Stephen King once wrote, “Memo to Abrams and staff writers: Your responsibilities include knowing when to write The End.”

It seems the creators of LOST have taken heed of this advice—have turned their heads from however many duffel bags full of money were placed on the table. They have given us one beautiful guarantee: LOST isn’t going to cling to life well after relevancy to have the life-sustaining plug only pulled once the cash has all but dried up and the long departed fans are left to wistfully think ‘what if they had ended it when it should have ended. I bet that would have been something.’

Famous Lost title card

It’s a familiar feeling, watching a series become sick and emaciated only to be revived each Fall despite the DNR note taped to its chest. Just mention the X-Files to a fan and watch their hand start shaking around their coffee cup.

(An aside: this is the ‘last season’ of LOST. To paraphrase Irvine Welsh, ‘They are last seasons and there are last seasons: which is this going to be?’ As in, Friday The 13th—The Final Chapter. The Final Final Season of Scrubs. The Brady Bunch—remember the four week ‘reunion show’ run entitled The Brady Girls Get Married? The glazed look in your eye tells me that vague memory might be haunting your subconscious somewhere.

But let’s take it at face value. Let’s tell ourselves that this time it’s going to be different. Brett Favre is going to retire. ‘I just want to be friends’ really means, ‘I just need some more time and then we can get naked together.’ The duffle bags of cash weren’t turned down only to be accepted in the guise of a LOST movie contract.)

Now that we have been giving this beautiful guarantee that ‘this is it, buckle your seat belts,’ comes the next hurdle in closing out: climaxing can be damn difficult. Unlike Woody Allen’s observation of never having a climax that wasn’t just ‘right on,’ there have been some pretty messy finishes.

As the cast of Seinfeld bemoaned to Larry David in the ‘final’ season of Curb Your Enthusiasm: ‘A Seinfeld reunion show would be great! We’ll get the chance to get the ending right this time!’

To which Larry David would scream, “There was nothing wrong with the finale!”

Now imagine the herculean task of finishing LOST. Imagine the pressure from the fans and the ‘suits’ to “tie it all up.”

Here’s another memo to the LOST creators: we don’t need all the loose ends tied into a bow. We don’t need to know what happened to Mulder’s sister. Bayliss doesn’t need to suddenly solve the Adena Watson case. We don’t need to see Winchester and Houlihan reconcile.

True, part of the beauty of the last two or three seasons of LOST have been the clearing up of some of the mysteries: polar bear, solved. Rousseau, solved. The stone feet, uh… solved?

But for Jacob’s sake, don’t solve them all. Mystery is part of the series’ charm; don’t take it all away. Give us a little something to ponder after the closing credits.

The creators of LOST have, no doubt, been working hard at this heroic task and have developed a conclusion they believe will excite and satisfy their fans. As, no doubt, did the creators of Seinfeld, Cheers, The X-Files, and The Sopranos.

And there’s going to be a lot of theories floating out there about how it’s going to end—and that’s part of the fun. Enjoy it. But avoid the people trying to get the ‘real scoop.’ Those who will read the upcoming Entertainment Weekly, ‘What We’ve Learned Will Happen Spoiler Alert’ article. Avoid anyone who has that ‘Dumbledore dies’ gleam in their eyes. (My advice, if you see someone with their eyes shining with that gleam and you hear the following sentence, “You like Lost, don’t you?” immediately, before another breath is drawn, punch that person right in the face, and then just stare at them. Message received.)

There’s no gleam in my eye, here, just a theory (and maybe a hope) on how I see the ‘last’ episode of LOST going down:

It’s the last fifteen minutes of the show. ‘It worked,’ as Juliette said in the first episode of this last season. They are all back on the plane. We think they are going to fly into LAX no problems and all the ‘flash sideways’ we’ve seen throughout this sixth season have really been ‘flash forwards’ showing us the future after they get off the island—and there you go, we’ve been watching an eighteen episode ‘final episode’ this entire time! Hell, that’s like a final season AND the reunion show all wrapped up into one!

Jack looks out the window and smiles, happy.

He’s won.

He’s saved them.

And then…

…something…

…goes wrong…

…and it’s the plane wreck, all over again. The plane splits apart. People get sucked out. Chaos.

Then a close-up of an eye.

Jack’s eye.

He’s lying on the carpet of the jungle.

It’s the opening again, from the very first episode.

He runs out of the forest and looks around at the carnage. His face twists with the sick realization that he’s back at the beginning AND THEN HE TURNS COMPLETELY WHITE…

…and Sam Becket ‘quantum leaps’ into Jack’s body. Sam looks at the wreckage and says, “Oh Boy.”

The End.

B.J. Burrow is the author of The Changed, a zom-com from Apex Publications.