Mario Perez/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty ABC'sLostended 15 years ago today, and fans and detractors alike are still discussing the final episode I used to be aLostfinale defender, but with time, I finally think the haters have a point Though it's anchored by strong performances, there's something saccharine about the way it all wraps up WhenLostended on May 23, 2010, it set off one of the greatest debates in all of TV fandom: Wasthe endinggood? It's a question that's plagued so many shows both before (The Sopranos) and since (Game of Thrones), but a unique set of circumstances has made this question such a hot topic over the 15 years since we left Matthew Fox's Jack Shephard dying on the Island with Vincent the dog by his side. Lostwas on network TV, for one, which gave it an enormous audience. By the end of the first season, more than 20 million people were watching each episode, and though that dwindled by the time the show ended, those people still did want to know many of the questions posed by season 1. And while some of those were answered quickly (What was at the bottom of the hatch? Only my favoriteLostcharacter, Henry Ian Cusick's Desmond Hume), many others lingered to the very end, becoming more convoluted.Lostwas also the unique network show that was telling one long mystery across its seasons, and for many of those seasons, the endpoint was vague. It's not incomprehensible why the show — which aired 121 episodes across its six seasons — got a little unwieldy. Bob D'Amico / ©ABC / Courtesy: Everett Collection Which brings us to the finale. In the final episode, viewers learn which of the surviving Island residents make it off the Island (includingEvangeline Lilly's Kate,Josh Holloway's Sawyer and Emilie de Ravin's Claire) and who dies, most notably Jack. The show spends almost equal time with a storyline referred to as the "flash sideways" — another timeline in which their flight from Australia to the United States landed safely. Except, there are some major differences in this timeline: Jack is a dad, Sawyer is a cop and Desmond has never met Penny (Sonya Walger), among others. Ultimately, all the castaways remember their Island lives and have emotional reunions. Viewers learn that this is some sort of waiting place before they go to the afterlife, where they're together again because these relationships were the most significant of their lives. No matter how long they lived after the show's main timeline ended, they move on together. Lostfinale detractors dislike this ending for a variety of reasons. PerhapsVultureput it best when they wrote that people hated it because "it copped out on the entire sci-fi mystery setup of the show and replaced it with a big goopy spiritual group-therapy sequence." It flattened their "rich" characters and resolved "complex emotional issues." Mario Perez/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty I loved theLostfinale the first time I watched it. I loved seeing the castaways connect again and find some peace. The acting is beautiful and incredibly moving. There's a moment where Kate delivers Claire's baby, just like she did on the Island, and Kate's moment of recognition is one of Lilly's finest moments.Lost, to me, was not about big mysterious answers, but about the way those mysteries affected these people. It was about how the worst thing that ever happened to you — getting stuck on a spooky Island after a plane crash — could also bring you some of the most beautiful, meaningful, joyful connections of your life. It was about love in the face of tragedy. And yet, when I revisited the final season and finale this week, I found I liked it so much less than I remembered. It did feel goopy. We spent so much time reifying Jack and Kate's love, which I've always found to be the least engaging dynamic on the show. Though there were moments where the flash sideways plot delivered —Dominic Monaghan's return as Charlie, who died in season 3, almost justifies the entire thing — in other moments, it dragged. Ending the show in the afterlife feels a little like cheating. People die with unresolved issues all the time. Still, the whole point of the afterlife plot seems to be to underline that this was a show about relationships between characters before anything else, and maybe that's a good message to leave us with — even if it's convoluted to get there. Mario Perez/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty But then that redirects to something else unsettling about theLostfinale. All the main survivors of Oceanic 815 are there at the end — except forHarold Perrineau's Michael Dawson and Malcolm David Kelley's Walt, two of the series' only Black characters. In 2023, Perrineau told journalist Maureen Ryan in her bookBurn It Down(excerpted inVanity Fairat the time) that he was written out of the show after he criticized how Michael was written, and he was also vocal about it at the time. He toldTV Guidein 2008 after Michael was killed off, "I'm disappointed, mostly because I wanted Michael and Walt to have a happy ending ... Listen, if I'm being really candid, there are all these questions about how they respond to Black people on the show." I didn't realize any of this might have been going on in 2010, but now, it leaves a bitter taste and I can't watch the final season the same way. Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE's free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. If there's anything that makes me want to plant my flag here, it's that maybe we just need nuance in the way we talk about TV. The season fourLostepisode "The Constant," which focuses primarily on Desmond and Penny, is probably one of my favorite television shows of all time. And at the same time,Lostwas deeply imperfect and didn't do right by all its characters, actors or audience. Fifteen years later, the TV landscape is so different thatLostcould never happen again. There's good and bad parts of that. Read the original article onPeople
