Live Together, Die Alone

I finally watched it.

Overall, I'm a fan. The finale was extremely emotionally satisfying. To me, the show can be summed up with the classic episode title, "Live Together, Die Alone." Ultimately, Lost was about the characters and the relationships that they built. Love that.

Random thoughts:

•  I am so, so glad and grateful that the island world was real. The show as we saw it actually happened. Thank you, Darlton.
• Sayid ended up with Shannon instead of Nadia? Really?
• I've heard some observations that the sideways world, or the afterlife, was about being rewarded for good works. I disagree - I think the afterlife was more about relationships than good works. Although, if I'm right, isolationists Rose and Bernard maybe shouldn't have been a part of the afterlife community...
• I like that no one character was omniscient, or all-knowing. Jacob, Smokey, Widmore, Desmond, Jack - to a certain extent, all of their theories were wrong.
• Satisfied that the Jack/Kate/Sawyer/Juliet love quadrangle ended the way it did.
• “I have a bad feeling about this.” Star Wars,  anyone? I laughed out loud the entire commercial break.
• Note to Jimmy Kimmel – Christianity is NOT about earning your salvation.
• In the end, bad boys Ben and Sayid both got their redemption. Very satisfying.
• I still wish I had more closure with Desmond and Penny, Eloise and Widmore, and Daniel and Charlotte. Which leads me to...
• Favorite theory by Doc Jensen - 

"Ben will become another Desmond. He has a job: to chase after and gather his own spiritual clan and bestow upon them enlightenment. Those members could very well include all or some the following: his father, Roger Linus, Rousseau, Alex, Richard, Charles Widmore, Eloise Hawking, Daniel Faraday, Charlotte Lewis, Miles, Dr. Pierre Chang, Ethan, and of course, Annie... wherever she is."  

• Themes I liked:
• We all need other people (the repetition of “help” in the finale).
• We’re all flawed.
• “It only ends once; the rest is just progress.” Jacob's reign was improved over his mother's (candidates now had a choice). Hurley will continue to improve upon Jacob's reign (letting people leave the island, etc).
• The constant tensions – between faith and reason, fate and choice
• The only true happy ending, the only true hope, lies in eternity. Yes, what they did on the island mattered, but only as far as it affected eternity. In the case of the show, What Mattered was primarily relationships.
• (My only deep theological application) - I thought the show portrayed fate versus free will similarly to my interpretation of the Bible. Ephesians 2:10 says that we were "created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them." First Jack, and then Hurley, were meant to protect the island. That is the good work they were created for. But they still had to choose whether or not to accept it, to walk in it. I believe that they could have chosen to say no, although with potentially devastating consequences.

Questions I Still Have:

• With Smokey dead, what is Hurley still protecting the island from?
• Why was Eloise so determined to stop Desmond from “knowing”?
• What did the producers have figured out from the beginning? That there would be an afterlife? While a good way to bring closure, was it even necessary to the show?
• In season four, why couldn’t Ben kill Widmore?
• In the same episode, who “changed the rules”?
• What was the deal with Walt and Aaron? Why were they “special”?

Thoughts?