Jack and his mom were looking at an uncertain future thanks to the deaths of John and the uncle. Bitter to be sure, but it’s clear Jack didn’t spend the next few years brushing up on his college applications. As I’m a cynic, I’ll propose that he spent those years practically waiting for his mom to die so that he could finally get revenge against the FBI agents who betrayed his father. All those dreams of John, gone. In the end, what difference did it make what John had done or the life he’d lived in order in hopes to improve the lives of the family?

Is this outcome much different than if John had refused to work for Agent Ross to begin with? Worse, I suspect, in that Jack would have otherwise blamed his father for the death of his mom, but at least he would have had some chance at turning his life into something more meaningful than simply a mirror image of his father’s dark past.

So yes, I’m man enough to admit I cried during the entire last episode of Lost. And maybe it’s just the piano music (which reminds me of Lost!) but I also cried for the Marstons … the ones that were and those that might have been.

I too feel like Jack’s short storyline would have benefitted a great deal from a reunion of sorts. I wanted some virtual comfort for him. He didn’t know his dad that well, and often thought he was just a murderer. How meaningful and reparative would it be if he (albeit briefly) sought out his father’s friends and acquaintances from the earlier story in his quest for Ross? In the process they could tell Jack how much John’s help meant to them. I’d like to see Jack go through a bit of self exploration and maturation, such that these folks wind up giving Jack some comfort and healing, and thus give Jack the end-game option of simply humbling Agent Ross (by disarming) rather than traveling down the all to easy path to a blackened soul. Make John’s life mean something more than a passage of genetic traits for gunslinging.

Does anyone else feel the same?