Fans divided over Lost finale (spoiler alert)

Just like the stranded survivors of Oceanic flight 815, fans of Lost were left vainly looking for answers after the curtain finally came down on the supernatural drama series.

For six years and 121 episodes, millions of viewers around the world have been hooked and infuriated by the riddles thrown up the ratings hit, about passengers marooned on a Pacific island after a plane crash.

Yet the 13.5 million US fans tuning in for Sunday's two-hour finale on ABC television hoping to be given neat answers to the mysteries which have gnawed away at them for years were divided.

Dozens of messages posted on ABC Television's official Lost website yesterday - which invited viewers to comment on their favourite part of the finale - revealed the sense of frustration.

"There was no favourite part of the finale. It sucks. We've been had. SO PISSED," one message said.

"What a PATHETIC ending this crap was!!!" ranted another.

"Too many things did not match up and nothing was explained about the island.

"It was by far the worst final episode to a series I've ever seen and am quite pissed off for wasting so much of my time and interest hoping for a decent denouement."

Another writer chimed: "Horrible! What a let down... six years of my life for one of the biggest let downs!"

Other fans were less critical, even while acknowledging that several plot points remained unresolved.

"I loved it. It was very emotionally satisfying and that was enough," said one message.

"I still have some questions, but don't we all?"

While fans were sharply divided, critics were broadly supportive of the finale, saying the fact so many questions were unresolved was in keeping with the show's tendency to bemuse during its six-year run.

"Thrillingly, cleverly, and in a manner that tapped into the simple, profound truths of great American works like Our Town, the show spelled out for viewers what it has been saying all along," USA Today's reviewer enthused.

"Lost is about life and death, faith and science, spirit and flesh, and has always stressed that the title refers to the characters' souls, not their location," the paper added.

National Public Radio reviewer Linda Holmes said the show had "died as it lived: by offering effective character studies out of murky logistics".

"Many people hated it instantly, there is no question," she wrote.

"It was always going to be so. But whatever unanswered questions remain about statues and symbols and food drops, those last couple of hours treated the characters very, very well."

Entertainment Weekly meanwhile said the finale was "pretty delightful, full of reunions that were both emotional and funny".

A reviewer on the Gawker.com website was unimpressed, however.

"Once upon a time, there was a television show about a bunch of people on an island," wrote Max Read.

"For six years it was one of the most fascinating things on TV. And then it ended, in the worst way possible."

"Lost ended tonight, and with it the hopes and dreams of millions of people who thought it might finally get good again."

So, what actually happened?

Jack Shephard, it appears, died in a bamboo grove on the lost island, gravely injured after saving it, his eye seen in close-up shutting as the series' final shot.

But what about the other castaways? What was the state of their mortality, both on the island and in the so-called sideways universe that showed their parallel existence elsewhere, mostly in Los Angeles?

"Both stories seem to be part of their limbo, part of their purgatory," said Chris Seay, author of The Gospel According to 'Lost'.

The finale, he said, "wasn't what I hoped."

Pointing to the pledge from Lost producers that the island wasn't a purgatory for the victims of the Oceanic airliner crash, Seay suggested that the outcome of the series amounted to "sort of a misdirection".

He cited the finale's closing scenes in an L.A. church where many of the former castaways - all of them dead - convened, with Jack, apparently, the guest of honour.

With light flooding the sanctuary, it seemed a vision of a blissful afterlife, or the gateway leading there.

"It was the most compelling part of the show - people that you love being present together," Seay said.

"They spoke about going to the place where you can be with the people that you love. This is how we speak of heaven, but in the most common understanding, it's a place where people that you love are reunited."

That's all well and good, he said with a laugh.

"But now, many of us are going to be having conversations about who died when, and what was the island. These were questions you would hope we would have gotten a little further down the road on."

On the other hand, Nikki Stafford "absolutely loved" the finale.

The author of Finding Lost, book-length guides to each season of the series, Stafford argues that the plane really crashed on the island, the castaways survived, and went on to have all the experiences viewers saw there.

But in her view, the sideways world is their purgatory. And since "there is no 'now' here," in the words of Jack's father at the church, all those gathered there had died, at one time or another, after living their own respective lives.

"They reconverged for Jack's sake," Stafford said, "and this purgatory was an afterlife scenario, shown through Jack's lens."

Stafford, who currently is writing her Season 6 Finding Lost volume for October publication, then acknowledged, "Other people are going to see it differently, I'm sure."

- AAP, AP