Mere hours after the “Lost” series finale, Los Angeles Times television critic Mary McNamara wrote about the episode as if she had never seen the show before. She criticized the final 10 minutes even though she obviously wasn’t paying attention to what actually happened.

In a nutshell, McNamara dismissed the six-year story as a tropical “purgatory,” where the fated passengers of Oceanic Flight 815 never survived the plane crash in the first place. She came to this conclusion despite three specific moments in the finale that explicitly refuted this theory.

McNamara wasn’t the only viewer to make the mistake. Message boards were flooded with similar confusion, and some viewers (not the die-hards, obviously) hooted and hollered about being “confused” and “cheated.”

Such misinterpretations are bound to happen with a show as dense as “Lost.” And who knows? Perhaps even us hardcore Losties missed some profound bit of evidence that proves the whole Island-As-Purgatory theory (doubtful).

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