For seven years, we were given enigmatic mysteries to solve, great quests to undertake, and a grand sense of overarching purpose and importance to everything.

Turns out none of it was ever explained or resolved at all.

But hey — they all met up in the afterlife later!
And that’s all that matters — emotional closure!

Don’t you mean “flout”?

While I know you intended “heroin-fueled”, the “heroine-fueled” alternative is quite enticing!

It was just a “of course everyone meets up with all their friends again in heaven” – a blatant curtain call / soppy padding. To me they might as well have cut out all of the sideways scenes and just shown one scene after Jack died of him meeting them all in heaven (just like he did).

I don’t know whether to consider the sideways sections of the episodes Red Herrings or mere padding.

The show was a set of character studies, not a mystery or an adventure show. The flashbacks, the “future”backs, the “side”backs, all showed the characters under a variety of different conditions. There were classic themes of relationships, good vs evil (or selflessness vs selfishness, which is the same thing), faith vs reason.

The finale took the theme of relationships outside of the context of the show, and I believe it was as much about the viewer’s relationship with a series as much as about the cast/crew. Given how much people got worked up over BStarG and The Sopranos’ finales, JJ Abrams’ was more or less telling us that the series is over, and it’s time to let go. Given the hype, he managed to both give a satisfying conclusion to the “mundane” story that had built up over time, as well as tell us that they weren’t going to answer every little question, and that while we could spend as much time as we wished arguing about whether or not it was a good series and/or finale, that it was over and we were just going to have to get used to that idea.

Also, I was thankful that JJ didn’t make a cameo (as Ron Moore so foolishly did in BStarG’s finale) in the last episodes.

It was a television series. A very good but flawed long term story, as all television series are. Nature of the beast and all that. It was still a great ride, and certainly a better conclusion, intellectual or emotional, than most television series provide.

Matt, I think one of your commentators hit the nail on the head in terms of your best point: the ending provided an emotional albeit not intellectual satisfaction…

But I do absolutely agree that, even if we were left intellectually wanting a bit at the end, it was very emotionally satisfying. To me that was the most important part of it. I didn’t watch Lost because it was intellectually stimulating – it was a fantasy show! (Sci-fi, esp. Star Trek, typically does it much better for me in the intellectual sense.) But the depths and motivations of the characters in Lost had mostly been well-developed over the years, and I cared about what happened to them.

Plus, for the most part not only was the writing and production of the show really good throughout its run (with some exceptions to the writing portion here and there), but from the first episode they managed to cast really talented actors in most of the roles. The cast was able to pull off the depth and complexity that the writers demanded, and the final episode was fantastic in that regard.