Lost promised viewers that, with its final season, all their questions would finally be answered. Fans had spent years searching for the clues that would finally reveal the truth about what was really happening on the island. But did their relentless focus on what was happening lead them to overlook what it really meant? By unpacking the show’s key themes, we can see how Lost’s final season offered a deeper message about our own existence—and how while this may have disappointed or frustrated viewers who were looking for more literal answers, it was also true to the kind of story that Lost was always trying to tell. Here’s our Take on the primary conflicts of Lost, and how its ending brought them all to a thematic conclusion that revealed the universal truths at the heart of the show—just like it always promised.
TRANSCRIPT
Lost promised viewers that, with its final season, all their questions would finally be answered. It was a tall order for a show steeped in misdirection and mystery—in flashbacks and flashforwards, cryptic numbers and philosophical allusions, polar bears and smoke monsters. Fans had spent years searching for the clues that would finally reveal the truth about what was really happening on the island. But did their relentless focus on what was happening lead them to overlook what it really meant?
Lost was a show built on classic storytelling themes like good versus evil, destiny versus free will, and the path to redemption. And by unpacking them, we can see how Lost’s final season offered a deeper message about our own existence—and how while this may have disappointed or frustrated viewers who were looking for more literal answers, it was also true to the kind of story that Lost was always trying to tell.
Here’s our take on the primary conflicts of Lost, and how its ending brought them all
to a thematic conclusion that revealed the universal truths at the heart of the show—just like it always promised.
Light Versus Dark
At its core, Lost is a story of dualities. In its final season, we learn that the island where the castaways of Oceanic Flight 815 find themselves has existed for millennia—the site of an ancient battle between the forces of good and evil, whose outcome will shape the entire world. That battle is over the Heart of the Island, a mystical energy source with the power to give life and to heal. After the plane first crashes, this energy cures Rose of her cancer, just as it allows a paralyzed Locke to walk again. But we also see how this light is forever in conflict with the dark.
In the final season, we’re shown how this battle began. We flashback to a crew of ancient Romans who also found themselves shipwrecked on the island. Among them was a woman named Claudia, who gave birth to twins: Jacob and his unnamed brother, a boy perpetually cloaked in black. Claudia was killed by one of the island dwellers, who then raised the boys as her own. As the boys got older and discovered
the Heart of the Island for themselves, Jacob embraced his destiny as the light’s protector. But his brother plotted to harness its energy and use it to escape. The brothers became rivals—and after Jacob’s brother killed their adoptive mother, Jacob got his revenge by throwing his brother into the Heart. His brother emerged as a cloud of dark, malevolent energy that both castaways and viewers came to know as the Smoke Monster—and in his human form, as the Man in Black.
The Man in Black was forever driven to kill his brother—to snuff out the light, escape the island, and to run amok in the real world. As the light’s protector, Jacob is the only thing holding back this evil. But they can’t wage direct war against each other. They’re forced to play out their game between light and dark by using all of humanity. They lure others to the island to test them, to determine whether people are essentially good or evil. The Man In Black searches for people who can help him kill Jacob once and for all. Jacob searches for a replacement in case his brother succeeds, a new protector worthy of guarding the light.
All of the castaways of Oceanic 815 are just the latest pawns in this age-old contest between good and evil. And the entire show has been about those people determining which side they’re on.
Throughout its six seasons, Lost makes frequent allusion to revered philosophers and heady concepts,
like tabula rasa—the idea that people are born as blank slates who are defined and shaped by their experiences. Its characters are named after great thinkers like John Locke, David Hume, and Thomas Carlyle, who grappled with murky ideas like morality, heroism, and free will. But at the root of all these philosophical investigations is the primordial conflict of good versus evil—how we recognize it, and which one we choose to follow.
Ben Linus: “We’re the good guys.”
Frank Lapidus: “In my experience, the people who go out of their way to tell you they’re the good guys are the bad guys.” - Lost, “The Incident, Part 1” (5x16)
That dichotomy is expressed throughout the show. In every episode, there is some sort of divide. We see the contrast between light and dark reflected visually, in the characters’ clothing, and in shots of faces
cast in half-shadows. Lost even spells out this black-and-white theme in its title cards.
