SPOILER ALERT FOR BOTH SHOWS, SO UNLESS YOU’VE SEEN ALL OF BOTH OF THEM, STAY AWAY IF YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOOD FOR YOU
Okay, you knew this had to happen once you saw what went on in the Lost finale. I came thisclose to promising a separate post on this topic in my Lost thoughts last night, and when I woke up this morning multiple people had already asked me to do so. Like I said, you knew it had to happen.
I think there are two big differences between the two finales, both of which were a mainline hit of mysticism.
First, the mysticism of the Battlestar Galactica finale tied in directly to the show’s central driving conflict and overarching mythology. The “God” we hear about here was the one responsible for such major mystical mysteries as Gaius Baltar’s visions of Six (and Caprica Six’s visions of Gaius Baltar) and Kara Thrace’s strange resurrection, and is the “truth” behind the bowdlerized judgmental monotheism of the Cylons and the more humanistic but still off-model polytheism of the Colonists. In Lost‘s case, while it does seem like the Island is the world’s most direct manifestation of the force for good behind the flashsideways afterlife, that’s a link in a much more general sense. It seems like any group of people who were tied together by anything would have ended up in much the same place; moreover, the Island plot is resolved without requiring any knowledge of the show’s conception of the afterlife, if that makes sense. The afterlife ties things together emotionally, not narratively, whereas in BSG, it’s linked directly to the big plot questions.
The second and more damning thing for Lost is that its conception of spirituality as articulated in that final sequence is awfully banal: The afterlife is a place generated by the force of goodness behind all major religions where you reunite with your loved ones, atone for your sins and shortcomings, and find true happiness before achieving literal enlightenment. Generic New-Age self-help stuff–whoopedy doo! By contrast, the “God” of Battlestar Galactica embraces its own sneer quotes and acts in morally dubious fashion in order to push humanity and cylonity (?) through a series of cycles of genocide and rapprochement for reasons still unknown. The God of BSG is a weird thing whose role in the finale is still haunting and challenging me today, whereas the creators of Lost could have just mailed every viewer a copy of The Celestine Prophecy and been done with it.
Actually, now that I think of it, the God of BSG is a bit like what we thought about “the Island” when we believed it was the source of all the manipulative goings on, before Jacob and the Man in Black entered the picture–a near-omnipotent force that’s probably ultimately a force for what we’d consider “good” but which on the way there does all sorts of heinous shit for reasons we can’t begin to comprehend in the moment.
Finally, I’ve always found it super-stupid to object to genre fiction simply because you discover its conception of the supernatural doesn’t jibe with your own: I read people saying things like “The Exorcist isn’t scary to me because I’m not Catholic” and simply can’t fathom how crazy that is. You don’t find many mackerel-snappers more lapsed than me but I still get the chills when they chant “The power of Christ compels you!” So it’s not like I’ve got beef with Lost for having a relatively upbeat view on spirituality whereas I tend not to. But I do tend not to. I find the atheist/anti-mysticism apoplexy over Lost‘s finale–seriously, people were losing their shit on Twitter–as silly and funny and pathetic and small-minded as I did when it happened at the end of BSG; that said, my hunch is that if there is a God then he’s a lot more like the vast and cool and unsympathetic entity running the show in the BSG universe, or like “the Island” or like a one-man Jacob/Man in Black mash-up. I figured I might as well cop to that.
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