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?

This episode was as good as "316."

Here's my weekly bullet-list:

• Why does Horace hate trees enough to blow them up? Was he trying to lure someone, or SOMETHING out into the open?
• The statue was coooool! BuddyTV.com has a genius rundown of all the Egyptian symbology in this episode: CLICK HERE.
• Sawyer is LaFleur... the head honcho... the big cheese. I didn't see that coming.
• The "3 Years Later" and "3 Year Earlier" titles made me giddy! I giggled each time those popped up... it was so much fun!
• Why was Paul killed in the first place? He and Amy were just picnicking.
• The Truce! Have we heard of the truce between Dharma and the Others before?
• Could Amy have made here earplug sneaking any more noticeable?
• It's a sonic fence? Can you just put your fingers in your ears and walk through? Is the fence to keep Smokey at bay?
• Daniel's line about "the record has stopped skipping, but they are on the wrong song" was nice writing.
• Where's Ben in the Dharma compound?
• Who is Amy's baby gonna turn out to be?
• I love every time someone drops a bombshell revelation on Richard. He's so helpless now... our Losties are becoming more powerful all the time.
• Now that the time-hopping has stopped, how will the gang start it back up?
• Is Locke buried in the ground for three years? Is there a way out? Is there food down there? Is he dead, again?
• Did Charlotte vanish because when the island is not skipping, you are unable to encounter yourself? Is the red-haired girl really Charlotte?
• Has ANYONE ever used the submarine to get off the island?
• Will Daniel lighten up?
• Kate looked old.

I wasn't happy with last night's throwaway episode.

According to the official LOST podcast, it was supposed to come BEFORE last week's "316"... thus it didn't matter where this ep was located in this part of the season.

Meh!

• I wanted to see all the papers Caesar was holding. Check out BuddyTv.com's photos and Easter Eggs from last night HERE... Jughead (the bomb) references??

• I didn't realize there were so many people on the plane when it went down.

• Grisly compound fractures during prime time TV? Sweet!

• Walt is a giant! I felt a little closure to his story... he's OK and is going on with life. He still has some power to see things (John is in danger).

• The directing style was unlike anything I've seen on LOST recently... it was strange.

• Abaddon is dead. Kind of a brutal murder. Ben did it. Abaddon can go back to Fringe now.

• John's suicide attempt was kind of upsetting. I seriously expected Ben to kick the table out from under his feet. I wasn't that surprised about the strangling.

• I'm frustrated with Caesar and IIana's characters... what are they doing? Why are they here and who sent them? Do they represent characters from the 815 crash... the officer escorting Kate and... ?

• Tunisia is the time travel exit. Ben has exited here too, right?

• Could Charles and Ben BOTH be bad guys? It's possible, right?

We finally get an explanation for Christian's white sneakers. Yay.

Where's Aaron? Perhaps Kate meets Claire off island? Remember how happy-go-lucky Claire was when we last saw her...she was hanging out with Christian in the cabin. Perhaps the future Claire is happy mother once again because she gets Aaron back? Or maybe Kate gave the baby to Claire's mother...or maybe Ben concvinced Kate that Aaron would not survive long off the island...who knows?!?!?! This is one of the HUGEST mysteries this episode introduces.

What happened to Ben before the flight? He was at a boat dock when making the emergency call to Jack...sailboats in the background...did he kill Penny? She would be waiting in the sailboat, wouldn't she? Or maybe it was Sayid who beat him up. Ben could have set Sayid up for capture by police, by baiting himself as a punching bag. This would account for Sayid's escorts on the plane.

Who convinced Hugo to go back to the island? It wasn't Ben, because Hugo was upset to see Ben on the plane. I'm thinking it was Charlie's ghost...I'll even bet that it's Charlies guitar in that guitar case.

I also like how they really tried to re-create the circumstances of the Oceanic flight:
- Coffin
- Replaced shoes on body
- fugitive (Kate/now Sayid)
- musician (Charlie/now Hugo and his guitar case)
- impregnated woman (Sun/ now Kate??? my theory)

Am I the only one who wanted to see the pendulum hit Desmond in the "Lamppost"? It was swinging away, and he was walking allover it's swing path.

EW.com via CNN.com posted this interesting article about Season 5's un-caging of LOST.

