SciFi Friday: The Finales


Lost ended the season with the most intriguing finale, both with events on and off the island. The portions of the story usually involving flashbacks showed Jack attempting to contact Kate after seeing an obituary. I quickly guessed that this was not a flashback but a view of the future after they got off the island. I may have predictedthis more quickly than some who didn’t realize this until the end since I have written recently about the differences in how some of the flashbacks have been used, and even speculated on showing such glimpses of the future after their rescue.

There was one moment which created some doubt that this was the future when Jack asked the new chief of surgery to get his father down, to see which one was more drunk. Jack probably talked of his dead father being alive due to being drunk, but there are other possibilities. The empty casket earlier in the series might indicate that Jack’s father is really alive, or perhaps Jack and Kate returned from the island to a point in time before the events of the series analogous to what once happened to Desmond. We also do not know what this happens compared to the narrative on the island. This could be occurring after the rescue hinted at the end of the episode on the island, but I bet Ben was partially right and they are not rescued until much later. I suspect that Desmond’s vision is correct and they are flown off in helicopters, but that they wind up back where they started. Perhaps somewhere along the way Jack tells the lie which haunts him in the events off island.

We are never told who it was that died, but reportedly blowing up the scene shows that the obituary has a name begins with a J. That leaves many possibilities, including John, James, Jacob, and Jin. As the obituary drove Jack into contemplating suicide, unless it involves events which we have not seen yet, my guess is that it was Juliette, which also explains Kate’s lack of interest in going to the visitation.

We also find that Kate is no longer a fugitive, and that Jack believes leaving the island was a mistake. My predictions that Locke would live and Charlie would die turned out to be correct, but I never guessed that Walt (or at least a vision of him) would play a part in Locke’s survival.

(Update: Further Thoughts on the Lost Finale)

While the finale of Lost just created more questions, Heroes ended as predicted with New York being saved from the explosion. If only he thought it through, Nathan should have realized that Peter could have picked up his ability to fly on his own and there was no reason for Nathan’s sacrifice. Hiro also managed to kill Sylar much to easily. It wasn’t the best episode, but didn’t distract from the fun of the series. In contrast, by the end of 24‘s finale I was practically shouting for Jack to jump, and end it all. I hope the producers keep their promise and move on to a new format, as they have now done this at least one too many times. In an attempt to do something new for the show, this season began with a nuclear explosion near Los Angeles. However, once it occurred, there was little left of interest. Heroes handled the idea of an explosion in a much better manner by holding it off as a vision of a possible finale for the year.

Another disappointing finale was on Veronica Mars. While it might have been fine as a season finale, this left too much open for an ending to the series. It was also disappointing that, after Veronica showed her ability to torment all those who crossed her path, she had to back off on taking revenge on the guy responsible for taping her and leave this to Logan.

Jericho also left many loose ends due to being cancelled, resulting in many protests to CBS. They responded on the show’s message board by promising to provide a closing for the series:

We have read your emails over the past few days and have been touched by the depth and passion with which you have expressed your disappointment. Please know that canceling a television series is a very difficult decision. Hundreds of people at the Network, the production company and the incredibly-talented creative team worked very hard to build and serve the community for this show — both on-air and online. It is a show we loved too.

Thank you for supporting Jericho with such passion. We truly appreciate the commitment you made to the series and we are humbled by your disappointment. In the coming weeks, we hope to develop a way to provide closure to the compelling drama that was the Jericho story.

Sincerely,

Nina Tassler, President of CBS Entertainment

Fans are hoping for a made for television movie to properly end the series, but I doubt they would spend the money if ratings for the show were to low to justify a second season. More likely they’ll put up something on the web site to provide an ending for the cliff hanger.

While I’d be (pleasantly) surprised if there is a made for television movie to end Jericho, Amy Sherman-Palladino has raised the possibility of revealing her planned ending for Gilmore Girls in a television movie.

There was another major event on a show besides Lost which involved a major development related to a long standing mystery. On How I Met Your Mother, Marshall and Lilly got married but Ted and Robin broke up. We know this was an inevitable step after finding in the first episode that Robin is fated to wind up “Aunt Robin” to Ted’s children. It appears that it will take as long for Ted to find his eventual wife as for the characters of Lost to really find a way off the island.

2 Comments

  1. 1
    Kerry Democrat says:

    I really like Heroes and I think the explanation for why Nathan had to fly Peter into the air to explode is that no one so far has been able to manifest dual “talents”.

    Also, I do agree that Hiro’s task was too easy for all of the build up….but perhaps Sylar isn’t really dead.

  2. 2
    Ron Chusid says:

    Both Peter and Sylar have multiple powers taken from others. Sylar seemed to be able to do everything at once, but his method of taking other powers was quite a bit different from Peter’s. I don’t recall off hand if Peter has ever used two powers at once. For his sake, I sure hope he can since he’ll need Claire’s regenerative powers as he explodes if he is to survive.

    Even if Peter had the ability to take Nathan’s flying ability while exploding, he wasn’t in the best shape at the moment to concentrate on a picking up Nathan’s flying power.

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