Here's what I think, thought, thunk about last night's finale... and the last bit of on-TV LOST for 2009. I've marked burning answers, that were revealed in "The Incident," with this: (answer!).

Key points (according to me):
• One of the best continuous two hours that the show has every had. There wasn't a dead spot. The whole thing was fast and info-packed.
• Best line: Rose says, "What is it with you people?"
• Jacob is revealed (answer!)!! Dun, dun, dun! Bam! Before the titles?! Awesome!
• Jacob wears white.
• Jacob is no one we've ever seen before.
• Jacob has an unknown enemy... he wears black.
• The Black Rock is seen, in the water!
• There's a loophole and the enemy guy wants to use it to kill Jacob.
• Anubis statue is seen in it's entire glory.
• The submarine has some really old-school controls. To surface, twist this knob...
• Jacob visits everyone in their past (answer!). Would it have not been crazy cool to see flashbacks from old episodes where you really see Jacob in the backgrounds?
• Sayid's Nadia got hit by an SUV (answer!). Cliche, but it answers a question we've needed to know... and ultimately it's Jacob's fault!
• Rose and Bernard at back (answer!)! And so is Vincent (answer!).
• Rose and Bernie need to give up on the whole "whatevs" attitudes.
• Ilana knows Jacob. She works for him!
• What's in the box? Locke's in the box (answer!). It's a Locke box.
• The cabin! It has a piece of Egyptian cloth. Let's burn it!
• We see tiny Sawyer, writing the famous letter to the evil Mr. Sawyer (answer!). Jacob is everywhere!!
• We see Jack in performing the surgery he told Kate about in the pilot episode (answer!).
• We see Apollo bars!
• Jack and Sayid take the bomb from the well-lit cavern... which is really the basement of someone's cabin at the Dharma camp. Kinda.
• Jack shoots and kills about as many people at the Dharma camp as Ben supposedly does with gas.
• Sayid is shot! He's dying!
• Sawyer and Jack finally beat the hell out of each other. We needed to see that!
• Juliet is a sad sack. She's so dead.
• Hurley gets out of jail, meets Jacob and finds out about flight 316 (answer!). And, he gets the guitar case. Hurley's not cursed, he's blessed... or is he? What's in the case?
• Ben's a wimp and a liar. He comes clean to John. Ben learns he will be killing Jacob after all. Hating Ben right now.
• Everyone joins Jack to throw the hydrogen bomb down the well. Wait. Is this the sealed well we see in other episodes?
• The bomb doesn't go off. Dr. Chang gets his arm smooshed (answer!). Phil gets speared with rebar (WOW!). And Juliet falls in the well. Good Lord!
• Ben stabs Jacob. Jacob goes into the fire.
• Juliet wakes at the bottom of the well. She has a rock... and she starts pounding the unexploded hydrogen bomb.

So my questions are as follows:
• Did Juliet really trigger the bomb OR did the electromagnetic pulse go off?
• Who is the "alive" Locke? Is it the guy in the black shirt from the opening scene?
• Are all the dead people that have come back to life, throughout the course of the show, really been Jacob's enemy guy?
• If the bomb didn't go off, and there is a pulse, is it possible that everyone is catapulted into the future except for the dying Juliet and Sayid? Kind of like what happened to Charlotte??
• Is Ben still lying? He's not a Pisces.
• Did we lose two characters? Juliet and Sayid?
• How awful will the love triangle be next year if Juliet is really gone?
• What's in the guitar case?
• How does Ilana know Jacob? What happened to her to be in bandages?
• What happens to the Anubis statue? Bomb? Pulse? Plane?
• Why was the end logo on a white background for the first time?

I'm worn out and kind of sad.

Does anyone have anything else to add??

My "big-bomb" theory was verified. I can't remember if it was a podcast or an entry, but I nailed the "Jughead" idea earlier this year: use the hydrogen bomb to basically erase the history of the show. I predicted it would be Desmond to trigger the devastation, after he had lost his beloved Penny, and thus had no reason to live. But, Ben's plans were thwarted and Penny didn't die. Daniel, luckily, has kept my theory going.

Here is Melcom's January 29th entry that mentions my theory:

Doug saw this episode early, and hinted that we'd see a possible way for the show to end...Jughead? The hydrogen bomb that could destroy the entire island? We know for a fact the Faraday will do some quantum leaping...because he appears in the cave where they're trying to get to the magical time wheel in the season opener. Perhaps to set off that bomb. We'll definitely go back to that scene in a future episode.