I particularly enjoyed this section:

And now it's clear the time-travel element of the Island (beyond just the flashbacks/flash-forwards) has been part of the show from the beginning.

In other words: The producers have a master plan -- and an exit strategy. But that master plan couldn't be unleashed fully until Lindelof and partner Carlton Cuse negotiated a series end date during season 3. "The same way our characters were sort of locked in cages in season 3, when the show went awry," says Cuse, "we felt locked in cages because we didn't know if our mythology had to go two more years or nine."

Yea! We're right!

Read the whole thing HERE.

I guess I might be the only one watching besides Doug and Ellen...

So I'm sitting here with a gut full of beef tenderloin from Javiers and thinking about Lost. I have a lot of free time lately.
This season is killer! I'm addicted again. I think most would agree this is the best season yet.

I'm also thinking the island does not have healing powers.
I think the reason Locke can now walk and Rose's cancer is now nonexistent is because what ails them hasn't happened yet. Meaning when then plane crashed on the island it actually traveled back in time. Or rather the island existed in another year, different from the year the plane and the Losties left Australia.

Maybe I'm rambling or maybe it's the Mexican Martinis talking...

I finally found that secret script page that was supposed to be part of the episode 'Man of Science, Man of Faith.' In this unused scene, Jack encounters himself.

Knowing what we know now (about the time-jumps and characters encountering their own time-lines) could this occur in a future episode?

Script:

Doug wrote: "Speaking of the catamarans, their appearance created a lot of questions. What time period was this? The camp was still intact. Who arrived in the boats? Why were these silhouetted boat-people so angry?"

I just did a little poking around at the Ajira Airlines site Doug linked to, and the only way to "book a flight" on that site is by knowing the right information to put in. You have to select a one-way flight, Jan. 21, from LA to Guam, flight 316, with 10 adults, and with the promotional code 112 114 111 109 111 (the number on the credit card on the Ajira home page). That brings up a little video and a seating chart, but the more important thing is does this mean that Ben, Hurley, Kate, Jack, Sun, Sayid, and Locke('s body), plus some other adults, will board an Ajira flight to Guam in order to get back to the island? Could it be that THEY were the ones who had the canoes -- with the Ajira bottle of water? So perhaps the time-skipping Locke & Co had gone forward in time to when the Oceanic 6 have returned, and the Oceanic 6 were in fact shooting at their own friends??

Or am I crazy?

Here are some of my bulleted thoughts about episode 5.4 'The Little Prince.'

• Yea! Jin is back and he's really sunburned, in need of ChapStick and in the wrong time period. Is he time skipping in sync with Locke's group?

• Ajira Airways makes it onto the show in the form of a water bottle found in the catamarans. Another great LOST brand filled with clues. Visit their site now.

• Speaking of the catamarans, their appearance created a lot of questions. What time period was this? The camp was still intact. Who arrived in the boats? Why were these silhouetted boat-people so angry?

• Russo is back and she's younger, less creepy and pregnant. Is Ben around at the same time?

• Locke's island entourage popped in a time period where the group could actually encounter themselves: Locke recognized the light from the hatch; and Sawyer witnessed Kate assisting with Aaron's birth. Jack's encounter with himself, hinted at since season #1's secret script page, seems very plausible. This could explain all kinds of mysteries that have occurred on the show... from Jack's dad to Jacob's cabin.

• The light from the hatch was 4 YEARS ago in TV time.

• What's up with Sun's Glock-edition Whitman Sampler?

• Where's Walt?

• As much as I've thought that the writers were making the story-line up as they go; I am now convinced the time-travel aspect of LOST Island was always the over-arching theme. I also think it's why the writers and producers asked for a set ending point.

• Ben hired the lawyer to find Kate and Aaron. Seriously, I never saw that coming, but it totally makes sense. And, yes, I know EVERYONE saw it coming.

• Time sickness. How many time hops does it take to bloody your nose? Then ultimately kill you?

• Kate needs to lighten up.

• Sawyer's "Thank you, God" scene was awesomely funny.

• I'm getting really 'Back to the Future'd' with all this time jumping.

• Ben is back on my suspicion list.

• Claire's mom makes me sad.

• Did the rain scenes signify something?

• Finally, a Vincent mention.