What a long, strange head trip the last "Lost" turned out to be.

If nothing else, the final image -- Dr. Jack Shepherd (Matthew Fox) closing his eyes in death -- offered full-circle resolution to how the show began, with Jack opening his eyes post-Oceanic Flight 815 crash. What happened on the show in the six years between those moments is open to interpretation.

"Lost" began as a series about the survivors of a plane crash and morphed into a meditation on faith vs. science and good vs, evil while telling its characters stories in flashbacks, flashforwards and, most recently, in confusing flash sideways to an alternate timeline where the plane never crashed.

In the end, Jack died on the island after being stabbed and putting a stopper back in the Heart of the Island Hot Tub, thus preventing the island from sinking into the sea. He also saw the Ajira plane take off with many of his fellow castaways on board. Jack died with Vincent, a yellow labrador retriever, at his side.

In the sideways story, Jack learned he died on the island as he was reunited in a church with many of his island friends with a few notable exceptions. Ben Linus (Michael Emerson) refused to enter the church ("I still have some things to work on. I'll be here a while," Ben said), and Michael (Harold Perrineau) and his son, Walt (Malcolm David Kelley), were missing.

In a room with a stained-glass window featuring symbols of world religions, Jack's father (John Terry) explained they are both dead and there is no "now" in the afterlife, "a place that you all made together so that you could find one another. The most important part of your life was the time that you spent with these people. That's why all of you are here. Nobody does it alone, Jack. You needed all of them and they needed you."

In the end, just about all the characters were redeemed with happy endings in the sideways universe. It seems pretty clear that what happened on the island did happen. Jack's father told him, "Everything that's ever happened to you is real." But how does that account for the sideways world? How does the show intend viewers to reconcile these parallel universes?

Those were the most perplexing questions in the finale, and they colored my initial reaction: The show wanted viewers to get caught up in the reunions of the characters, but I was so preoccupied with trying to understand what was going on that I missed out on the intended emotional impact.

The dominant emerging theory is that the flash sideways depicted an afterlife for the characters before their arrival at the church, a sort of personal heaven as each one might imagine it.

After some time to noodle through the mechanics of the finale, I re-watched the last 30 minutes of "Lost" Monday morning and found it had more emotional resonance once it was less burdened by the "Whaaaat?" factor.

Reactions vary to this head-scratcher of a finale that averaged 13.5 million viewers (better than this season's average but not a record by a long shot). In the pantheon of TV series finales that ranges from "Newhart" (most creative, surprising) and "M*A*S*H" (most emotional) to "Seinfeld" (pretty much universally hated, although I didn't mind it), "Lost" seems likely to occupy a middle ground similar to the divisive "Sopranos" ending.

"After six seasons, you call a prom of the dead in a chapel of love where everybody is [spewing] rainbows, where all the primary Oceanic 815 survivors are redeemed, where a loving 'Dad' opens a Spielbergian door of light to the greater beyond ("Where are we going?" "Let's go find out.") -- a finale?" asked Jack Shafer at Slate.com. "The series, which started with so much promise, stalled some time in its third season and will now be remembered as a monstrosity that fused kitsch to camp. ... As Johnny Rotten once put it, 'Ever feel like you've been cheated?' "

The show's producers long ago denied that the island was purgatory, which is technically true, but as Willa Paskin points out in New York Magazine's Vulture blog, "the finale did involve afterlife-issues in a more fundamental way than [the producers] suggest. So, all of you, the ones who watched the first episode of 'Lost' and said, 'Hey! I bet this is purgatory' and then spent the next six years fighting with people about how you were still right, even though no less than [series creators] J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof said you were wrong? Well, you were sort of wrong, but not as wrong as other people! So, sleep well, and dream of dead soulmates holding hands in a church."

Some viewers interpreted the finale to mean everyone died in the initial crash of Oceanic Flight 815, but that theory does not appear to be the prevailing view as viewers gain distance from the episode titled "The End."

"I can already see on the various Internet haunts I frequent that the episode didn't work for everyone. It continued the series' hard left turn into outright mysticism, and some are frightened that the end of the show suggests that everyone has been dead all this time," wrote Todd VanDerWerff in the Los Angeles Times Show Tracker blog. "While I can see where some are coming up with that theory from ...I don't think that is what we're seeing here. This flash-sideways universe is one final gift from the last protector of the Island that we see -- Hurley -- to everyone he ever knew or loved. It is a chance for him to do what he does best, as Ben says. He is taking care of people, giving them both what they wanted and what they needed. ... At some point in the 'Lost' world, all of these people die. And then they end up in the sideways world, where they're able to have what they wanted (perhaps thanks to Hurley). And then Desmond becomes their spiritual counselor, in a way, helping them to let go."

Time magazine critic James Poniewozik praised the finale, calling it "moving, soulful."

"The Island world, we learned, absolutely mattered to the physical fate of the survivors. (And sci-fi purists ticked over the spiritual ending should at least give it up for this: what happened, did, indeed happen.) And the Sideways world mattered because it was the culmination of the spiritual, moral, human lives -- the souls -- of the characters," he wrote. "It mattered, it moved, and it achieved. ...

"'Lost' is a story about community, connections and interdependence. You live together, it told us, or you die alone. And when you live together -- when you share of yourself and make meaning with others -- you never die alone, even when you die bleeding out on the floor of a bamboo forest."

It's worth noting that the theme of connections at the heart of "Lost" was absorbed, perhaps subconsciously, over six seasons by viewers, many of whom chose to watch the finale with fellow fans, forming just the kind of communal links the show ultimately espoused.

On the "Jimmy Kimmel Live" after-show, Mr. Kimmel theorized that the whole show was Jack's test and he passed.

"The way it ends there is room for interpretation depending on peoples' spiritual beliefs," Mr. Fox told Mr. Kimmel. "There are also religions that believe when you die you go to a place and that place can last for a nanosecond or an extended period of time where you have to remember your own death and all of the people that were instrumental that ... were the most important to you, and in remembering them lead up to the moment that you died before you can move on to whatever's next."

In many ways, "Lost" did turn out to be a bit of a con. The show raised questions, especially about the island, that producers either never intended to answer or opted not to answer. But the character stories were more consistent and the finale rewarded viewers who watched for the relationships. Fans of coherent plots were probably less satisfied.

Wherever one stands on "Lost," the finale disappointed in one significant way: Too many commercials. Or maybe they were just oddly placed, sometimes resulting in four minutes of commercials following just five minutes of program time. An ABC spokeswoman said the company does not comment on the number of ads it airs in programming.

The one commercial break bright spot was a series of "Lost"-themed Target ads, including one featuring the show's Smoke Monster that was revealed to be an ad for a smoke detector.

TV columnist Rob Owen's Tuned In+ is featured exclusively on PG+, a members-only web site from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.