One thing I didn’t mention was how brilliant and simple it was for the writers to turn the Man in Black back into a human being after the Uncorking. It’s something I never considered, that he could in fact become human once again, almost like a curse being lifted (same with Richard and his immortality). Lost has been brilliant in the way it brings out these simple explanations — like Desmond bringing down the plane.

That’s what I thought was missing in the last fifteen minutes. When Jack had his “I see dead people, and the deadest person of all is me” moment, I was sorely disappointed. Perhaps I was expecting more science fiction and less ethereality;  after all, my favorite season of the show was the fifth, when there was all that time traveling.

I think I would’ve been happier if the two timelines merged, or if Jack sacrificed himself so the second timeline could become reality, or something. What was finally left on the screen just didn’t do it for me.

Cuse and Lindelof tried their best. They also made it very clear that the show was about the characters and not the mysteries, but that’s where they’re wrong. Lost was about great characters in a great mystery. They absolutely knocked the character part out of the park. Not so much with the mystery.

Just to clarify: I had no beef whatsoever with the island’s mythology. It was handled nicely, all the way through, especially the Richard Alpert story. I wasn’t looking for any explanation of any kind for the light and the cork and whatever; I’m completely satisfied in that regard. It’s just the alternate timeline that was the problem, but it’s a pretty significant problem, since it was a large component of the final season.

In the end, I was just looking for something more clever to tie the two timelines together. The showrunners didn’t deliver.