Riley ,'Lessons'
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"It was all a dream"? REALLY?
I don't think it was a dream; I think everything on the island (as well as the flashbacks and flashforwards) were real, and the flash-sideways was basically purgatory, in the sense of a holding area where everyone waited and resolved stuff in their lives and then met up and went on to heaven/Valhalla/afterlife 2.0.
Unless that's what you mean by it being a dream. But I think there's a clear difference between a dream and purgatory/holding-area-pre-afterlife.
I deleted the episode when I should have gone back to rewatch the last few scenes - were Miles, Frank, Daniel, etc. in the Church of the Departed at the end? I don't remember seeing any of them.
I was happy that the church pretty much just had the original cast (except for Michael and Walt), which made sense to me.
Of course, in the end, they didn't really answer many questions at all, but I liked it as a series conclusion and character resolution. For personal reasons, it was very hard for me to watch the death wish fulfillment ending, so part of me wishes that they got to live those new sideways lives, but just remembering the island.
Yes, I understand it wasn't literally a dream. The flash-'sideways' stuff, i.e. the almost-entirety of season six, was irrelevant to the story (or it was the only thing that was relevant & the rest was unimportant, depending on how you look at it). It was as bad a lie as the 'it was all a dream' sequence in Dallas.
Don't get me started on it all being Christian mythology after all. I'm desperately trying to make it work with a different kind of mythology, that works with ancient temples and four-toed statues. It just doesn't.
The flash-'sideways' stuff, i.e. the almost-entirety of season six, was irrelevant to the story
What do you think makes it irrelevant?
Don't get me started on it all being Christian mythology after all.
It wasn't. The church was multidenominational.
In the sense that we were misled into thinking that it was closely connected to, or even concurrent with, immediate events on the island. It was not. Desmond didn't go there when Widmore dosed him with electromagnetism, although we were supposed to think he did. Small to large events, from the sunken island under the Oceanic flight to Juliet's dialogue while she was dying, weren't related to their apparent counterparts in the other worlds. There was a whole lot of misdirect that has left me very pissed off.
I wasn't looking for answers to every question - I don't mind that Walt's psychic abilities aren't relevant, or that we don't know what gave the numbers their power, or that we don't know who built the temple and why, or even that the light at the centre of the island is never going to be explained. But I did expect more than a deus ex machina ending that appears to have been entirely unrelated to the rest of what happened in the season. I mean, seriously? Christian telling us everyone's dead? I thought the Lost writers could do better. Or at least, could do slightly more coherent.
It wasn't. The church was multidenominational.
I saw that. But it's hard to explain purgatory and walking into the light outside of a Christian context. OK, maybe just about. But it felt very Christian imperialist to me, after many seasons of fantastic pagan temples and pantheistic imagery.
Alternate endings: [link]
sunken island under the Oceanic flight
Since the Sideways world was a collective construct of the Lostaways', I've decided they sunk it psychically.
Juliet's dialogue while she was dying
That was completely related to the Sideways world. When you die, you download to Sideways Purgatory. As she was dying, she got some bleed-through; her coffee line is right after the download.