Lost (Season 6)

Look, anything would've had a hard time following up Lost's amazing fifth season, but Season 6 is a pretty massive step down for me. It was a departure from the last two seasons in terms of tone and pacing, but when it wasn't downright frustrating, it was utterly boring. At least the finale was good, though.

I loved The Incident, it's my favorite season finale ever, but man, does it not get followed up on very well at all. Let's talk about that episode's two cliffhangers and how the potential they established were ultimately squandered in Season 6. First, there's the reveal that Locke is actually Jacob's nemesis, the Man In Black, who proceeds to then kill him. It's implied that the Man In Black is going to be this big new terrifying force to be reckoned with, and that the islanders are going to have to team up and take him down, but what actually happens is a bit less exciting. Granted, the actual final battle with the Man In Black in the last two episodes is really fun and probably the highlight of the season, but much of Season 6 is spent watching the Man In Black wander around the island preparing to enact his plan, which is simply just to escape the island, which would in turn destroy the world. He's still a cruel villain, for sure, since he needs to kill a lot of the cast to escape, but he's still nowhere near the tyrant that I was kind of hoping for. Even more, his appearance ends up shafting Charles Widmore, who is still probably an even more menacing villain due to only being motivated by greed.

And then there's the hydrogen bomb detonating in the Season 5 finale, which initially seems to have created a sideways timeline where the island never existed and the cast lived normal lives. That was such an awesome decision, I absolutely loved seeing the flash sideways sequences and how all of the characters would have turned out if the events of the show never happened. But, because there's always a but with this season, as the season progresses, I started to feel disconnected from these sequences, mostly because they never reveal what you're looking at until the series finale. Sure, the flash sideways sequences were cool, but if you didn't know if they were real, how could you get invested in what's going on? Eventually, you learn that the flash sideways was actually the afterlife, which is a solid reveal, though now it comes at the cost of the hydrogen bomb having not really done anything.

There's a lot more issues with Season 6, though, such as the fact that it adds a lot of mysticism and religious theming to the series, which frankly felt a bit jarring. On the "Man Of Science" to "Man Of Faith", Lost has been firmly on the side of science for the past few seasons, so suddenly introducing stuff like godlike figures, mystical temples, and the afterlife felt completely out of left field to me. Not to mention the exhausting loredumb episodes (Ab Aeterno and Across The Sea) that were filled to the brim with hollow religious symbolism, I couldn't help but miss the science-fiction elements that I loved so much about Season 5. Actually, let's get back to that temple for a second, because there's another thing I don't like about Season 6, which is what it puts the main cast through. Much of this season has the cast spend time meandering about in a hidden temple (that of course eventually gets destroyed), and it's so dull. You'd think that once the temple gets destroyed, the season would get better, and that's kind of true. Some of the best episodes in Season 6 do take place in its second half, but we also get the aforementioned loredump episodes as well as The Candidate, where Jin and Sun die in a hollow attempt at shock value that completely forgets that they're supposed to have a kid.

Highlights: 

LA X: It pains me that this season dropped off as much as it did because I really liked the premiere, especially the first half. Aside from introducing the Flash Sideways and misleading the audience into thinking the hydrogen bomb actually accomplished something, it spent much of its runtime dealing with Juliet's death, making for a much more personal episode compared to the rest of the season.

The End: I feel like my opinions on series finales can be a bit against the grain at times. I really like the gutsy and controversial finales (Angel, The Sopranos, Evangelion), so it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that I love the Lost finale. Even more, I think that much of the hatred for it stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of what actually happens. Because the whole show did happen. The island isn't fake, and the characters were never dead the whole time. The ending explicitly states that the parallel timeline is the afterlife, and is supposed to be a happy ending where the characters finally reunite after all their hardships once they die in their own time. Once again, this finale does not render the events of the show null, and it doesn't make the action-packed and dramatic final battle with the Man In Black any less fun. Sure not every mystery is answered, but given how much of a drag this season's loredumps were, the decision to focus primarily on giving the characters a happy ending was perfect. 

Overall, Season 6 of Lost is not very good, a huge step down from the prior five seasons due to its weak villain, slow meandering pace, boring loredump episodes, one of the most frustrating death scenes I've ever watched, and a general wasting of the plot points introduced in last season's finale. This would be an easy 1/5 stars if I didn't love the finale as much as I did. 

2/5 Stars

My ranking of the Lost seasons is:

5 > 1 > 4 > 3 > 2 > 6

My ranking of the Lost finales is:

5 > 3 > 1 > 2 > 6 > 4

Favorite Episode: The Incident