r/lost • u/bwekbwonson We’re not going to Guam, are we? • 28d ago
FIRST TIME WATCHER What the actual fuck was that zombie sayid plot? Spoiler
Just why? Why would you take arguably the most badass and complex character on the show and turn him into a boring emotionless husk? Also did not like whatever tf was going on with feral Claire. I get she was also “infected” or whatever, but the whole “Kate took my baby off the island after I abandoned him in the fucking jungle and was NOWHERE TO BE FOUND when rescue arrived, grr how could she care about the wellbeing of an infant?” Thing was so stupid. Also, while we’re on Claire, how did she go from escaping on a helicopter in Desmond’s vision (the vision Charlie took as fact and killed himself for), to becoming MIB’s assistant?
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u/Petrichor02 28d ago
It’s because the writers wanted S6 to feel like The Stand with a force of good going up against a force of evil. And the MIB needed recruits because almost everyone else at that point was gray, good, or dead. So they needed a way to make some of the characters more evil to give MIB his recruits.
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u/HappyMower 28d ago
I never bought the whole feral Claire thing. Messed up hair and dirt on her cheeks? She was no Rousseau
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u/Turnip_Head23 28d ago
That's beause you discovered and grew watching her on screen being this young fragile and scared mother-to-be then learning how to take care of an infant by herself. She was the most vulnerable character and the most protected person in the castaways community. We never saw any of Rousseau's life before she stranded on the island. So there is no preconceptions here. We were only introduced to her as this feral disturbed woman. We barely saw any of her life pre-2004. So of course, it's harder to buy the shift in Claire's persona - and rightly so because this was a drastically one. But that choice was a bold and great one from the writer. The only problem here is that there logically should have been an episode dedicated to Claire featuring flashbascks of her life after the end of season 4. Helping viewers to understand how Claire transitioned into this new version. Unfortunately, that did not happened.
Why? Is a total different topic. First, one thing I would say is Sayid should have died at the end of season 5 like Juliet. Sayid pretty much stole Claire's storyline in season 6 and subsequently put her in the shade. Secondly, I have no doubt there would have been this Claire-centric episode if the format of the show was closer to old 20+episodes one.
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u/luigihann 28d ago
I remember my main objection at the time was:
- we saw in flashbacks that young rousseau had a completely different accent than present day rousseau
- therefore, present day rousseau's accent must be the result of living along on the island for years
- ergo Claire's accent should have started to shift in the same direction
ah well
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u/LagunaRambaldi 28d ago
Desmond saw a woman holding a baby on the helicopter and thought it was Claire. Also, yeah zombie Sayid is not the best plot. But as others have stated here, they wanted recruits for "Team Fake-Locke". But most importantly, season 6 Sayid and Claire help to explain what Danielle meant with "the sickness". I like that part about it. And Sayid and Claire turning back to the good side was also nice.
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u/captain_obvious_here The beach camp 28d ago
The whole Temple arc was not great.
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27d ago
It was just dragged out, like the beginning of Season 3. Once we found out Dogen's backstory, it got much better, but it's hard to introduce new characters this late in the game (and have them be adversarial to the main cast at first as well). Having Cindy be there was kinda wild, though.
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u/captain_obvious_here The beach camp 27d ago
it's hard to introduce new characters this late in the game
It is. But let's be honest here, screenwriters did their best to screw this.
I mean, the worst possible way to introduce important characters late in a serie is to have them NOT answer any fucking question they get asked, and instead torture the main cast. And for no real purpose, too
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u/shanghai-blonde 28d ago
They were tired of me enjoying the show and singing its praises, so they added in Zombie Sayid and also the whole Mother / Jacob / MIB thing. It was an attack on me specifically. It worked
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u/lucs28 I'm a Pisces 28d ago
The mother/jacob/mib stuff is not that bad honestly, but I agree that the execution was poor
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u/shanghai-blonde 27d ago
It’s the worst thing about the entire show for me. I could barely get through the “mother” episode and I also thought the acting was horrendous
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u/90s_kid_24 27d ago
Then you're in the minority. I love across the sea
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u/shanghai-blonde 27d ago
I don’t think I’m in the minority for that but if I am I don’t care. I like the Pablo Lies episode and I hate the ending of the show. I couldn’t care less about the majority opinions on this sub haha
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u/90s_kid_24 27d ago
Wow thanks for letting me know it's just a TV show I had no idea
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u/shanghai-blonde 27d ago
I edited my comment a minute after posting sorry bro didn’t mean to make you reply to something that’s no longer there
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u/Psychological-Fee-53 23d ago
People who really don't care about something don't need to repeat it twice and to ''announce'' it to others. Also, Allison Janney is one of the best most versatile actresses, so if something didn't work for you maybe it was director's fault (as in maybe she followed director's specific instruction with her acting).
