Static Zombie

I'll take a stab at some of these, though I share your frustration with the writers' seeming disinterest in answering a bunch of the mysteries.

- The Island was "real" and the sideways world was the afterlife. Everyone who died on the island over the six seasons was actually dead.

- The people who were missing from the church were either unready to go on (like Ben), or were presumably reuniting in other afterlives with other people who had become more special to them. Or they just weren't available for the finale.

- The others were interested in Walt as a bargaining chip, and because they couldn't have children. They weren't aware that he was "special" until after they had him. They terrorized the Losties because Ben wanted to keep the upper hand and figure out which of them had things that were valuable to him.

- The Psychic had dire predictions about Aaron because Claire abandoning Aaron led to her joining up with the Evil One (aka MIB). Or more to the point, she was seduced by MIB in the form of someone she trusted, and told she could leave Aaron with the rest of the losties. Apparently she regretted that decision.

Some stuff that bugs me:

- What were Jacob's powers? He apparently couldn't be killed by MIB. Why? What would happen? If he couldn't be killed by MIB, why could he be killed by some other random person (like Ben).

- In what way did Jacob being alive keep MIB on the island? What did MIB expect to get by killing Jacob? Why couldn't he leave? What would happen if he tried? When Jacob was dead and a successor hadn't been picked out, why didn't MIB leave? What did he expect to get by killing the "candidates?"

- What would have happened if MIB had left the island? Clearly MIB didn't think anything would happen. What if he was right? Then his "mother" and Jacob essentially kept him trapped for a few thousand years for no reason at all. Which turned him into a homicidal loon, but still. Jacob was no saint either.

- What was the "sickness" that made Rousseau's crewmates try to kill her, and turned Sayid and Claire bad? Did they even turn bad? Sayid eventually turned hero, and Claire eventually did leave the island. But maybe they needed to be free of MIB's influence. Did MIB have the power to cloud men's minds? He's The Shadow!

- Was Ben really working for Jacob during the time he and a chunk of the Others were living at the Dharma barracks? Or was Jacob essentially letting Ben and the Others do their own thing as part of his "free will" experiment? Or had he lost control of them, and that's why he needed the losties?

- The whole "revelation" of season 5, that the mysteries of the Island were really all about time travel - that was a red herring? It wasn't in any way about time travel? But turning the donkey wheel shifted the island in time? What was MIB going to do with that power? What does time travel have to do with the cork and the light and the source of life....aaaaaaa it's not worth it.

Man, I could easily list ten more unanswered mysteries without breaking a sweat. In the end, it seems like a lazy way to keep people hooked - keep having characters do and say mysterious things and then just don't ever explain. It's like they want to have the good part of mysteries (hooking people on the story) but not the bad part (having to tell people your possibly lame answers). This way, the answers can never be worse than the best answers each viewer comes up with on their own.

So: emotional impact high, intellectual satisfaction low.

One more thing that makes very little sense to me:

- Before he found out about Desmond (from Widmore?), MIB had no interest in using Desmond for anything. What was his plan at that point? Kill all the potential island protectors and...

I really get the impression that the writers had some kind of backstory for all of this, and that they had worked out at least how MIB and Jacob thought the Island worked, and how the rules worked, and why they did the various things they did. But maybe they didn't. Certainly things make much more sense if you assume the writers were just making crap up.

There's a Homestarrunner cartoon called Dangeresque 3 that is a parody of bad 70's cop movies. The key plot driver in that is summed up by Dangeresque as "We've got to get that serum through! Or else Cutesy Buttons will be kidnapped!" It's a masterpiece of surreal MacGuffin-ism.

I'm really having a hard time seeing how "Someone has to protect the light or else the smoke monster will leave the island and everyone will die!" is really any different from "We've got to get the serum through or else Cutesy Buttons will be kidnapped!"

Another annoying thing for me was that the different "universes" weren't necessarily good/bad, so the idea that they were being "rescued" from one or the other made no sense. Rose & Bernard seemed to be doing fine in the "original" universe (sure, he hadn't accepted her cancer but she was fine with it); the "sideways" universe gave Jack a son whom he was starting to relate to... does that not count as some of the "best memories"?

I'm afraid I'm going with the "making shit up" theory on this one.

I think watching the Jimmy Kimmel "Lost" special right after the final episode was helpful, especially the 3 alternate endings. It didn't answer any questions, but it made you laugh and distracted you so you didn't care quite as much. Although in some ways the Sopranos-type ending was kind of close to the actual thing, a bunch of people were walking around and talking and nothing is really made any clearer and then... darkness! :) However, and maybe this makes me sound too girly, I found the finale emotionally satisfying. But I also like the long, and some would say drawn out, ending to Lord of the Rings. When I have lived with those characters for so long I need some time to say goodbye. But I know that was an a-typical reaction.

Here's a link to a pretty good analysis of the finale and the show that I think doesn't let the creators off the hook for constantly teasing people with mysteries they never planned to pay off, but nonetheless seems to have good insight into what the show was supposed to be about:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2010/05/one-lost-tuesday-all-of-this-matters.html

I do think that they had answers for at least a portion of the mysteries, but decided as an artistic choice not to explain them. Like I think they had a clear idea of what specifically Jacob and MIB could and could not do. They just didn't feel it was necessary to spell it out. But I could be wrong.

Dug, the sideverse wasn't really an alternate universe, it was the afterlife the characters created for themselves. When you look at it through that lens, the final season becomes much more interesting.

Sayid was so guilt-ridden about torturing Nadia that he couldn't forgive himself even in death. He created an afterlife where he'd still done the same horrible things, and where Nadia wasn't just inaccessible, but married to his own brother.

Locke still pitied himself too much to get out of his wheelchair, but his thirst for revenge allowed him to cause his father to be in an even worse state.

As for Jack, he used his afterlife to work through his father/son issues, but reversing the roles. He made himself the father and gave himself a son with all the same hangups about an absentee father who never expressed his love.

Desmond had the trust and respect of the one man who would never give it to him in life. Hurley traded his bad luck for good. Etc.

Looked at in that light, the sideways universe is vastly more satisfying than the "real" world of the island where plot lines got forgotten when they were no longer convenient for the writers.

peter, i like your ideas of how sayid, locke, and jack were working through their issues. i find that description very satisfying.

I'm not sure if you guys have seen this, but an intern "insider" posted an interesting analysis here:

http://forum.lostpedia.com/someone-bad-robots-take-finale-t59261.html?s=a89b40f29f59fc4e62cd5c360bee5e42&