York setting. Waves of a less than a minute repeats of minor characters saying how bad the characters were to them was essentially a clip show without any funny bits.  So many viewers despised the Seinfeld finale – perhaps because it made them uncomfortable in having to question why they liked characters who may indeed have been terrible people. Others thought it was a dumb ending that did nothing but diminish the comedy standard it tried to create in the 1990s sit-com arena

The current trend was to leave the audience in the dark, literally.  The Sopranos cut-to-black ending found fans within the writing industry as being a bold and shocking end to an acclaimed series, but fans were outraged by the stunt. Did Tony and his family get whacked? Why did the creators leave the story line open to individual interpretation? Many compared this ending to reading a long book only to find that the last chapter was removed.

LOST had similar critics who thought that the series creators did not fulfill their promises to give the viewers the answers to the main mysteries that cultivated a rabid internet community of theorists. It also sparked backlash that the producers had lied to the fan base in the early seasons that the show was not about purgatory, but the ending seemed to put that in real doubt.


The Mad Men finale also had similiar gripes. But the shows creator did come clean and say that yes, Don Draper's character created the iconic Coke commercial seen as the closing sequence. However, this is intellectually dishonest because a real person actually created that advertisement and his name was not Don Draper. The show runner's post broadcast statements actually make the finale seem even worse since it made Don go back to NY to his old job when his character clearly "killed himself off" by reverting to his old name and leaving behind his old past. But that attempt to create "a happy ending" palatable to the fan base should not be the core for a writer.

 The Mary Tyler Moore Show planned its own end date in 1977, resulting in a finale many would argue sets the standard for all future television endings. It combined these approaches: it gave smart viewers something to think about like Seinfeld or The Sopranos – in a softer, sweeter manner that also provided satisfying closure.  In that show’s finale, the entire staff at the TV news station where Mary has worked for the whole series, WJM, is fired. As they all clean out their desks and move on, we see how office mates often function as families, and were becoming especially important to single, working women like Mary in the ‘70s. Such insights, undercut with the melancholy of a real goodbye, earned the finale every right to some tearjerking.

It’s even possible that inconsistent shows with long runs, like Star Trek: The Next Generation and Battlestar Galactica, were enshrined as "classics" in hindsight simply because of their strong finales. ST:TNG ended with the Captain making an appearance at the senior staff's weekly poker game which signaled the final bond between the characters. It showed that during the series each character had risked something during their space exploration, but in the end they could come together in friendship.

But the greatest TV finale with the most memorable twist was The Bob Newhart Show. Newhart, a dead pan comedian who had a long TV career, was the focal character running  a small New England B&B resort.  He had a quirky cast of characters as he tried to run a vacation inn. But that series finale put in a strong memory most people have of Newhart is of Newhart waking up in bed beside Suzanne Pleshette, who had starred as his wife in his previous series, and realizing he had merely dreamed the entirety of the later show. It was so genius and unexpected that it will survive the test of time.

So it is possible for popular television series to have brilliant finales. It takes writers who are true to their vision, realize what their audience wants, and have the guts to make a truly memorable, non-cliche finish to a long run.

MAN MEN ILLUSIONS

Many of my friends who were die hard Mad Men viewers felt that the show's conclusion was great. There were several vocal writer-critics of the series end. They did not like the new justification for acclaimed series ending on ambiguities like the Sopranos or even LOST.

But reading more the of back story on lead character Don Draper, I find it hard to connect the dots to the ending. Yes, the McCann advertising agency in real life created that brilliant Coke ad. However, the ad executive who actually did it was trapped in an airport observing fellow passengers passing the time during the delay. The majority of people felt the ending of the iconic commercial was done by a returning Draper to the agency. But that assumption does not follow from what we saw from the Draper character prior to the end.

I had not realized at first that Draper was a con man of sorts. He assumed the identity of a fallen comrade in the Korean war in order to get home. Once back into the states, he assumed this dead soldier's name (and some reputation as being a Purple Heart hero) in order to run away from his troubled past life. These are familiar themes and plot lines in LOST.

In Draper's own mind, his past including his name, was killed in Korea. By erasing his past in such a manner, he was free to become the man dreamed of becoming: a highly successful person with all the rewards of the age - - - wine, women and song.

But big secrets are like one's shadow - - - always there to haunt you when you least expect it.  Apparently, his past would crop up during the series, but he always managed to charm his way to keep it a secret so he could continue his path to wealth and fame.

Part of the cost of keeping such a secret was the divorce to his first wife.

Part of the cost of keeping such as secret was keeping around an associate more ambitious than himself.