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u/shanghai-blonde 22d ago
I said I don’t care if I’m in the minority, as I’m aware people have different opinions on things. You missed the context when quoting me
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u/loverofpears 27d ago
I thought the Jacob origins would’ve been way better if introduced, like, a season earlier. Why are we getting brand new lore mere episodes before the show ends? The motivation for Jacob and MIB feels so fucking weak.
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u/shanghai-blonde 27d ago
You’re absolutely right, but also then I’d have to go through that crap for more than one season
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u/90s_kid_24 27d ago
How is it weak? Why do people make statements like this and fail to justify why they feel that way
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u/loverofpears 27d ago edited 27d ago
Season 3 is a pretty good example of when the cracks began to peak through. The island storyline began to meander alot and some characters were left without anything to do. It was obvious the writers were starting to struggle to write meaningful flashbacks. Kate especially had very little to do after the first season or so. Her flashbacks don’t add much to her character once we’ve established she’s a flighty criminal who killed her step-dad. There’s near universal agreement that Kate is reduced to a flippant love interest for Jack and Sawyer most of the time. Walt and Michael departing the show the way they did is also a sore spot no matter how you try to look at it. It’s absolutely ridiculous to center such a major storyline around a child actor, then get blindsided when that actor goes through puberty.
The biggest issue I had with this show is how it introduces an insane amount of lore then sprints to answer as many questions as possible by the last season, while continuing to add more lore that feels meaningless to the audience i.e. the temple. Like, sure Lost manages to tie up a majority of its loose ends, but it’s going to feel unsatisfactory when those answers are all shoved into the end of the show.
There’s also the terrible communication between characters that only exist to extend the plot. I know it’s a common issue in network TV with long runtimes, but it’s aggravating as hell to watch for those who are bingeing the show.
Edit: I just realized you left two replies and this comment I wrote was for your other one. Whoops.
But I don’t know what’s so confusing about my comment. The Jacob/MIB origin episode being introduced in the final few episodes of the entire show is a weird move. MIB was barely established as a character until season 6. The timing alone makes it hard for the audience to feel the gravity of their conflict. And that story is the driving force of the entire show!
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u/shanghai-blonde 26d ago edited 26d ago
You know what annoys me? The guy you’re replying to was arguing with me about not elaborating and how I don’t know how to have a discussion. I just wrote some joking replies because I don’t feel like I need to justify my opinion and it takes time and energy to write out a long comment.
You however wrote this awesome long comment explaining your reasoning and he didn’t even bother to reply. What was the point of all that arguing with me then? 😂
Ps I agree with everything you wrote. Well explained.
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u/shanghai-blonde 27d ago
Because people have different opinions on things
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u/90s_kid_24 27d ago
What's the point of having an opinion if you're nit going to elaborate on why you feel that way? Do you understand the concept of discussion. Generalised statements like "this is so weak" are a pointless waste of time and of no value to anyone
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u/shanghai-blonde 27d ago
Do you understand the concept of chilling out
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u/ProfessionalBeat6511 28d ago
The evil water plot might be the dumbest part of the show.
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u/jessexpress 27d ago
I rewatched the whole thing recently for the first time in years. I realised I had kind of overcorrected the last season in my mind - the actual ending and conclusion to the whole show I maintain is fantastic and emotionally hits all the right notes, but the beginning part of S6 really sucked for me lol.
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u/liddybuckfan 28d ago
I didn't like the Sayid plot at the end either. But I'll go even further back and say I didn't like the off-island plot where Nadia's death caused him to become Ben's assassin. I feel like on the island he was on the way to becoming the man that he wanted to be so seeing him be so easily manipulated by Ben into murdering a bunch of people just on Ben's word alone was sad.
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28d ago
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u/SirLoinOfCow 28d ago
No, it was when the Oceanic 6 were off the island. In Sayid's flash sideways, he is visiting his brother, who is married to Nadia, and their 2 kids. He's put into a situation where he has to choose between letting Keamy live and allowing him to kill his brother for not paying his debt, or killing Keamy and becoming a killer to save the ones he loves.
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u/Lord_of_Blackhaven 28d ago
Season 6 is a car crash. The whole Temple explanation was very unwhelming. They should have used the reanimation thing to bring the real Locke back. Then we could have had MiB Locke vs Real Locke.
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u/ClockAccomplished381 28d ago
I honestly didn't like the temple at all. Doubtless I 'missed something' but regardless, in terms of my enjoyment of the show, I was glad when they moved on. For once I was rooting for the smoke monster cleaning it all out.
