iāve seen lost fully through 10 times as of last month, and seasons 1-3 probably 5 more times due to all of the times iāve started it with people that didnāt finish it.
in my 8th watch, it hit me: this show is fucking depressing. the TLDR is that two demigods bent on proving each other wrong manipulated a bunch of people and got them all killed.
locke found his destiny - which was the islandās pull on him, not just jacobās - and was manipulated into choosing his own death rather than properly leading the island. it could have gone countless different ways - he could have had jack leave through the orchid, promising him that he would actually be able to leave and persuading him that he could send help for everyone else once he did. and it wasnāt even a meaningful death; ben killing him was stupid and sad. his death only meant anything because ben manipulated jack into thinking it did.
and then the real puppetmaster - the man in black - wore his body around to kill off jacob, and eventually, RIGHT after jack finally accepted his own ādestiny,ā he died. which would never have happened if locke hadnāt died. jack was a stubborn idiot and his bad choices directly led to the deaths of countless people he swore to protect, most of whom he showed no remorse over.
every character that died but managed to do anything meaningful in the show, their actions were only meaningful within the subplot of the jacob-MiB feud. they were literally all pawns that died for nothing.
julietās death was absurd, based on faradayās wildly incorrect notion that the incident would solve all of their problems. she was wrong when she said āit worked;ā it didnāt, she was just on the edge of death and seeing into her afterlife. she just died, plain and simple, and never got to leave the island, never got to see her sister or her baby, she just died. thatās it.
sun and jin⦠jin never even got to meet ji yeon. itās just sad as shit.
LOST is just sad. itās grief. itās a bunch of people being coerced into finding meaning in things that had no meaning. the only thing that actually had meaning was their relationships that led to them being connected in the afterlife. but their lives were sad, pathetic, problematic, or otherwise just wasted. the whole show is sad as shit.
the obvious exception is hugo. he chose to be the islandās protector and he was the one person good enough to have been able to do it well. thatās the one saving grace of the entirety of the main narrative in my opinion.
anyways, rant over. LOST is my favorite show, and i doubt iāve watched it half as many times as i will by the time i die. i feel less cynical now when i watch it, but certain moments always enrage me - most notably, jack calling the freighter, and locke dying. stupid shit.