Part of the problem of keeping such a secret is that over time it will wear you down. At some point people like you, respect you, love you not for the real you but the illusion that you had created: Don Draper, dapper great advertising giant.

So when his NY ad world collapses around his illusion (with his second divorce, and his small agency being taken over by a heartless giant), Draper reverted to back what he did in Korea - - - he found a way to run away from his problems and responsibilities. In essence, the last couple of episodes was all about Draper killing the Draper persona.

You can tell by the evidence that he started calling himself his old nickname, Dick. It shows that he had discarded his NY life and the fraud that continued to eat at his soul. He could not go back to his hold Dick Whitman life because he killed that off a long time ago (he was officially dead). So this character had now created a man without an identity or purpose; a body without a soul.

So as he wandered out west, bouncing in and out of bed and in and out of trouble, Draper really did not care what would happen to him. In his final phone call to Peggy, to say goodbye, he meant it. He was never coming back to McCann or his old life. It was over. Peggy sensed suicide and she was partially right: Don killed his identity to assume a new one unrelated to his past - - - some new age. transcendent loner.

That is why is it not realistic to believe that Draper suddenly changed his mind to return to NYC and create the iconic Coke commercial of total world peace through soda. That type of illusion was too great for even him to swallow.

This explanation is part of the tone of some viewers who felt "underwhelmed" by the finale. They thought that something unexpected, visual, striking and horrible would happen to Don. Negative expectations are still heightened expectations to viewers. But there was nothing truly negative as most of the story lines were wrapped up in a happy bow. Don's character sitting on a California bluff doing nothing but chanting is the exact opposite of what most viewers wanted to see in the end. But in one respect it is a full circle character arc where the Don persona of being the high profile, respected and wealth ad man is tossed aside to return to a second Dick persona of being a faceless loser and loner who is dropping out of society.

MAD MEN

Having only seen the last 2.5 episodes of Mad Men last night (on the recommendation of many), I cannot personally conclude whether the ending was good, bad or indifferent since I don't know all the background stories of the characters (though I had a basic understanding through articles and reviews throughout the years). 

I did observe the New Hollywood thematic plot lines for a large ensemble cast woven into a premise of 1960s nostalgia. Advertising is the illusion to elicit dream fulfillment. Don, the golden boy advertising wunderkind, seemed to have had it all, twice, and lost it because of his personal demons, career pursuits, work stress and the gnawing fear of failure in a high pressure profession. One theme may have been you have to sacrifice everything to get to the top.

But I found two redemptive themes in the finale. First, the cliche that it is always darkest before the dawn as represented by Peggy's story. Our generation had the iron spike of work ethic pounded into our skulls. We were supposed to work hard, focus on the tasks at hand, and advance our careers to the top of our field. Success was measured by titles and bank account balances. But Peggy's story ended with a better reality check: that life is not about just work. You don't have to sacrifice everything for a career. And what may be missing in your life may be right in front of you if you stop and really think about it. Work, like life itself, is better shared with someone who cares about you.

Second, I believe in the principle that every person has one great financial opportunity in their lives. This principle can also be applied to one's own personal life. The problem is that people don't realize the opportunity when it comes along, or are too afraid to take the risk. In Pete's case, he never thought of the Lear job as an opportunity since he was dead set on his advertising career path (to be the next Don Draper). But once he realized it was an opportunity, he was given a second chance (another opportunity) to have the family life he always dreamed he would have, but far away from the corrupt action of NYC. If Pete did not make that realization and put his feelings on the line for his second chance, he most likely would have wound up like Don.

Now, another feature of New Hollywood series writing is the "non-ending ending" to a major character. The creative staff may do this in order to allow the fans to finish the story with their own theories and opinions. Don's story has that non-ending end vibe. He was the anti-hero. For a man who knew the human psyche so well to tap it to make impulse purchases, he could not control his own impulses. He was the focal point of what was good and bad in his generation. Many will think that he had a transcendental awakening on his road trip journey of self-discovery, but I saw it as a selfish guy running away from his responsibilities and problems. We never see him get back to work so it is speculative leap to conclude that Don's spiritual retreat galvanized his creative soul to make the iconic Hilltop Coke commercial (in reality, the idea for that spot was from an ad executive stuck in an airport in Ireland who observed a group of diverse people in the waiting area laughing and joking while drinking soda.)

It also harks back to the LOST controversy, where the final credits rolled over the airplane debris on the beach. Many thought that was the final clue to the mystery that the show's characters died in the plane crash and the plot was all based in purgatory (which TPTB still deny).