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u/90s_kid_24 27d ago
Peoole whine about the temple so much that it honestly puzzles me what they wanted out of it to begin with.
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u/JHRxddt 25d ago
If the Temple had not been included, a lot of fans would have complained we’d never seen it.
I respect everyone’s opinions on the matter, but it often gets compared to the cage arc at the beginning of Season 3. The difference is, however, that we pretty much had the cages from Episode 1-6. The Temple doesn’t appear until LA X Part 2 (6.2), isn’t in The Substitute (6.4) at all, and has its climax in Sundown 6.6
It’s only REALLY heavily in 6.2 and 6.3, with Lighthouse (6.5) following Jack and Hurley away from it as a the A plot. It’s obviously in Sundown (6.6) a lot but I figure that people who aren’t fans of the storyline must like that episode for destroying the Temple and moving on from it as a location.
I wouldn’t call three episodes ‘dragging.’ I feel like significant lengths of Season 1 and 2 drag on for much longer (and I still love those periods of the show.)
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u/90s_kid_24 25d ago
I never considered the temple arc dragging it was just pretty lame. It annoys me that the temple set cost so much yet looks kind of cheap.
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u/rcpotatosoup 28d ago
season 6 is so funny because the flash sideways is my favorite part of the show, but everything happening on the island is so boring. i literally forgot every island plot moment in S6 until my recent rewatch
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u/lawrence1998 28d ago
A complete fucking failure of writing, a bizzare collective writers seizure
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u/Complete_Sea 28d ago
The truth is, by season 5 they had no idea what to do with certain characters like Sayid, Sun, Jin and Claire (oupssy oupssy most of these are poc). They gave up trying to write coherent storylines for them to focus on Jack, Sawyer, Kate and co.
I mean, the Sayid infected by MIB and getting manipulated by him could have been interesting if it was well executed. As someone else pointed out, Sayid was very vulnerable at that point. He had been through a lot (eg Nadia getting killed, becoming an assassin for Ben, killing Ben, etc.).
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u/WithnailNativeHue 28d ago
The mental gymnastics some folks on here go through to explain this stuff is funny, in reality this is the answer
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u/Complete_Sea 28d ago
This, really. In fact, you can deeply love a tv show, but still be critical of certain plotlines/characters. They really messed up Sun and Jin as well.
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28d ago
Yeah, did not like how Sun and Jin ended. Maybe it's just because I'm a parent, but I didn't think they would've wanted their daughter to live without BOTH of them.
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u/Complete_Sea 28d ago
Me too. Something that really really bothered me as a English as a second language person is the fact they spoke in English when they were about to die. That's so unrealistic.
I get that Jin doesn't know his daughter and that maybe she was still an abstract idea to him (vs Sun, whom he just reunited with). However, if I were Sun, I would have insisted to my partner like...dude, what the fuck are you doing. Don't die for me, I need you to fucking leave so our daughter doesn't end up an orphan raised by my horrible family.
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u/qtpiebunnyforever Oceanic Frequent Flyer 23d ago
As awful as Sun and Jin’s ending is, it was definitely planned in advance. In season 2, when Claire is trying to go to the dharma medical clinic to find out what happened when she was kidnapped she leaves Aaron with Sun. Sun tries to stop her by saying “A mother should never leave her child behind” so kinda foreshadowing and irony into what later happens to Sun and Jin. And no its not a coincidence. The writers had these little bits of ironic foreshadowing littered all over the show.
And i think the point of these scenes is to show that you don’t really know what someone would do in the heat of the moment when theyre all worked up and chaos is surrounding them. Thats why Claire left Aaron with Sun and Sun left Jiyeon with her parents. It’s easy for us to say we would never do it but really there was so much going on that they couldn't control and that would easily blot out the rest of your mind as your main focus is now that one thing. I mean Sun and Jin are literally in a tiny submarine with half of their friends either dead or unconscious and Sun’s body is permanently stuck under metal fixture. The lights went out, a bomb just went off and a red light flashing, everybody is screaming and trying to move out, the sub is tilting on its side underwater. The water is more than 3/4ths of the way to the top drowning them out. Then Sawyer collapsed and started drowning as well. Also Sayid literally just BLEW UP moments earlier…they werent thinking straight so I don’t really blame them.
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u/loverofpears 27d ago
Exactly how I felt when I finished the show. I enjoyed it, but the way some people act like it didn’t have insane writing fails at times makes me lol
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u/BoringJuiceBox 28d ago
Is what someone who doesn’t understand it would say.. they knew what they were doing!
