The difference between literary and popular fiction was described to me like this: popular fiction puts ordinary people in extraordinary situations while literary fiction deals with extraordinary people in ordinary situations.

Lost, was popular fiction. Lost might be the definition of popular fiction. It was a plot driven mystery novel made for TV. It certainly wasn't the character-driven literary masterpiece the finale would have us believe it was. If it were a character-driven tale, Lost would have been just as entertaining if the Jack, Sawyer and Locke sat around a table and discussed the events they went through. Really, there was nothing remarkable about any of the characters in Lost outside the fact that led interesting lives before arriving on the island. What was remarkable about Lost (and what drew viewers to the show week after week) was the situation those characters found themselves in – deserted on a ancient island full of mystery, intrigue and danger. So why the writers of Lost thought it was a good idea to end the show the way they did is infuriating.

In literary fiction you can get away with ending a story with the resolution of the character's story arcs because that's what's interesting, the characters. In popular fiction you have to provide a resolution for the circumstance the characters find themselves in - there has to be an external meaning behind the actions the characters took because the extraordinary situation they found themselves in drove the choices the characters made. For example, in the Lost universe the man in black couldn't kill Jacob because the island wouldn't let him, not because the man in black couldn't bring himself to do so because he had some internal moral conflict about it that stemmed from whatever. That being the case, the writers are obligated to (at some point) reveal why the "MiB can't kill Jacob" rule existed in the first place.

After watching the finale, we now know that no explanation for that Lostian law (or many others) will ever be given. This is maddening.

It boils down to this: You can't create a universe with rules the characters have to abide by without explaining why those rules exist. If you do that, your story fails the Dues ex Machina test and passes the bullshit one.

So the bad guy needs all the good guys dead so he can escape? I'd guess that the bad guy will probably try to kill the good guys, right? Oh, he can't kill them? Hmm, that's interesting. I'd like to know why that is. Oh, you're not going to tell me? OK, then I'm just going to assume you made up that rule so you could write the story they way you wanted to. Hell, if you're going to do that, why not do this: give the plane crash survivors a magic monster killing device in the pilot, have them find a tablet laying on the beach telling them how to use it, let the main characters kill the bad guy, march the rest of the cast off a cliff and never tell us what the monster is or why it needed to be killed. That would have been just as satisfying the show that aired last night.

Apparently the writers of Lost considered the characters more important than the story because that's the only aspect of the show they provided closure on. OK, great, the flash sideways was some sort of purgatory where they all went after they died so they could find each other and "move on". They saved the light on the island so it was there for them in end when they needed it. I get it.

Then... The End?

What was the light? Why did it exist on the island? What was the smoke monster? Did it originate from the light? What made the island special? What were the consequences of failure to protect it? These aren't just "why can't women have babies on the island" type questions, these questions are the heart of the entire series, and absolutely no resolution was provided that answered these in any meaningful way. What I watched last night would have been like watching the original Star Wars trilogy end with Luke, Leia and Han having tea in a Galactic retirement home discussing how awesome it was that they saved the galaxy, but we were never shown how they did it.

Interestingly enough, the writers of Lost cited Star Wars creator George Lucas' introduction of midichlorians as an example of why some things are better left un-explained. As if somebody fucking up their story absolved them from any responsibility to address the questions they proposed in their own. It's absurd. And it's not even a good analogy. Nobody was asking what "the force" was. Nearly everybody watching Lost who didn't care who Kate ended up with was asking what it was really all about.

It was the mystery that made Lost worth watching. The character of Jack could have been written as an ex-cab driver and we still would have watched. Why? Because it was never about Jack, what he did or who he did it with, it was about the island. It was about the island, the plot, the circumstance, the complexity of the story, the puzzlement of it all and the belief that one day those puzzles would be solved.

So much for that. I guess it doesn't matter why things happen, just that everything turns out alright in the end. That's real entertaining storytelling.

Maybe for an encore Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse will rip the last 50 pages out of the next Dan Brown novel.