BEST ENDING EVER. Except, that's hyperbole and not really true, as the last episodes of M*A*S*H and Newhart tie for best series ending ever.
But I enjoyed it thoroughly. After watching every episode assiduously, it confirmed a couple of theories ( including - SPOILER IN BLACK TEXT -
my postulation that Jack would initially be selected as guardian of the island but Hurley would ultimately actually end up in that role - YES, I predicted that!) and the wrap up of the alternate time-line worked out nicely. It was very nice to watch the Jimmy Kimmel Live "Aloha To Lost" special after the show, see Kimmel actually ask about my interpretation and have Matthew Sheppard (Jack) say, "That sound's good to me."
It probably helped that before the finale I saw the
two-part interview that Diane Sawyer conducted with the producers of Lost about the finale and concluding the series. In it they acknowledged that while they feel like they've answered all the major questions, they also started some narrative threads were dropped in that they felt they didn't serve the main story. That makes sense in explaining things like "What happened with Walt?" (Also, since time on the show didn't reflect real-time, they really couldn't bring Walt back to the show after a certain point because the actor had grown so tall in real life that it wouldn't have matched.)
But in watching the twitterverse discussion of #lost I saw about half were happy and about half were saying, "WTF?" And there's no in-between ... either people are very satisfied and feel like their questions were answered or they are asking, "How come I still don't know what was going on?"
(SPOILER SUMMARY IN BLACK TEXT)
Kimmel summed it up nicely though. The show started with Jack opening his eyes. It ended with Jack closing his eyes. The whole thing was really his story. And the moment in the alternate time-line when the Oceanic 816 plane shook in this last season ... the point where it should have broken up and crashed on the island like it did in the first season ... and the plane got through the turbulence and stopped shaking ... Rose turned to Jack and said, "You can let go now." And that was the crux of the thing. Because in that millisecond Jack experienced everything that happened on the island and passed his "test" ... he just needed some time to accept that he had passed, and to let go.
And yes, even though I like that interpretation, I do recognize that it pisses some people off. But everyone had to know that the ending was going to be some meta-physical, quasi-religious conclusion ... it was inevitable.
I think the bar was set so high that it was certain that some people were going to be unhappy with it no matter how they ended it.