Destiny Versus Free Will
The game that Jacob and the Man in Black play involves manipulation. We learn that the passengers of Oceanic 815 were all hand-picked by Jacob, either as candidates to become the island’s new protector or as people who would help those candidates find their way. We see how Jacob influenced certain events in their lives so that they would find themselves on that doomed flight—and that he chose each of them specifically because of who they were. For this latest round, Jacob’s also stacked the deck in his favor; he’s selected people he believes can work together to build a community and who are less likely to succumb to those dark forces.
Jacob’s plan sets up another basic philosophical question: whether humanity is driven by a predetermined destiny, or if we’re allowed to have free will. As with light and dark, the show tells us that both play a part.
Destiny plays an important role. Jacob brings them to the island, and if someone tries to leave before their time, the island will stop them. But how they behaved—whether they would prove Jacob’s faith in man’s essential good, or give in to the forces of darkness—always came down to them.
Jacob: “You have a choice.”
Ben: “What choice?”
Jacob: “You can do what he asks, or you can go.” - Lost, “The Incident, Part 1” (5x16)
It’s a balance between accepting what we can and cannot control.
Faith Versus Science
Accepting that there’s always been someone behind the curtain—or that there even is a curtain—proves more difficult for some castaways than others. This conflict, between rational explanations and embracing the unknown, is most obviously expressed in the dynamic between Jack Shephard and John Locke.
Having witnessed the island’s miracles firsthand, Locke has an abiding faith. He relies on feelings and instincts, and he believes in omens. Among the survivors, he’s the first to suspect that there is something deeper going on—and he’s right.
As a doctor and man of science, Jack is a natural skeptic. His skills and his determination make him someone the other survivors quickly depend on. But Jack’s own dependence on empirical facts—and his need for control—can’t allow him to see the island for what it is. And this creates a conundrum for Jack; when he encounters problems and mysteries that can’t be rationally explained, it plunges him into an existential crisis.
This dichotomy between Jack and Locke, between science versus faith, is another central theme of the show—much as it is in our own world. In the second season, Jack and Locke’s dispute comes to a head
down in the Hatch, when Locke becomes convinced that failing to enter the numbers would be a disaster. But Jack is certain it’s all just a manipulative joke.
Humanity has always struggled with some version of this debate—do we put our faith in the unknown,
engage in the ritual of praying to a higher power, and observing a prescribed set of behaviors? Or is all of this completely meaningless? But just as light and dark, and destiny and free will, all work in tandem on the island, we eventually see that it was never really a question of who was right. Much as they do in our world, faith and science work together.
Locke’s faith that the island has a greater purpose—and that his role is to protect it—allows him to play a crucial part in that immortal battle, even if not everything he believes in is literally true. Meanwhile, Jack’s realistic caution and down-to-earth skills keep all the other castaways alive, just like science and medicine have for centuries. We can’t depend on miracles for everything, after all. But by learning to believe in something greater than himself, Jack is finally able to become the true leader that he was always meant to be.
Regret Versus Redemption
Jacob makes it plain that he specifically chose each of his candidates because they were all in desperate need of change. Every character carried a heavy personal burden, whether it was addiction, mental illness, daddy issues, dysfunctional marriages, or even a criminal past. But the island gives each of them a clean slate. It’s an opportunity to prove themselves anew, allowing them to grow into different, often better people.
Jacob: “I chose you because you needed this place as much as it needed you.”
- Lost, “What They Died For” (6x16)
It didn’t take long for viewers to decide that the island was an allegory for Purgatory, and some even concluded that the castaways had obviously died in the plane crash—even as the creators repeatedly denied it. But even if the island isn’t literally an afterlife, the characters are undergoing a purgatorial journey. Each is tasked with examining their past selves and sins and working to let go of the things that have been holding them back.
