Lost on Netflix: What Actually Happened in the Most Misunderstood Finale of All Time

Lostwhich was just added to Netflix in the US, has the most incomprehensible ending of all time.

After the divisive two-part series first aired, a large number of disappointed viewers thought (incorrectly), “Oh, so they were dead all along.”

Luckily, we’re on hand to discuss what actually happened in the last episode, so that the next time someone makes the above statement, you can roll your eyes and point them to it (as well as a new oral history of the show with words by Damon Lindelof, Evangeline Lilly and Jorge Garcia).

WARNING – serious spoilers regarding the ending LOST follow

Last scenes from Lost are interspersed with events on the island and an alternate timeline called flashbacks – scenes that replace flashbacks and flashbacks throughout the final season.

These flashsideways scenes come after Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell), trapped in the 1970s, detonates a hydrogen bomb in the final moments of season five in an attempt to prevent the hatch from forming. The logic is that if the hatch never forms, Oceanic Flight 815 would never have crashed on the island. The flashsideways show what would have happened had the plane landed safely.

Throughout the season, viewers watch the characters come together side by side in Los Angeles, unaware of the events of the past five seasons.

Eventually, the characters grow closer and begin to reminisce about their time on the island, leading to the reveal in the final scene: they’re actually dead in the flashsideways, which are essentially an underground world created by the survivors so they can come together and move forward together toward “whatever happens.”

To clear up the confusion: in the flashback scenes, these characters are dead. But no, they weren’t dead the entire time on the island after the plane crash. And everything you witnessed throughout all five seasons actually happened.

The second-person scenes depict the afterlife that the characters have created for themselves, because their time on the island – completely real from beginning to end – was the most important part of their lives.

The characters present in the final scene in the church are characters both dead and alive in island time, meaning that several characters (including Kate, Sawyer, and Claire) lived full lives after the series finale.

These flash scenes represent a sort of purgatory that these characters end up in when they finally appear. Down die, whenever possible. When broken, it is a beautiful and uplifting image of the afterlife.

The plane crash, the smoke monster, the hatch, the island – it was all real.

Of course, almost everything ended completely differently…

Find the ranking of each of them Lost episode here, plus an oral history of the finale, with co-creator Damon Lindelof and actors Evangeline Lilly, Henry Ian Cusick and Jorge Garcia.

If you are a long time fan Lost or you’re just looking for a new series, subscribe The missing boys podcast