jeffm725 wrote:Definitely right, the ending left it open to a couple of interpretations but I think Jack's conversation towards the end with his Dad kind of points to what you said (flash sideways was some sort of purgatory). That's why Desmond was telling everyone to "let go". The island was real and actually did happen, the flash sideways was a life they had in their "minds" to eventually bring them together so they could move on with their loved ones. Anybody catch all of the religious symbols from all the different religions in the stained glass windows of the church?
There are a couple schools of thought here. The prevailing one seems to be that they DID NOT all die in the plane crash. Everything that happened was real up to the "flash sideways" world. All the losties died at different times, but needed to remember their deaths to be able to "go on" . The flash sideways world was like a purgatory ( although the connotation does not entirely fit and I dont like the term, but it works as a way to start to understand what was going on there).
There is obviously A LOT more to it than that, but that seems to be what the writers were trying to get across.
Bottom line though, there was a Dharma initiative and an Oceanic 6 and all that stuff.
Ben did not enter the church because he had not died yet.
And I think Ben was dead at the end (and hence in the "purgatory"). Christian said to Jack something like "We are all dead, whether they died before you or after you." Time is irrelevant (or not congruent with the real world) in the purgatory world, so whether they died in 2004 or in 2050, they were there. Hence why Hurley said to Ben that he was a good #2. They lived for a while after Jack died (along with Sawyer and Kate who got off the island possibly in the plane). I think Ben was either punishing himself or was waiting for Alex before he could move on.
Them showing the plane at the end throws me for a loop. Could also mean everyone died in the initial crash or it could have been the plane Sawyer and Kate and everyone was on trying to get off the island at the end. Or it could have just been the producers way of signing off.
Obviously this is all just my opinion, but what was great about this show is that it is open to interpret it any way you want. Wonderfully written and beautifully executed.