Nowhere was the theme of redemption realized more than in Jack’s arc. The very first episode of Lost
begins with Jack opening his eye, and the show ends with it closing—a visual bookend that suggests the entire show can be read as Jack’s journey of self-discovery. He starts as a man whose life has been destroyed by his own obsessive doubts, and he ends it a man of unwavering faith.
Again, it’s a journey that mirrors our own. Though we are plagued by skepticism and self-doubt, we’re also given the chance to open our eyes to another way of being, to see the truth about ourselves and the world. Only then are we able to forgive ourselves, and find a way to transcend the things that fill our lives with so much needless pain.
Living Together Versus Dying Alone
Lost is rife with Christian symbolism. Jack’s heroic self-sacrifice parallels Jesus’s own story, right down to the rites of communion and the wounds he suffers. The show even ends in a church, where Jack receives his final deliverance from his father—a holy spirit named Christian Shepard. But while Lost is
undoubtedly a spiritual show, creator Damon Lindelof has denied that it’s explicitly a Christian one. Rather than being about heaven or hell or salvation in the afterlife, Lost is ultimately a show about people here on earth, offering a decidedly humanist message about how we can overcome our greatest struggles by working together. Jacob explicitly points out that all of the castaways were alone in the world before he brought them to the island. And this need to rely on each other becomes a recurring theme throughout.
Jack Shepard: “And God knows how long we’re going to be here. But if we can’t live together, we’re going to die alone.” - Lost, “White Rabbit” (1x05)
This simple idea—that all of these characters found their true destinies in each other—led to one of the more complex and confusing aspects of Lost’s final run of episodes: the so-called “flash-sideways.” From the beginning of the season, we’re led to believe that, because Juliet detonated the bomb in Season Five, it created an alternate timeline, where the survivors never came to the island at all. But we eventually learn that this is yet another misdirection; this flash-sideways world is another form of purgatory, a holding place where all the castaways gathered after they died—whenever they died—so that they could all move on together.
For each of these people, the most important thing missing in their lives was connection. We see how most of them have been let down by their friends and loved ones. The central battle of the show is even waged between two brothers. So one of Lost’s recurring motifs is the idea of finding your constant—a person you care about who can keep you grounded, even as the world shifts into chaos. And while not all of the castaways were always being tossed randomly through time, they each learned the importance of finding their own constants—someone who made them feel safe, reaffirmed who they were, and kept them from slipping away. This is another fundamental truth—that no matter what uncertainties or unfathomable mysteries surround it, in the end, our world is defined by the people we share it with.
Conclusion
One more time for the people in the back—the characters on Lost were not dead the whole time, and they weren’t in Purgatory. That people still believe this, despite its creators’ denials, could be partially attributed to ABC, who opted to air footage of the plane’s empty crash sites over the end credits. Still, some of that lingering confusion can also be attributed to the way Lost itself set those expectations. The mystery-box show had spent years building a complex mythology that spilled out into the real world via novels, podcasts, and alternate reality games. It demanded an unprecedented amount of fan engagement and dissection—and by promising that the time for questions would be over, the promo suggested the finale would unlock the show’s many puzzles and present some grand, final twist. As Time magazine TV critic James Poniewozik said, “For some people, the perfect way to end Lost would have just been with a half-hour Dharma video, followed by an extended scene of Jacob’s ghost and/or Christian explaining everything about the island to Jack.”
But the reason Lost resonated with so many wasn’t because of its rabbit holes or Easter eggs. Although Lost may have dazzled us with its various supernatural phenomena, at its heart, the show was always about the most natural question there is: what it means to be human—the same mystery that we’ve been confronting since the dawn of mankind. In the end, the truth was revealed, only it was a far more universal truth than many had been expecting: that what we do for other people shapes our collective destiny, that we find our redemption in forgiving others and in being forgiven, and that only we can bring out the light inside of everyone. It’s a lot to unpack, but a deceptively simple thing to understand.
As Locke says, “We’re going to need to watch that again.”
SOURCES
Lacob, Jace. “Lost Secrets Revealed in an Epilogue: Did It Ruin the Show?” The Daily Beast, 23 Aug. 2010.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/lost-secrets-revealed-in-an-epilogue-did-it-ruin-the-show