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That's it folks, after 6 years it's finally over, was it everything you expected? I'm guessing not, but surprisingly I was pretty happy with the ending. I do want to get one thing out of the way before we dive into this though, there was no reason for this episode to be 2.5 hrs long. It was pretty obvious they only extended it from the original 2 hrs so that they could fit in more commercials. There was literally a commercial every 5 minutes and where we were watching it we didn't have access to a DVR so we had to watch it live (I know, we're spoiled). So now with that out of the way, let's dive into the episode. I'm not going to give a recap of the entire 2.5 hours because I'm sure if you're reading this, you watched it, so I'm just going to talk about how I felt about it and what I thought was happening. [and of course after finishing this post I realized that it's hard to write about things without doing a semi-recap]

If you haven't seen the episode I would recommend you STOP READING right now, this is going to start with SPOILERS and never stop....

Let's start with the island reality... it was all real, 100%. Everything that we saw that happened on the island up until Jack dying at the end was completely real. That being said, it does make it pretty obvious that a lot of the stuff that was happening over the past few seasons was "filler", most of which would serve no purpose in getting to the final goal. I feel that the main point of the island reality was just a "game" between Jacob and The Man In Black and they were using people as pawns in this game. The Man in Black just wanted to leave the island and couldn't kill Jacob himself, who was protecting the way off the island, so he needed to manipulate someone, in this case Ben, to kill Jacob for him, or at least that's what he wanted people to think... maybe. At some points I thought that his end game was always to destroy the island and not to leave, but then I think back to how he sent Sayid to kill Desmond and he didn't, and things like that, and that makes me lean back towards the fact that he was really trying to leave the island, but either way it doesn't really matter. Whether he left the island or destroyed it, it was going to have grave consequences for everyone on the island (and possibly those outside the island as well). So we know the intentions of The Man in Black and Jacob's sole purpose was to protect the "light" and keep the Man in Black from finding it, hence the need for MiB to kill Jacob as I mentioned above. And Jacob wasn't lying when he said told the "Losties" that the reason he brought them there was to find a new candidate to protect the light from the Man in Black. He knew that MiB would eventually find a way to kill him so he needed to find his successor.

In the end, Desmond did exactly what I thought he was going to do, although not quite in the way I had predicted. He goes down to the source of the light and removes the "plug" that was giving the island it's power. Since this power is now gone, the smoke monster aka Locke aka the Man in Black, is able to be killed. And it's during the fight scene between Jack and "Locke" that we start to get an idea about the alternate reality and that maybe there's something we're missing. During the fight Jack is stabbed in his right side near where your appendix would be, he's also cut along his neck (which are the two wounds we see on Jack in the flash sideways') before Kate shoots "Locke", thus saving Jack. Ultimately it's Jack that kills the Man in Black by pushing him over the cliff towards the water, although he lands on a lower cliff and dies. This kind of mirrored the way that Jacob was killed, being stabbed by an outside character and then being kicked into the fire by The Man in Black. So I guess you could argue that it was Kate that actually killed the Man in Black since "Jacob/Jack" supposedly couldn't, but I think with the power being drained from the island, anyone could have killed him just the same (but at the time Jacob was killed that wasn't the case).

So with the Man in Black dead and Jack on the verge of death after being stabbed, he heads back to the source of the light to try and restore it. It's at this point that he knows that he's going to die and that someone still needs to protect the light, from what I can only assume are other people that may happen upon the island in the future, like Widmore's people, but I'm not entirely sure of this one. It can't be from the Man in Black anymore, cause he's dead. So he makes Hurley drink from the stream and supposedly "he's like him now", but I'm pretty sure that wasn't the case because the power to the island hadn't been restored yet so I think Hurley was still exactly how he was, but either way he believed he had to protect the light.  This would also explain why Richard got the gray hair, he started to age as soon as the light went out, thus removing the power of immortality. Jack then went down and pulled Desmond to safety, tying him to the rope they had used to get down there and then "restarted" the island by putting the plug back into the hole. So Hurley and Ben see that the light is restarted and pull the rope up thinking it's Jack, but it's Desmond.