Who is going to set off the bomb?

Will this REALLY be the plan of action?

How crazy-nerdy-cool was the Enterprise flying through the LOST logo?

Tonight's ep was pretty darn amazing! I have to say that watching this show two or three seasons ago, I never would have imagined the writers could have pulled off this kind of tie-it-all-together episode. Very nicely done.

And it's probably the only end-game scenario that equates to "it was all a dream" that I would actually accept as an ending. In fact, Daniel's plan (now presumably carried on by Jack) raises interesting thoughts about what would happen if they succeeded in making all this -- the whole show -- NOT happen.

* Kate would go to jail
* Sun would leave Jin and they'd never have their baby
* Charlie and Ana Lucia and Mr. Eko and Shannon and Boone and many, many others would still be alive
* Rose would probably die of cancer
* Locke would still be in a wheelchair
* Claire would give up Aaron for adoption
* Jack's dad would really be dead
* Michael and Walt would live happily ever after

What else? It's fun to think about.

Wonder if Kate can bring herself to help Jack with this plan when she knows it ends with her back with the Marshall. And for all of them, wouldn't it be weird to choose never to know each other, after all they've been through together?

Of course, I don't think it's going to happen, at least not this way, b/c we've got a whole 'nother season to get through, so they can't end it all now. But what a concept.

Did anyone get anything out of the re-cap show?

It was a snooooozer!

Make sure you pick up this month's Wired magazine. If you haven't already heard, it features special guest editor J.J. Abrams.

Let's hope the 100th episode, next week, makes up for this week of blah.

Here are my bullets from last night:

• Two freaking weeks until another new episode? I call major fowl. We were promised this wouldn't happen. This is TWICE this season. BOOO ABC!
• Tiny Miles was kind of heartbreaking.
• Old Miles was kind of heartbreaking. I like Miles more now.
• Miles really can call dead people.
• Miles really is Marvin Candle's, uh, Dr. Chang's kid.
• Naomi is back, kind of.
• Hurley MIGHT have written the "Empire Strikes Back"? But, he did say his version had some fixes.
• Great "Star Wars" references.
• "Face it, Ewoks suck, dude." Best line of the season (I kinda like Ewoks).
• Hooray, Daniel is back... and he rode the sub to the island. Where from?
• So Bram and Ilana may be working for Ben... not for Widmore?
• There is more talk of the "shadow at the foot of the statue." HMMMMM.
• More confirmation that Widmore faked the other 815 wreck.
• Hurley is a foodie and makes a delicious garlic mayo.
• Hurley trying to one-up Miles in the "I talk to dead people" conversation was funny.
• Hurley has a hard time saying the word that rhymes with "dart" but starts with an "f." So do I.
• Brief mention of the numbers. Will we ever get an explanation of these digits?
• Miles is a sell out.

Two whole weeks until the season continues. Oh, that's right before sweeps. How convenient.

I hope next week is a GOOD re-cap show. Face it, re-caps suck, dude.

Going back to point out two things I guessed right, 'cause I like tootin' my own horn.

Just thought of one possible mystery -- Is Miles the son of Marvin Candle? Is he the baby we saw in the Marvin-related flashback? Is that why Miles has "time on the island" nosebleeds
Back on Feb. 5

I betcha Kate gave Aaron to Claire's mom. I'm sure she's doing it to be all noble and give up the son that wasn't supposed to be hers, to go back and save the others. But you know, that's still a crappy thing to do to that kid who just lost the only mother he remembers.
Back on Feb. 16

Other notes:

Hurley is hilarious. Save us from the Ewoks!

Kate. *eye roll* Ever heard of "low profile"?

Browsie gets punched out! Quick, Sawyer, erase the tape!

Daniel's back! I missed him. Quick, Daniel, explain some time travel stuff to us!

Another good episode! I'm really enjoying this season, maybe more than any other. I think the writers finally have the balance down of intriguing us with questions but also answering some questions as we go along, so that not EVERYTHING is a weird confusing mystery. Anyway, high notes:

* Ben's not dead. Duh. But Richard's going to perform some temple magic on him that will leave him forever changed... and EVIL??

* Now we know why Kate left Aaron and decided to come back to the island. Watching her say her goodbye to sleeping Aaron was rough... very sad. But I do hope this means we'll find out what the heck happened to Claire.

* Wow, they made Ben's abusive dad kinda sympathetic. Maybe I'm just a sap...

