Do all of the other characters in the alt-timeline exist? Christian tells Jack that the timeline is something this handful of losties created so they would have somewhere to meet before crossing over. So this timeline is specifically created so the people in the church would have somewhere to hang out until the last one of them dies and they can come together again.

Or... when Christian tells Jack how "they created this" is he specifically referring to the church? Now that I'm typing this I guess I'm leaning towards the church because other characters in the alt-timeline have an awareness that things aren't as they seem - some more so than others (Eloise, Faraday).

I mostly ask this because of Ben. He's going to stay behind so he can sort things out with Rousseau and Alex. If alt-timeline Rousseau and Alex are "imaginary" then I guess that means that Ben wants to stick around to spend time with them and be the father and husband he wasn't in his life.

If this is the actual Rousseau and Alex then Ben would be staying around to help awaken them when the time is right. Obviously when he does so they are going to be supremely pissed with him so he would need to regain their love so they could cross over together with Ben who is now redeemed. If he fails he rejoins the losties, I guess.

Overall I enjoyed the finale and I don't really feel the need to have all of the mystical elements of the island explained. Two things that stand out for me though:

1) Shannon being the one to awaken Sayid was the weakest of the awakenings. Obviously Nadia was his true love where Shannon was just some minor player from season 1.

2) A season or two ago Ben was talking to Charles on the phone and when Charles asked if Ben was going to kill him Ben replied something like "Come on, Charles. You know I can't so that". The implication was that there was some greater force at work stopping the two from being able to kill each other - almost as if they were the original versions of Jacob and MiB. Anticipation was created when Ben uttered this line that led me to believe the final showdown between these characters was going to be epic. I was seriously disappointed when Ben simply shot him and it was over.

Again, you picked Shannon because you thought she was the love of Sayid's life. Look through the thread, the one thing people are complaining about is "shannon, really?"

You aren't right, just look at the 'entire show'. Nadia is the one Sayid pines for. From season 3 to season 6, before the finale, how many times do they show Sayid thinking about, talking about, pining for Shannon. If you guess 0, you are right.

with regard to Ben / Charles - we don't know (ldo) -

but Charles and Ben both had incredibly important roles to play still at that point -

Charles brought Desmond back to the island - which was critical to the plot.

Ben had LOTS to do (no need to list it) - so technically "the island still needed both of them" - whether that was the island - or one of Jacob's rules is unknown.

Also unknown (but I suspect it is true) - Jacob was able to see the future - he knew they'd both be needed (he also knew the outcome - thus his ability to plan / pull off a ridiculous long con).

I might hazard a guess - even going back to the scene where Ben stands up to Charles - where charles is clearly the leader - that some time prior to that Richard had told the two of them "Jacob has a message for you - you two aren't allowed to hurt each other"

yeah, reminds me that I forgot maybe the weakest character pairs: Shannon/Sayid

.

Of all the people in the church, who wasn't paired up?

Boone and? Poor Boone, survives a plane crash to die in another plane crash, and ends up with no one to go to heaven with except watching his sister get boned by some Arab.

so what, everyone dies anyway and end up in a magical church and meet all their friends and have a good old time and then they go to Heaven.

If I knew there was a Heaven waiting for me, I'd just kill myself right now.

- EW

seems low.

Surely Nadia is a part of the island experience? She is what keeps Sayid going. Much like Penny was Desmond's motivation. Or maybe Penny was on the island at some point, i don't remember.

Also, does Jack wear Red Wing boots?

Right - but I think that Jacob wanted his brother FREED - not stuck in smoky for eternity...so that his brother can also experience this after-life

I can accept all of this.

My problem is more of WHY they went this route. They purposely swerved us into thinking the Bomb worked and caused this other timeline, even had some piano player have a dream to tell us the bomb CAUSED the alttimeline.

If the bomb caused it, it's only cause the bomb ****ing killed everyone. Not just make them flash back to the present time.


But I can accept that the bomb was the instrument in "tapping the pocket of energy"

I have no clue why - to make a mystery I guess - to keep us guessing through all of season 6 what the alt was -

I think you made a good point several pages back about which came first - the chicken or the egg, etc..

It won't be satisfying to the anti-s - but I would go back to faraday's speech about course correction - whatever happened, happened - BUT there are ripples that occur before the universe can course correct.

Perhaps in the original timeline - the Bomb still went off - but it was someone else who did it (no clue who)

Two random thoughts.

- did anybody suspect that Jack might turn into Smokey once he was exposed to the light and no longer had JacobStatus?

- I thought it was awfully strange that Hurley didn't do anything to say goodbye to Sawyer or Kate on the cliffside. I mean, it's super likely they're never going to see eachother again, and he's just all "oh, I'm with Jack and nevermind that I'm a big blob of emotion 90% of the time, I'll uhh catch you guys on the flip side of never".