Now this is where I was a little confused, but after thinking about it, it makes sense (well, sense in the LOST world). So Jack is laying in the pool with the light, which is full of electromagnetism (which is why Desmond was the only one that could pull the plug). We see later that Jack has been transported to another part of the island, the same part of the island that the Man in Black's body was sent to after he was pushed down the hole by Jacob, thus becoming the smoke monster.... So why didn't Jack become the smoke monster as well? I have two thoughts on this, the first one being that Jack hadn't actually killed the previous smoke monster like the Man in Black did when he killed his "mother". Yep, that's right, I'm pretty sure the crazy lady that took care of Jacob and the Man in Black in that flashback episode was the smoke monster originally. I discussed why in my write up of that episode, but essentially it boils down to the fact that there's no way she could have killed that whole village and filled in that well if she wasn't smokey. So that's my one theory, the Man in Black stabbed the original smoke monster in the back, thus becoming "evil" and so when he was pushed into the light he turned into smokey.  My other theory was that since he was wounded it didn't work the same, but the more I think about it, the Man in Black was pretty beat up when he pushed down into the hole... so I really think that my first theory is what happened.

So after Hurley and Ben pull Desmond up Hurley realizes that he now has to protect the light source, but doesn't think he can do it alone so he asks Ben to help. Meanwhile, while Jack was trying to restart the island, Miles, Kate, Frank and Claire get on the Ajira plane and take off... eventually making it home safe (I'm assuming). Jack then wanders into the island and collapses due to his stab wound eventually dying.

Now, this is where the actual "Flash Sideways'" are occurring... in the afterlife. Yep, every flash sideways that has happened this season has been after they have all died. And that doesn't mean that they all died on the island, because that wouldn't make sense for some of them, it's just a place that all of them created, a life they all would have wanted had they not crashed on the island originally, a happier place that they could all find each other in, a place where the island only existed on the bottom of the ocean. But none of them realize that until they all make it there, meaning they all die, and experience something from their past life that makes them remember everything that happened to them. Whether that's meeting up with someone you fell in love with or a significant event that you'd never forget, it was those experiences that brought the original memories rushing back. Basically it was purgatory and they needed to remember in order to let go and move on. And again, this brings more meaning to those famous words from Desmond "see you in another life, brotha" (I could be off on the exact phrase, but that's the gist of it). And the catalyst that started the memories was Widmore blasting Desmond with the electromagnetism earlier this season, that event must have been so powerful on the island that it caused him to remember everything in the afterlife, since the hatch exploding due to the failed pressing of the button and turning the fail safe key was a major incident that happened to him, thus allowing him to get people together to make them remember.

And in the end, they all end up in the church where Jack is supposed to have the funeral for his father, but a few people are missing. Last week we saw Ana Lucia, but Desmond said that she wasn't ready yet, I think this is because she killed Shannon in the island life. This is also the same reason why Michael is not in the church, since he killed Ana Lucia. And as for Walt, I think the reason he was not in the church in the end is because he's not dead yet. And we also see Ben sitting outside the church when Locke pulls up, but he doesn't go in. I believe that he doesn't think he's worthy due to all of the bad things that he did over the years on the island. It's also at this point that we see that Hurley and Ben protected the island together until their deaths  as Hurley makes a comment to Ben about being a great number 2 and Ben makes a comment about Hurley being a great number 1.

Jack and Kate were the last ones to arrive at the church. Kate goes in ahead of him as Jack still doesn't understand as he hasn't quite let go yet. Upon going in the backdoor and laying his hand on his father's coffin, he begins to finally remember. There's an emotion meeting with his father when he realizes that he is also dead, as with everyone else. It's here that Christian Shephard explains that everyone dies and some died before Jack and some after, and they all made this place, their afterlife, as a place to find those people that had such an impact on their lives. I liked the fact that even though that scene took place in a church, the back room that Jack and Christian spoke in had artifacts and nods to every religion somewhere in it.

Cut to an emotional reunion of everyone in the main hall of the church followed by Christian opening the door to the church allowing light to flood in. And then a brilliant final scene of Jack laying down in the jungle on the island, Vincent the dog laying next to him, close up on his eye as we've seen at the beginning of the series and so many episodes, but this time the eye closes instead of opens. I think maybe if the light had gone out forever, it would have negated even the afterlife as well as all existence, and that was the whole purpose...

So there you have it, the end of LOST, and after thinking about all of it this morning and writing about it, I'm even happier with the way it ended than I was last night. I know there are going to be a lot of people that are upset that not all the questions from the island were answered and a lot of things still don't make sense, but I think the things people wanted answers to are pretty trivial issues when compared to the overall outcome of the story. I will say that I do have an issue with one thing in the final episode (other than the insane amount of commercials), how the hell did Ben get out from under that tree?!??!??!

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