* Hurley and Miles arguing time travel was funny. And I'm thoroughly in the "this is confusing" Hurley camp. It was interesting that they brought up the "why didn't Ben recognize Sayid later" question, which I guess was answered by Richard when he said Ben wouldn't remember anything. But I'm not sure why they felt that was necessary -- perhaps because when they wrote that Sayid-tortures-Ben part, they didn't give any indication that Ben knew who Sayid was. But it seems like they could have indicated that he did know but kept it super-secret, as he is prone to do. Anyway. Complicated.

* Aw, look at Sawyer all grown up and in a healthy relationship.

* It was sad that kid-Ben was dying and all, but I can't be the only one who totally sympathized with Jack's position. Let the kid die, maybe rewrite history for the better (even though Farraday says it can't be done -- wouldn't you still want to try?).

So.... is Little Ben dead? (I really want to call him Uncle Ben but that doesn't work.) I assume he's not, or the island will revive him, or something. But I have to admit it was cool to see Sayid shoot him -- I figured something would interrupt them before that happened.

Actually, that was one of two get-right-to-the-point shootings by Sayid last night (the other one being the Russian guy in flashback). Often in TV shows or movies, there's a lot of time elapsed between pointing the gun and pulling the trigger, letting people explain themselves, letting things happen to get in the way of the shooting, but Sayid is a killer and doesn't let that happen. That's a very effective way to make him scary.

Also, he can kill a chicken like nobody's business.

Illana is a bounty hunter who doesn't SEEM to be working for Ben, but I don't believe she's really working for golf course guy's family, either. Widmore? Hmm...

Other than that, I don't have much to say. I'm not a huge fan of Sayid-centric episodes. But two questions:

-- Was that Dharma torture guy the "I'm Larry, this is my brother Daryl" guy from Newhart? (I just IMDB'd it -- it WAS!)

-- Does anyone else think Horace kind of looks like present-day Kathleen Turner?

What a good episode! Lots of fun stuff:

* Hanging at the Dharma folks' groovy '70s party. Right oonnnnn!
* Young Ben! They got the eyes just right on that kid. *shudder*
* I totally thought Juliet was going to keep Kate off the recruits' roster just so she could keep her away from Sawyer.
* Jack has to be a "workman." Ha! And Sawyer is enjoying being the one in charge.
* Poor Sayid -- no cool jumpsuit for him. And he got flashed away from his lady cop, but he still can't get out of those handcuffs.
* Sun smacking Ben on the back of the head with the oar -- nice one.
* Looks like Jack's dad will be helping Sun and Lapidus get back to 1977? ("Gotta go BACK in time")

Not a lot of big revelations, but some forward motion to the "now" plot, which was good. Questions:
* Where did Farraday go? (Jack: Farraday's with you? Sawyer: Well, he WAS...")
* Did Marvin Candle say his name was Peter Chang? Huh?
* Why did Sun stay in present time instead of being flashed back to the '70s? Is there something she has to do in the present first?
* How many beatings can Ben take before he just curls into a ball and gives up?

It's time to read up on ancient Egypt. Dead Paul had an ankh necklace, for which I believe his death was not just a random act of violence. My feeling is that we're going to get a lasting taste of ancient Egyptian beliefs pulled into the storyline.

We get a glimpse of the statue that belongs to the giant four-toed foot that we've seen in the past. If you compare the pointed ears, the skirt, the headpiece, and the items being carried (shepherd's staff/crook, and ankh), you can assume it is of ancient Egyptian origins. Eye-liner Richie probably has ties to ancient Egypt and Anubis (or some have guessed Egyptian god Horus), which would semi-explain his choice of eye makeup and his ageless existence. Anibus was the ruler of the underworld and the patron of lost souls. As a god of death, he protected souls as they journeyed to the underworld. The Egyptian god Osiris might also lead us to some clues about Richard, Locke, and Christian, because the wiki-text describe his worshipers inherit eternal life.

BTW, the exit point of the Orchid station time-wheel is in Tunisia, very close to Egypt. Ancient Tunisians were believed to practice ancient Egyptian religion.

Could the ankh necklace tie Paul to the others? Perhaps he was a spy for them. Richard's requirement of taking Paul's body to keep the truce in place was quite strange, I thought. If Richard and the others are indeed ancient natives to the island and its Egyptian statue, then the ankh necklace and the retrieval of Paul's body would be clues as to why he was killed and what's coming next.