The 22-hour finale of “Lost” concluded late Sunday on ABC. Below, some reactions from major critics, fan sites and selected “Lost” fans from around the Web. (Spoiler: most liked the relative ambiguity of the ending; others, not so much.)
Mike Hale, New York Times:
Well, it was better than the “Life on Mars” finale.
But you have to think that the gauzy, vaguely religious, more than a little mawkish ending of ‘Lost’ – “Touched by a Desmond” — will not sit well with a lot of the show’s fans. Many of them will have thought that things were going pretty well for the first two and a quarter hours of the final episode, as the producers treated them to a series of montaged moments in the sideways reality world, in which the main characters regained their memories of the island. But then came the ending, in which most of the main cast members gathered at a church for the big reveal: they were all dead. […]
The finale will be compared, in its effect if not its form, to that of the “Sopranos.” The “Sopranos” finale was ambiguous and a bit of a shrug, but not puzzling; to me the “Lost” finale, in the immediate aftermath, felt forced and, well, a bit of a cop-out.
James Poniewozik, Time:
The great puzzle of the last season of Lost has been: how can both the flash-sideways universe and the Island universe mean anything? If Sideways is the universe in which Oceanic 815 never crashed, who cares what happens on the Island? If the Island is where the characters' fates are sealed, how can there be any meaning to what happens in the Sideways?
The moving, soulful finale that Damon Lindelof and Carleton Cuse gave us met that challenge. The Island world, we learned, absolutely mattered to the physical fate of the survivors. (And sci-fi purists ticked over the spiritual ending should at least give it up for this: what happened, did, indeed happen.) And the Sideways world mattered because it was the culmination of the spiritual, moral, human lives--the souls--of the characters.
It mattered, it moved, and it achieved.
Liz Kelly, Washington Post:
If, as some said, "Lost" was to be judged by its finale then all I can say is Damon and Carlton pulled it off. I've been crying and laughing and basically an emotional basket case for the last 2.5 hours. I could not possibly have asked for anything more. I am in awe.
Henry Hanks, CNN:
Answers or not, as two-and-a-half hours of television, the final "Lost" was extraordinary, and I think it accomplished what it set out to do: It was a very memorable ending, and people will be talking about it for years to come. One thing I never expected was how emotional I would feel watching this finale, and reflecting on it.
Jeff Jenson, EW:
“The End” was an emotionally draining epic that had me crying with almost every single “awakening” and has left me mulling the true significance of the Sideways world, which was revealed to be a Purgatory-like realm created by the souls of the dead castaways themselves.
