The Lost rewatch continues! Woot woot! Now that my wife and I have gotten a couple more seasons under our belts, I want to share something else about the show that's struck me the second time through. It's actually really obvious to anyone who's watched the series (and even more obvious to anyone who's read the title of this post), but heck, I'll say it anyway: Lost has great plot twists.
Before I go on, I just want to preface this by saying that I'm going to mention a few major plot points, so if you haven't watched the series yet, be ye forewarned. Here there be spoilers.
Also, for the sake of clarity, let's put a definition in place. When I say plot twist here, I'm not talking about the general idea of something surprising happening, even though that's pretty much the actual definition for the term. In this post, what I mean by "plot twist" is the Twilight Zone/Sixth Sense type of twist. You know, "He was dead the whole time" or "It's a cookbook." The sort of late-in-the-game revelations that dramatically change how you think about everything that came before it.
So: spoilers and a reductive definition of plot twist. Got it? Good.
Think back to some of the great Lost twists. Locke is in a wheelchair at the end of "Walkabout." Desmond lives in the hatch in "Man of Science, Man of Faith." Anthony Cooper is "Sawyer" in "The Brig." These are compelling reveals and rank among the most memorable moments in the show. But what makes them so memorable? Well, I argue that, like most great twists, it has a lot to do with character.
To explain, let's look at one of Lost's more iconic examples. In the final minutes of the Season Three finale, "Through the Looking Glass," Lost gives us its most sublime twist ending when, in what we assume to be a flashback, Jack pleads, "We have to go back, Kate," revealing that: 1) This is not a flashback but a flashforward; and 2) Sometime in the future, Jack and Kate get off the Island. And all the Losties collectively gasp. What a twist!
Now, memes aside, there are plenty of reasons why fans have found that particular twist to be so striking. For one, it's a clever inversion of a basic Lost storytelling device, the flashback. For another, it pushes the story into uncharted territory unlike anything that's come before it on the show (hey, the characters know each other off the island now). But I think the main reason we care about that moment—the main reason, in fact, that we're interested in those other two reasons—is that it's a moment that is primarily about the characters.
Think about it. The reveal isn't that amazing in terms of plot. It's not exactly revolutionary to say that some of the characters make it off the island at some point in the future. Along with survival, getting off the island is the primary motivation for most of the characters, so finding out that a couple of them succeed shouldn't be surprising. And yeah, it's a clever structural trick, but Lost had been experimenting with its flashback structure as early as Season Two. It's unexpected, sure, but the flashforward reveal is no more clever than, say, Desmond's lucid flashbacking in "Flashes Before Your Eyes." There's nothing inherent in the idea of flashforwarding that should make it one of the show's most memorable moments.
Except that it majorly changes how we think about the characters. In the flashforwards (which we think are run-of-the-mill flashbacks at the time) shown throughout "Through the Looking Glass," we see Jack, the moral center of the show, acting very unheroic and immoral, caught in an increasingly dire downward spiral of drug abuse and bad facial hair. Once the end-of-episode twist lets us know that the flashbacks are actually flashforwards, we realize how miserable Jack will be once he leaves the Island. We remember that all the characters, even Jack, were doing pretty poorly before they crashed on the Island. They were lonely. They were drug abusers. They were handicapped. On the Island, however, they beat all that miserableness through community and faith. But once they escape the would-be purgatory of the Island, they go back to being miserable, even heroic Jack. And now he regrets his choice to get off the Island. The flashforward takes an idea the show had hinted at before and makes it explicit: the characters' desire to get off the Island is not in their best interest. They are better off with each other. Live together or die alone.
In short, there's a lot more character analysis than plotting going on in this twist. And that's something I think it shares with most of Lost's good twists and most good twists in general. Twists are most meaningful when they affect how we view people. "Walkabout"'s ending is great because it affects how we view Locke. He's not a safari badass; he's a sad, lonely man finally realizing his dream. Or, to use famous non-Lost examples, the endings of The Sixth Sense and Citizen Kane are so incredible because they change the protagonists of their respective films. Malcolm (i.e. Bruce Willis) helps the boy because he needs to ease his literally restless soul. Charles Foster Kane uses his dying breath to call for Rosebud (the *gasp* sled) because he longs to return to his youth, to relive his now-wasted life. These twists add depth to their characters that connects them to audiences in ways that go beyond just describing them as "the lonely psychologist" or "the regretful business tycoon."
I'm not denying the visceral appeal of a well-told story turning in unexpected directions. But what I think separates the great twists from the merely exciting ones is the humanist touch. Exciting plots thrill us, but great plots teach us something about the characters and, in turn, about ourselves. At its core, all art is about humanity and how we react to elements bigger than ourselves: to God, to nature, to communities, to sin. Art, the "empathy machine," as Roger Ebert called movies (and by extension, I think, all good storytelling), gives us the emotional connection to internalize those ideas about humanity. Without that human connection, plot and its twisting is pretty empty[1].
Until next time!
1] I'm sure we can all name countless examples of empty plot twists, many from the very minds who brought us the great ones. Rod Serling and M. Night Shyamalan are kind of the elephants in the room when it comes to plot twists, but there are tons of other examples, too. Let this be a warning, Christopher Nolan; You've come close.
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