Lost's Ending: the Junction of Time and Timeless Discourse

• Main Author: Vladimir Lifschutz
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Groupe de Recherche Identités et Cultures 2020-12-01
• Series: TV Series
• Subjects: Lost; deformulation; time-image; movement-image; ending; conclusion
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/tvseries/4968

This text offers a questioning on the ending of Lost from a temporal and aesthetic angle. As it has been the source of many strong controversies, the conclusion of Lost gives us an opportunity to wonder about the way we watch the show. Through our deformulation theory, we shall analyze how fiction unravels before us while accomplishing the impossible junction of two antinomic temporal lines. The show sets up a strong connection with the TV viewer as it elaborates a final double-speech whose second listener is the TV viewer. Through a subtle and coherent final cut, the authors of Lost connect our experiences, the temporal lines, and the characters in a same goal: producing an emotional catharsis, whose scope tends to indefinitely engrave the fiction in the collective memory. Lost reminds us that the value of the ending also consists in having shared some affect with someone else, since Lost is a fiction about Lost characters who, during the last moments of the fiction, find themselves.