Instead of going back home to support his family with the struggles of his ex-wife's impeding death, Don pushed farther west, away from those responsibilities. It is more probable that he wanted to drop out of society, get away from the material culture his subconscious helped create; to be a loner so he would never get hurt again from the pain of meaningful relationships. When he told Peggy goodbye, he meant it. The advertising industry's Great White Whale was going to beach himself to never return to his past. Is that the great redemptive moment for this character? Maybe. Maybe not. There was a segment of the culture that did decide to "drop out" to become part of the Lost Generation.

Many loyal viewers liked how Mad Men ends. Prior to the show, there were many fan theories on how the show could end (including Don jumping off a roof like in the opening sequence.). But that open ended non-conclusion to Don's story line allows fans to project their own ending to their favorite character's journey. I still think that is a writer's cop-out in some respect.

THE SUDDEN END

LOST's writing and creative staff admired how The Sopranos ended even though it left many viewers and critics baffled by it.

The Sopranos was one of the most controversial endings in television history. The camera suddenly cuts to black after a quick shot of Tony Soprano looking up from his plate of onion rings in a small town New Jersey diner, loyal viewers were left, quite literally, in the dark as to the fate of the beloved/reviled mobster. Did he die? Did he live? No one, except the show’s creator David Chase, knows for sure. In the past, Chase has rebuffed any suggestion of any fan’s conclusion to his series.

That said, in DGA Quarterly, Chase goes into a lengthy, incredibly detailed, and wildly fascinating dissection of this memorable finale. He breaks down the action shot-by-shot, giving hardcore fans unprecedented access into his thought process and directing choices, including some awesome insight into why he chose Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin'” to score the scene:

I love the timing of the lyric when Carmela enters: ‘Just a small town girl livin’ in a lonely world, she took the midnight train goin’ anywhere.’ Then it talks about Tony: ‘Just a city boy,’ and we had to dim down the music so you didn’t hear the line, ‘born and raised in South Detroit.’ The music cuts out a little bit there, and they’re speaking over it. ‘He took the midnight train goin’ anywhere.’ And that to me was [everything]. I felt that those two characters had taken the midnight train a long time ago. That is their life. It means that these people are looking for something inevitable. Something they couldn’t find. I mean, they didn’t become missionaries in Africa or go to college together or do anything like that. They took the midnight train going anywhere. And the midnight train, you know, is the dark train.

I said to Gandolfini, the bell rings and you look up. That last shot of Tony ends on ‘don’t stop,’ it’s mid-song. I’m not going to go into [if that’s Tony’s POV]. I thought the possibility would go through a lot of people’s minds or maybe everybody’s mind that he was killed … I thought the ending would be somewhat jarring, sure. But not to the extent it was, and not a subject of such discussion. I really had no idea about that. I never considered the black a shot. I just thought what we see is black. The ceiling I was going for at that point, the biggest feeling I was going for, honestly, was don’t stop believing. It was very simple and much more on the nose than people think. That’s what I wanted people to believe. That life ends and death comes, but don’t stop believing. There are attachments we make in life, even though it’s all going to come to an end, that are worth so much, and we’re so lucky to have been able to experience them. Life is short. Either it ends here for Tony or some other time. But in spite of that, it’s really worth it. So don’t stop believing.

To Chase’s credit (and to most people’s frustration), he still does not give a definitive answer as to Tony’s fate. 

Some critics still think the Sopranos ending, like LOST's, was a creative cop-out.  A few infer that the creative minds drew so many plot tangents and mysteries the creator's well had run dry on how to wrap things up. Even LOST's showrunners have stumbled upon the vague explanation that the show's finale was about "bigger questions," like life and death.

What was Chase trying to say? That life ends and death comes, but don’t stop believing. There are attachments we make in life, even though it’s all going to come to an end, that are worth so much, and we’re so lucky to have been able to experience them. Life is short.

Everyone can agree "Life is short," but so is the conclusion of someone's favorite weekly entertainment show. Mankind is all about curiosity, exploration, relationships, causes and effects. And answers - - - we need to continually need to final answers otherwise we would apathy and sink like a shark who stops swimming.

But in the Sopranos ending, viewers had a cue to the long history of gangster film tropes, especially the quaint family diner "hits" by a character's rivals. And many assumed Tony got what he deserved as he looked from his plate when diner door opened . . .  but others could presume a fate worse than death such as the FBI arresting him, or an old girlfriend coming in to make a scene to destroy his family. Which such a sudden ending without more, fans were left to their own imagination to figure out what happened next.

