I think the thing that you have to remember about why this character wasn’t in the episode or why this character was in the episode is that television shows aren’t created in a vacuum. Of course things have to be changed during the middle of the entire series. The actor that played Walt became a young man instead of a child. The actor that played Mr. Eko was evidently the one person in the world that really, really hates Hawaii.

As for getting answers to questions we have had, it’s exactly like in life. We rarely get answers we are looking for in life, why should a television show be any different? We have to search, dig and ascertain our way little by little. This answer begets this question which begets these answers. This keeps repeating exponentially until the final episode, and really you could say the entire final season, there were just too many questions and not enough answers. So we have to figure it out for ourselves.

Lost would not be nearly as satisfying or sustainable if we were given the answers. As an Ole Miss man, I feel it is my obligation to invoke William Faulkner’s storytelling. You take maybe his most famous short story, “A Rose For Emily” and see how leaving things in the subtext for the reader makes it much a more poignant passage. Sure, Faulkner could have said “Emily killer her boyfriend and slept next to his dead body for the rest of her life.” It gets the point across, but that sounds like something weird from CSI. It is creepy, sure, but it can be easily diminished and soon forgotten. Instead Faulkner wrote:

Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair.

Faulkner didn’t come out and say exactly what happened. Instead he evokes the reader’s mind go to a place that is not comfortable and not safe. And in that place, the reader’s mind becomes truly haunted by the words. And they are unforgettable.

Same thing goes with Lost, if we knew that Ben went into the church with everyone else it would ruin his character. Ben has been so unbelievably manipulative and uneasy for the past few seasons. He was maniacal and ruthless, and now we want to see him go in the church? I didn’t want to see that. What I wanted to see him do, he did. He apologized to Locke. And Locke forgave him. That’s all that mattered. If Ben walked in the church, it would have been a complete cop out. Enough people found redemption on the island, we still needed some characters looking for that same redemption. Ben obviously made huge strides in his redemption story, but if we saw him skip into the church arm in arm with Hurley, it would have rang false to every viewer that invest hours and hours into the show.

All that said, I do have a little gripe about this season’s ‘flash-sideways’ (which they’re not really, more like flash forwards). Basically, it boils down to a distraction. It had no impact on their lives on the island… That could have been done with any show or group of characters anywhere. AND, it will really be a pain to ever enjoy those episodes in repeat viewing because all those flash-sideways scenes are in essence like dream sequences in the future. Plus, in the end, they seemed to confuse those who weren’t paying enough attention, thinking too hard, or not hard enough, because I was reading comments like, “great, they were all dead!” – NO… In the future they are… we all are. DUH!!! BUT, this season’s ‘flashes’ did prove to be a great twist… I had them pegged as another dimension – alternate reality.

My other complaint is with the multi-religion stained glass in the final Jack-Christian scene… Not necessary. We know they weren’t going to endorse one religion alone, but no need to patronize them all, thus risking offense to them all. Put a sour note on the ending for me.

As for the “all your questions answered” promos, the producers actually talked about that in one of the podcasts. Essentially, they have very little control over what ABC decides to do with those promos. ABC was just trying to hype up the show so more people would watch. The producers in their podcast were essentially saying that there were many questions that would never be answered. (And for what it’s worth, I loved No Country For Old Men – especially the book, but the movie too – haha).

I think personally that the crazy lady might have gone crazy because she had been there for so long (hence the “thank you” when MIB killed her). She might have been a good appointment at one time. And crazy lady told Jacob and MIB when they were kids that the light needed to be protected from people who would come to the island. Smokey didn’t even exist at that point yet. So after Smokey was gone, the island/light still needed to be protected. Why? Not sure about that one. Mother just said that “If the light goes out here, it goes out everywhere” (implication: that’s a bad thing).

I love Sawyer too. There are definitely days that I could vote him in as #1. Wish they would have kept up his snarky one liners near the end, but they seemed to diminish.

I’m not sure that there is a good explanation of why Shannon and Boone were there, other than the popularity of the characters and requests from fans.

I thought the open-ended questions about the source of the light, the reason for the light, etc. were too much. I think that the idea that they had to turn the light off to kill fake Locke/Smokey was significant, but I wish we knew why turning it back on made everything okay again (or, like you pointed out, why it was necessary once fake Locke was dead).

I just wanted to say I laughed at your Twitter feed, because I dreamed about the LOST finale, too. I think that’s what I get for watching it just before bedtime.