6 seasons is going to be like 200

He's a man of faith. The deal with his dad's shoes. There were lots of times he just went with it even though he didn't really have any evidence that it would work. ie, the bomb.

No kidding.

It still doesn't explain why seeing her was enough to awaken Sayid. All kinds of losties were bumping into each other in the alt-universe. It isn't like they were all becoming aware every time this occurred. Kate didn't snap out of it in the airport when she interacted with Sawyer or saw Jack.

Awakening took something emotionally significant - a near death experience, the birth of a child, physical contact with true love. The creators spent 6 years showing us Nadia was his true love - not some random blond he made out with on a beach.

I thought the first one. Would have made the episode so much better.

Jacob said it several times, even as far back as his first conversation with Richard when he showed him the bottle of the wine and said the island was like the cork keeping the evil inside. He more recently said it to Jack when he annointed him to protect the island. Jack said something like what happens if I can't stop him? Jacob, "Then thats it for all of us". I mean it was said so many times. Stop him or everyone you know or have ever loved will die.

So how does he succeed in getting Desmond to turn off the light, the heart of the island, so he can leave. But then he turns into a mortal? Maybe Smokey didn't know he would lose his immortality I can see that, but how did Jacob not know? If the minute he destroys the light in the island he becomes mortal, how exactly was he going to kill "everyone you know or have ever loved"? Makes little to no sense and was just a convenient way to solve the bigger problem of how was Jack ever going to stop Smokey. imo

I considered it for a moment or two when we saw him lying next to the river after having been mysteriously ejected from the cave. Didn't make sense though because there was no anger or envy in Jack... he seemed at peace with his role. Not exactly smoky-esque qualities.

No. It would have been awful for the reasons I stated above. MiB was carrying a lifetime of anger and resentment which fueled his transformation into the smoke monster. Jack was at peace and becoming smokey would have been way too random. There would be no conflict between smokey and the protector.

A thought about Jacob/MIB and the notion that if he got out, he'd ruin the world.

I think one way to look at that is that Jacob/MIB really only know what they've been told, and what they were told was mostly by a withholding mother. They're human, they're flawed, and they could be wrong. Now I don't think that jibes with everything we saw, and that's part of the beef with the plotting of the show- but I don't think it's totally horrible that Smokey turned out to be wrong.

Nadia was a tortured love, she may have been his past, but in his afterlife she was more of a painfull memory rather than a positive one.

There were many issues Sayid would choose to forget from his Iraq days, and some of the island ones as well. Nadia, Sawyer and Ben's torture to name a few.

yeah I thought the first one. It certainly would have been more consistent from what we knew prior about going down that cave and being exposed to the light... I also kept thinking why is Jack just laying there waiting for the electromagnetism to kick back on and kill him? He's had some semi-suicidal moments in the Flash Forwards where he's never without a bottle of Jack for long, but on the island he's only expressed an interest in living and fulfilling his purpose. He asked Jacob how long am I suppose to do this job? Jacob's response "As long as you can" Crapping out on your first day on the job, doesn't seem like a real good longevity test to me. He easily could have gotten up went to the cliff and they would have pulled him up. Instead he has some crazy look on his face while he's waiting to "die" (I'm only putting that in quotation marks b/c I have no idea what really happened there and why we seem him later traipsing through the forest and collapsing).

The Hurley thing is way more random imo. The Cliff is falling apart, the island is cracking and falling apart. There's not alot of time for pleasantries. In fact, I kinda had the opposite take on that. I was thinking they had Kate sitting there talking to Claire for too long. The island is collapsing, the plane is leaving, and they're having a conversation that amounts to you're a good mother. In real life it would of been like B**** do you wanna live or die here?

http://www.salon.com/entertainment/t...cap/index.html

Lol, Shannon. Literally the only part i didnt love about the finale.

Awesome end to an awesome show. Even better since even though i grunched most of the thread it seems a lot of people are annoyed because they didnt understand the point of the show from day one was the characters.

Lol, no. The bomb always went off. It was always Juliet who set it off. It was always Sawyer who saw Juliet drop and it was always Jack's fault that the incident happened which caused the 185 crash in 2004. THAT is the point, it was always a loop in time creating a self fullfilling prophesy that someone tries to stop a plane crash that causes a plane crash to create the conditions for the man to stop the plane crash.

It always happened. This is the theme of the show, it always happens and it always will happen. There is always a protector, after Jacob came Jack, came Hurley, came someone else. The island is always there, always protected because it has to be as the source of life.

The alt island stuff is the afterlife, plz stop overthinking things ppl. The island is real and not purgatory, but the "alt universe" is purgatory leading to whatever happens next.

See you in the next life brother.

I was waiting for Ben to triple cross everyone and jump into the light after Jack turned it back on. I mean, why was he there, he's got to go all Ben on them.

Then he turns out he gets to help protect the island, which makes sense for him.