When I was a kid I believed in Santa Claus. I don’t think I was alone in this one.

I remember the moment in Mrs. Nichol’s class in the first grade when one of my classmates told me (*Spoiler Warning) Santa didn’t exist. That it was just my parents putting those presents under the tree.

That feeling, which I will never forget, finding out the myth was a hoax, probably still ranks as one of the biggest disappointments in my life. Christmas, this event which once felt so magical and special, wasn’t really so anymore. Sure, it was fun but it wasn’t the same. I would later come to understand the true meaning of Christmas in my early adulthood but what I originally thought it to be was, in short, a lie to make me behave better lest I end up on the “naughty” list.

Then six years ago, I watched a very exciting pilot for this new J.J. Abrams show, LOST and in short time, I became a believer again. As one season turned into another, as one mystery was raised only to be followed by another and another, I assured myself there was meaning to all of this.

Why did the Others want Walt? What was the real significance of Nikki and Paulo? Who the heck really was Alvar Hanso? How did the Island move? The list goes on…

Every week I religiously read Doc Jensen’s amazing Lost episode recaps where he detailed the links between every small detail like the books characters were seen reading and their existential relationship to the overall story. I could tell each of these props was in fact, some kind of clue. An Easter Egg. Even as some of my less sci-fi geeky friends would lament that it felt like the writers were pulling it out of their asses from week to week, I reassured them there was a greater meaning to all of this. It was just all too damned clever for there not to be.

Easter Eggs be damned… (*Spoiler Warning) The Easter Bunny doesn’t exist either.

Season Six started out so strong. I was eager to see how what I felt was one of the greatest TV mysteries of all time would wrap up. I knew it would be a case study for brilliant storytelling that would be discussed for years to come. They (probably Doc Jensen) would write a book detailing how all the clues were there from the beginning, pointing to this brilliant and satisfying conclusion.

Boy, am I a sucker or what?

Then, as the season started to draw to a close, right after I saw the 2nd to last episode “Across the Sea” detailing this whole backstory between Jacob and the Man in Black, I got a real sinking feeling. A warm glowing light in a cave? 118 hours into a 121 and a half hour story you reveal that it’s all about protecting something that essentially proves there is a meaning to life? Talk about Deus ex Machina. This is when I really started to get concerned.

(NOTE: This is where it may get spoiler-y for the finale. If you haven’t seen it, stop reading)

So in the finale, Fake Locke/MiB wants to destroy the island and Jack, the new Jacob, must stop him. Okay, I can see the dramatic potential in that. I can see that since they are now unable to kill each other because of Jacob’s mother’s whamma jamma that the only way Jack can do so is to trick Fake Locke. I get that turning off the island’s magic, held in place with a big stone cork, like that wine bottle Jacob carried around, would also make Fake Locke’s human body human again and now, capable of being killed by Jack. But it’s all this sickly sweet sentimentality heaped upon us in those two and a half hours with so many questions unanswered that makes this Lost series finale so ultimately unsatisfying to me. I have to say that even that final fight scene on the cliff between Jack and Locke really didn’t feel that climactic to me as a final battle between good and evil should.

And then there’s buzzkill Desmond. So all of these characters who were lost in real life and suffered through unspeakable horror on the island finally get into a world where, while their lives may not be perfect, they certainly sucked a lot less than their pre-Oceanic 815 days. Locke gets to walk down the aisle, Jack has a relationship with his son, even lonely and invisible Napoleon Ben finds a conscience by not revealing his slimy principal’s school-nurse extramarital affair, gets his daughter back and finds love. But no, in the true Lost world, the flash-sideways are just a mass halucination… a dream, Bobby Ewing waking up in the shower, looking into his snowglobe and turning to Suzanne Pleschette and blaming it all on halucination-inducing bad clams or something.

You know, for a show that preached choice and destiny an awful lot, it seems like the castaways never really had the power of choice in their lives unless you count having to always, and I mean always, pick between “run” or “die” as a choice.

So, in the end, the flash-sideways was Limbo… a faux Matrix-esque construct of the real world for everyone to hang out in while Jack finalized his Christ-figure story arc (complete with stab wound in the side) and then goes back into the bamboo forest, lays down in the same spot where he woke up after the crash and in a reversal of Lost’s iconic extreme close up of an eye opening, Jack closes his eyes and dies.

And if you need one last eye roll, let’s at least give the Lost writers credit for having Kate acknowledge the hacky pun of the Christ figure’s father being named “Christian Shepherd”. I was almost waiting for the LOST sound effects team to insert a rim shot into the audio mix.

So in the end there are no answers to all the questions, everyone gathers around to say goodbye and then off you go into the light not knowing what, if anything at all good bad or otherwise, awaits on the other side. Sounds like a metaphor for life if you ask me. But after six years of putting my faith in the storytellers of LOST that I would feel somewhat enlightened, I can honestly say that more than anything I feel disappointed they couldn’t have ended with something a bit more clever and compelling that would make me want to believe life has purpose and is not just a never-ending balancing act of pulling stuff out of your ass in the hope that some mythical man with the big bag of toys will deem you worthy of being rewarded.