http://livefeed.hollywoodreporter.com/2010/05/lost-finale-highestrated-episode-in-two-years.html

Ratings for the series finale of ABC's "Lost" were much like the critic reviews: mixed.

The emotive two-and-a-half hour closer was seen by 13 million viewers and drew a 5.6 preliminary rating among adults 18-49. That's the highest-rated "Lost" episode in two years, but a softer number than one might have expected given the massive amount of anticipation and publicity leading up to the finale.

It's tough for a heavily serialized show to post big spikes once it starts to decline (and "Lost" has been gradually eroding for years). For what was essentially a decorated clip show, ABC's pre-show "Lost: The Final Journey" (11.4 million, 4.0) performed very well.

In general, critics seemed let down by the closer, or at least heavily divided: NY Times said it was a "a bit of a cop out." LA Times gave it one star out of five. Gawker said the finale was "two-and-a-half hours of slow-motion bullshittery." The Onion's AV Club disagreed, writing it was "highly effective." Maureen Ryan loved it. EW called it "refreshing."

My thoughts: Was it necessary? Did we need to spend half the final season explaining what happened to all the characters after they died? The problem with the flash-ultra-forwards was they zapped the final season's island story of suspense and emotional impact -- when Sun and Jin perished, we didn't even know if they were really truly dead or not. In the finale we're told what's happening right now matters and there are no do-overs. Well, this was news to us, and it came pretty late. Think of how much more intense the entire final season would have been without the flashes that muddied the reality of the story we were watching. Now, perhaps the afterlife story does matter because the island is some sort of testing ground for Jack (moreso than living your life elsewhere), as Jimmy Kimmel suggested, or is actually purgatory and they've been dead the entire time -- except the writers refused to make that link too directly. At the end of "Lost," we did not learn what the island was. The "Lost" team can skip answering a lot of the show's mysteries, we don't need every question resolved, but that's a pretty big one to duck.