LOST's showrunners also keep going down this path, in interviews saying it was never their intent to answer "all the questions and mysteries."  In fact, they boast proudly of not answering the big questions.  But one of the bargains in the creator-consumer entertainment complex is that the viewer or reader is not to being tricked into thinking that the time, energy and resources given to the show, film or book was for naught. A creator who takes a path of creating mysteries is bound by this implied contract with his audience to answer what he created for them. Despite LOST being a highly fan-interactive show, it was not up to the fans to write their own ending to their series.

Yes, creators and writers have the right to see their personal vision to their end. But then they should at least have the decency to explain their ending to questioning fans. Otherwise, there is a smoldering resentment that carries on long after the series' end.
 

CREEPY

The internet is filled with lists on popular culture, including vague rankings on televisions shows.

LOST appeared in the Top 10 "creepiest endings" to a television series. Creepy, an unpleasant fear or unease about a situation, may not accurately describe LOST's conclusion, but the list remarks stated:

As if this show was not strange enough, the show's finale added an extra creep factor to it. Though the finale did piece things together, fans who had fallen in love with the various characters were heartbroken, or better yet, disappointed to learn they were all living in purgatory. It made some viewers question whether the characters were ever alive at all.

 It depends on whether you take TPTB's word that the characters were "alive" the whole time (when the purgatory theory was advanced by fans early on in Season 1). But the purgatory Ending did bluntly raise the possibility that the characters were dead all along.

And that doubt is valid because the writers could have done a different, non-purgatory ending, IF they so chose to do so. However, it would not have been "as happy" ending because so many main characters (Juliet,  Jin, Sun, Jack, Locke, Boone, Shannon, Christian) were already dead so you could not have a happy reunion at the island grave yard. For a few, having the characters all dead prior to Flight 815, with the unhappy departed having their souls treated to "one final adventure" in the spirit anteworld called the island, would have been a clearer justification for the sideways church reunion.

It would have been creepier if the final reveal was that all the characters NEVER lived at all; that the entire series was a "what if" these human spirits actually had lived . . . in other words, the final scene would have not shown a church but an operating room door at an abortion clinic.  All the characters were never born. But since they were innocent, the universe gave them the chance to live like humans in a cosmic playground.

HAPPY ENDINGS

There is a trend that seems to come from Pan-Asian entertainment stories from Japan and Korea. Long lived shows, comics, or  manga seem to need to end happily ever after. In Japan, the Trinity of global manga-anime franchises (Naruto, Bleach, One Piece) is winding down with the Bleach anime ending its run after 366 episodes with a happy ending as the lead regains his powers and heads home. After 15 years of publishing and selling more than 130 million issues, Naruto manga concluded with a two part "Harry Potter" style happy ending set 10 years after the action stops.

The culture must expect a story to have a happy ending; a publisher may demand one in order to leave the fans upbeat for the next franchise. It also may be the creator's vision, since he or she must think that the characters they nurtured for so long are like family, and everyone wants their family to live on happily ever after. You can have the most violent, vile, bloody and evil action series suddenly wrap up with a tortured, stretched but positive ending.

And that is the divide in America entertainment from the Asian ending principles.

In U.S. shows, there is a greater focus on "the anti-hero," characters who are acting outside the norms of society. Their brash freedom and anti-authority beliefs still strikes a chord in the American spirit of independence, adventure and freedom.

So in U.S. shows, the hero character does not necessarily live happily ever after - - -  in most cases the character's adventurous fun runs into the long arm of the law, and is crushed without any moral redemption. Breaking Bad's ending is an example of this, where the main character had no regrets for the pain he caused to others. And most fans of the show expected and accepted this ending.

With all the red shirt killings, evil mental torture, manipulations of people's souls, LOST was barreling down the road to a chaotic and explosive ending where no one was going to be saved from the dangers of the island. So a great deal of fans expected the show to end in a flurry of death and characters unable to come to terms with their faults, their lost lives, or their wasted second chances (as capsuled in Locke's earlier demise). Despite all the adventures, choices, decisions and actions of the main characters, no one found any real redemption from their evil ways, sins or regrets.

But since many fans loved their characters like close friends for six years, they were pleasantly surprised and happy that their fantasy reunion in the after life was the last images of the series. They believed the characters suffered enough in life to have some sort of reward in the next life. And that reward should be shared with their island colleagues.

There is no right or wrong answer to this theme of ending a long running show with a happy ending. It is a creative choice the writers consciously make in order to finish their vision of their characters. And with any creative endeavor, there will be various viewpoints on how successful the ending is perceived by fans.