Review: Lost season 3 finale

Piss poor, that was. Appreciating that flies in the face of what many have been saying, I still thought the end of Lost’s third season was a bit of a shambles.

The first series of Lost, infamously, ended with a pretty terrible lame duck double episode, which featured an hour or so of pondering simply to find a ladder. Series two? Much better. Action, a hint that people knew how all this would end, and a few answers in amongst the myriad of questions.

I’ve got so many problems with the way that season three stuttered to an end that it’s hard to know where to start.

Beyond this point, folks, it’s spoiler land.

The good bits first. The idea of the flashback being a flashforward was welcome, and quite well done, save for a beard that’s straight out of a pantomime prop cupboard.

As usual, it guffed on more than it should have done, but regular viewers have learned to indulge Lost its added time to pat itself on the back, and to be fair, it probably deserved it this time. And just whose funeral was it, then? Locke? Ben? Plenty to ponder there, and the last scene at least offers a different angle on everyone faffing around on an island.

And now the crap. Locke the Indestructible. Ben pulling another ‘you don’t want to do that’ moment. Charlie’s hilariously ridiculous moment of heroism. Hurley in the fecking van. It degenerated into a series of moments seemingly chosen with darts and blindfolds, and while they may work well in isolation, in the context of a major season finale, this was a wasted opportunity.

One or two stands of hope. The distress message, which was pretty much a parallel of what happened in the last season finale, is no less intriguing this time round, even if that part of the narrative barely moved on over the last year. We also know that at least a couple of people get off the island, and that offers some tangible narrative options. Could season four be about some trying to get off and some trying to get back?

But, again, any hint of tension, any mild murmur that a resolution may be coming, was dulled by that announcement that there are still 48 episodes to go. And you know that, while rug pulling is allowed, that means certain doors can’t be closed.

Come the last season, Lost will, and should be, genuinely edge-of-the-seat stuff, rather than the tepid diversion that season three became. Sadly, the season three finale, while not without moments, wasn’t enough to lift Lost out of the doldrums. 15 minutes of intrigue in an hour and twenty minutes? Surely the loyal viewers who’ve stuck with the show deserve a bit more than that.

Bah.