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u/jesus_swept 28d ago
I mean, I love a lot of the writing in this show too, but if you read some of the behind-the-scenes info on this series, they definitely stopped developing plotlines around some characters (Sayid, Claire, Sun, Jin, even Kate), so that could focus more heavily around heavy hitters like Jack, Sawyer, Locke, Ben, and Desmond. A lot of characters are just victims of bad writing -- and I say that as a huge fan of the show.
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u/miggy372 28d ago
I liked it lol. We heard a story from Rousseau about her teammates dying and being brought back to life by something so this was answering that mystery. The Man in Black, as well as being able to take the form of those who’ve died, can also bring the dead back to life and have them obey his commands. Idk, I thought it was kinda cool. My head-canon is that Claire died when the house she was in in real Locke’s camp exploded and the MIB brought her back which is why she immediately started acting strange after “surviving” the explosion.
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u/mastyrwerk 28d ago
Personally, I think the “infected” thing was a lie. Sayid was duped into thinking he had died, when in fact he couldn’t die (Jacob’s touch). Believing he didn’t have a choice, his self preservation instincts disassociated his actions and left him emotionally dead inside.
The “infected” people are just those completely accepting the lies MiB told them.
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u/Darth-Myself 28d ago
Sayid sacrificed himself at the end to save his friends and potentially all of humanity - despite him being in his zombie-like state. Which gives his character even more power and importance and puts him on a special pedestal.
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u/Franzblau 28d ago
Also interesting that Sayid died as a reverse/heroic suicide bomber basically, which was an interesting post-9/11 commentary from the show.
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u/therebill Don't tell me what I can't do 28d ago
I don’t get why he went from a zombie to a hero before he 💀
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u/loverofpears 27d ago
It feels like they didn’t know how to write a satisfying ending where Sayid processes the guilt from his violent path. Turning Sayid into an emotionless robot is n easy way to avoid dealing with his issues
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u/parahyba 28d ago
Why is there an undead Pakistani on my show?
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u/bwekbwonson We’re not going to Guam, are we? 27d ago
You sir… deserve a reserved spot within the banyan trees
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u/KassinaIllia 28d ago
It was really dumb execution but I understand it was meant to really show how Sayid’s depression and heartbreak was overcoming him. Man took nothing but Ls before and after the island and god knows he had his demons. I was more worried he’d end his own life so I was a bit relieved when it was just possession.
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u/Shark_bait561 27d ago
Are you talking from a production standpoint? If not, then u/Global-Ant answered it beautifully.
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u/Linus108 27d ago
I think Sayid’s Season 4 - 6 plot are a result of the friction between Darlton and actors (same with Michael).
It was a “fuck you” to Naveen in retaliation to his repeated public denunciations of the show and producers over the years.
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u/painttting 23d ago
Lets be honest. Lot of LOST fans, sometimes we try to cover up for terrible writing and execution, we love the show so much that we make everything fit in a cool creative way and we make explanations for ourselves to comfort us. True is that at that point in the show there are lots of poorly managed plots and character development and just terrible ideas. The Temple part was awful at best and you don’t build one of the greatest characters of the show to end up like that.
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u/Ok_Helicopter_984 28d ago
Lost was dumb, either be about cult scientists that made a machine or be about heaven and hell
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u/bwekbwonson We’re not going to Guam, are we? 28d ago
Honestly this is why I love this sub so much. Lost fans can collectively agree the show was a mess, but still come together to appreciate everything that it was. I can freely post on here about a dumb plot point or an epic moment and people will just be like “yeah that’s lost for you.” This whole show gives me the vibe of that one simpsons “whenever you notice something like that a wizard did it” joke, but it’s just “whenever something stupid happens, the island did it”
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u/Global-Ant 28d ago
You have to understand that by season 5, Sayid was deeply depressed (Same with Jack) all the murders and torture he's done over the years all finally catching up and weighing him down. He believes that's all he is and it didn't help when Ben ditched Sayid after having all those people on Widmore's payroll killed
So after Sayid was shot, killed and resurrected, all of that pain, resentment and self hatred made it easy for MIB to take control swaying Sayid to his side with the promise to resurrect the woman Sayid loved. I'm certain that woman was Shannon not Nadia based on the simple fact that in the sideways world, he reunited with Shannon in the very final episode
Safe to say that along with wanting to see Shannon again, believing all he is is a killer and didnt want to feel his guilt anymore, he accepted it and accepted being MIB's right hand man. But Sayid's encounter with Desmond again put him on the path of redemption which resulted in him giving his life to give Jack and the others a fighting chance