They Once Were Lost And Now Are Found

SPOILER ALERT!

So Lost ends with the sacrifice of someone with bloody hands and feet and a wound in his side. Whereupon everyone, including everyone who died in the series, ends up in a church–complete with a statue of Jesus–where they forgive each other, are reconciled, and experience a joyous reunion. The door opens and they walk out into the light.

I can’t remember any prime time series with so much explicit, overt Christianity. It’s given in symbols, but symbols are far more evocative than prose in a work of art. In addition to the Baptismal imagery that ran throughout the series, we also had in the last episodes Holy Communion imagery, with the mysterious God-figure saying “take this cup, and you’ll be like me.”

Pundits were saying that Lost has unique significance for our culture at this time in our history, to the point of proposing that the first decade of the 21st century–lacking a good name so far–be called “the Lost decade.” So what does it mean that it takes Christianity to resolve all of those intractable problems and unravel all of that confusion?

I suspect that there will be a lot of howls from critics about the ending of Lost. I’m not sure the literary critic in me is completely satisfied with the narrative resolution. But still. It shows that all of those Christian interpretations that people were reading into the show for the last six years were right after all, that all of that scattered symbolism was, in fact, the key to the show.

More importantly, the ending shows that traditional Christian concepts and imagery still have a powerful resonance in a Lost world.