I like this comment from a Washington Post article- there was a debate about whether the whole thing was just Jack's purgatory (ie. Jack was dead the whole series from the beginning):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2010/05/21/DI2010052103465.htmlJack wasn't dead: At least not during the season. He died in the finale, lying in the bamboo field, just like we saw last night. That was all real. The plane really took off, like he saw. That was real too. Shannon died when she was shot, Boone died after he fell, Charlie died when he drowned. It was all real. Just like Christian said at the end: "Everything that's ever happened to you is real."
Everyone lived their lives in the "real" world. Some died early on on the island (Boone/Shannon/etc). Some died later on on the island (Sun/Jin/Sayid/Jack). Some got off the island and went about living their lives (Kate/Claire/Sawyer). They eventually died too. Maybe a week after they got off. Maybe 70 years. It doesn't matter. Christian again: "Everyone dies sometime, kiddo. Some died before you. Some died long after you."
The timing of that doesn't matter. Not in sideways world. This is where I think you guys got off track in your analysis this week. (Please don't take that the wrong way, because I LOVE reading your analysis.) But, anyway, I think you guys both got off track on this one because you're trying to make a temporal link between what happened in sideways world last night in with what happened in the island world. But you can't do that. Time doesn't exist in the sideways world. Again, remember Christian: "There is no NOW here."
Its just where they all went to wait for one another and find one another. And they found one another exactly like they were when they were with one another in the real world. That's why Locke was able to walk. That's why Kate/Sawyer/Claire all looked 35, even though they were likely much older when they died. And that's why Aaron was a baby, even though he very well could have led a full life.
I loved it. I thought it was just perfect. I knew we weren't getting a ton of answers, so I was prepared for that. And then when we're seeing scenes in the first hour that you would have anticipated being the penultimate scenes (i.e. all the stuff with Flocke), you quickly realized that this wasn't really going to be about the island at all. It was about the people. It was always about the people.
Handcrafted by RollDdice 2005