Lost: The Complete Sixth Season (The Final Season) Blu-ray Review

The final season of Lost comes to Region Free Blu-ray complete with a superior 1080p High Definition rendition in the show’s original aired aspect ratio of widescreen 1.78:1. Now Lost was one of scant few shows that has enjoyed releases of all of its seasons (albeit not contemporaneous) on the format, but they really have pushed the boat out for this sixth and final entry. Detail is better than it has ever been before, the kind you would associate with only the highest quality TV presentations, with everything from the longer island landscape shots to the closer face-shots exhibiting clarity, with negligible softness and no noticeable edge enhancement or visual defects. There is a fine layer of noise, but it never interferes with your viewing pleasure, and only lends the material a more substantial, filmic feel.
The colour scheme is broad and vivid – the island settings have always afforded the show some bright and sumptuous tones, lush greens, deep blues, and warmly tanned skin tones. Sun-drenched, perpetually paradise-like, the transfer has plenty of excellent material to deal with, as well as some tougher instances of low-level lighting and darker shadow-dominated shots, which all hold up well with this high quality transfer. It’s the best Lost has ever looked on the format, which probably makes it the best Lost has ever looked full stop, and this is a fine way to bring the popular show to a close.

The final season of Lost comes to Blu-ray complete with a fitting, powerful DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track that is amongst one of the absolute best TV-show presentations that I have ever come across. Dialogue is clear and crisp, cleanly observed across the frontal array with near-perfect levelling so that – for the most part – it neither feels swamped by the more boisterous moments, nor overpowering during the quieter moments (I say, for the most part, because there are a couple of episodes where the dialogue dips occasionally, but in the grand scheme of the 17 episodes, the sound drop is negligible). And boy are there some boisterous moments! Perhaps more so than any other season of Lost (as is normally the case with finales) they really pull out all the stops with this one, explosions and devastation wreaking havoc on the mysterious island – which has reached the end of the line. Thundering out of the surrounds during these striking events, it’s not like the effects are subdued during the rest of it, with keen regard for the more atmospheric nuances, and decent directionality across the array.

The score is playful as ever, tinkering around in the background throughout – even when you initially think it has totally abandoned the proceedings, a couple of riffs play softly behind the proceedings, lending them an eerie edge. Of course the more thrilling set-pieces get a more rousing accompaniment. The track is rounded off by a hefty quota of bass, rumbling out of the LFE channel for the greater part of the series, and lending it a fair amount of potency and weight. Overall, the video and audio on offer here are comparable to the kind of presentations you would expect from mainstream cinema releases. It’s top notch.

First up we get Lost in 8.15, and 8-minute Recap of basically everything that has come so far. It’s quite matter-of-fact, and does not take itself too seriously as well, which makes this a very entertaining way for fans (who have watched all the seasons over the years but can’t necessarily remember every single nuance) to catch up with 100 episodes of material in record time. It’s also worth noting that there is a ‘SeasonPlay’ option, which is actually quite a useful – and not just gimmicky – feature. With it, you can create a profile for your viewing of this show, and continue to play the episodes continuously – even across discs. When you finish viewing for a couple of days, even if you take a break to watch Prince of Persia or something, when you pop the disc back in it will give you the option to return to SeasonPlay, to pick up exactly where you left off. Trust me, this is one of the most useful functions if you’re the kind of person who is juggling a couple of seasons of your favourite shows at the same time.
Epilogue
The New Man in Charge is what many have been waiting for ever since the Finale aired. The creators stated that these short 12 minutes would help tie up some loose ends and yes, it does, but not really about anything massive. They talk about the polar bear, and both Hurley and Linus are featured, and you get to learn some more about Walt’s destiny (which I guess is the only aspect that really helps with all that nonsense in previous seasons about the kids being important – something that went totally overlooked in the final season itself).
Audio Commentaries
There are only 4 Audio Commentaries, which I think is probably the biggest disappointment for fans with this release. Sure, they centre on key episodes: the Creators themselves chipping in on the opening salvo, LA X, Linus himself pairing up with the Writers for Dr. Linus, the Writers returning with Richard for his origin story Ab Aeterno, and then the Creators returning for the tail-end episode Across the Sea. Although the finale isn’t covered, a fair amount of background material is divulged nonetheless, and the Creators in particular reflect upon the fan reaction to their end-run of Lost. Overall it’s a nice selection of audio offerings, but fans would have undoubtedly liked a more comprehensive set for this final season.
Featurettes
The End: Crafting a Final Season takes forty minutes to look at the preparation done to close out the season and shoot the final episode. It is quite a melancholy offering, the cast and crew almost in mourning already at what is about to be... erm, lost. A nice companion-piece, it is a fitting tribute in its depiction of the final episode shot.
A Hero's Journey takes 9 minutes to give a global overview of the characters in the Lost universe and how they have evolved over the years. It skims through quite a lot, given the brief runtime, but it is still worth checking out to see the many twists and turns of the Lost alumni.
See You in Another Life, Brotha is a 9 minute look at the flash-sideways universe that was explored within this season, and the alternate characters that reside therein. It was certainly an interesting concept, albeit thrown in to raise as many questions as it answers, and it is nice to have it reflected upon here.
Lost on Location is basically a compilation of episode-specific Featurettes which – as was the format for previous seasons – looks at individual episodes within the season and offers up a Making-of for each one of them. LA X, The Substitute, Recon, Ab Aeterno, Happily Ever After and The Candidate are covered.
Deleted Footage
We also get 10 minutes worth of Deleted Scenes (9 scenes in total), which are really neither here nor there. You’ll probably want to watch them once as there is nothing truly earth-shattering here, just a few nice touches. We also get the usual compilation of Lost Bloopers, this time a 4 minute collection of line-fluffs, on-set goofs and so forth. Finally, it’s worth noting that this disc comes with the usual BD-Live option, which – for fans of Lost – is quite a nice package really, allowing you access to the Lost University once again for further tuition on all things Lost.
The Final Season of Lost rounds out 6 years of enduring the lows and enjoying the highs on the mysterious island. It does not offer up a big, all-inclusive reveal which will please everybody, and in fact poses almost as many questions as it – eventually – answers, taking you on a typically convoluted island-trekking journey full of warring factions, broken allegiances, betrayal, revenge and retribution. Only the alternate timeline flash-sideways sequences are brought to any kind of satisfactory conclusions, and many of the mysteries of the Lost islands will, unfortunately, have to remain as such. Still, there’s some semblance of finality to many of the individual character-arcs, and you’ll largely have to file this one under ‘meh, that was ok...’ Personally, I found it a massively entertaining season – alongside the fourth it is a strong contender for being the best entry – and viewers will at least revel in the twists and turns, and engagingly dramatic events, even if the end itself comes as something of an anticlimax.

On Region Free UK Blu-ray the complete Sixth and Final Season of Lost comes presented with some of the best video and audio that I have ever come across with a TV release, and boasts a hefty quota of extras that are sure to keep fans busy for hours after the island stories come to a close. Fans will need to see this – you can’t really live without it – but newcomers are starting at the wrong end! If you’ve come this far in the Lost universe, it’s impossible not to want to know the answers, but since they may leave you feeling anything from outrage and annoyance through to happiness and (albeit vague) satisfaction, I can only recommend a rental. (Unless you’ve already watched it when it was broadcast – in which case you know whether or not to pick this one up.)

Lost was bloody entertaining fun, by anybody’s standards, but its evolution – around season 3 – into a full-on supernatural mystery was, by all accounts, a bit too much for the creators to tie up neatly with their (apparently) planned ending. Time travel, disappearing islands, sacred children, quasi-God-like keepers of the island...the original intended answer, which is what we get here, does not really cover any of those bases. It just leaves the island mysterious, and gives the cast some peace. You have to decide for yourself whether that is enough for you, but you also have to accept that this is all we are ever going to get. Anticlimactic.