I also think that taking Christian’s statement about it being the most important part of their lives too literally is going to give you the same trouble as worrying too closely about the rules governing Jacob and the Man in Black or Ben and Widmore. I just figured it was sort of a fuzzy “the people they met on the island and the things that they did there were significant enough that they have to resolve them”. So Shannon, who we can assume based on her flashbacks was a pretty unhappy and damaged person before the island, unable to fulfill her dream of becoming a dancer and engaging in a series of abusive or meaningless relationships, found some peace in making herself useful on the island and in her relationship with Sayid. I thought that giving Sayid two loves of his life, while maybe kind of realistic, muddled his character’s resolution even more than they did earlier in the season with the sickness and his sacrifice, and consequently kind of weakened Shannon’s reintroduction in the finale a bit. But I don’t feel too bad for her that she got the ending she did. Better than we had reason to expect really.

I don’t recall them really clearing up why Desmond went on his campaign to wake everybody up. I guess the high of finding out that all of these people meant so much to each other must have just got him overexcited. I did like how infectious they made the enthusiasm of some of the awakened people, like Hurley’s glee at seeing Charlie again or Jin and Sun being so charmed by Sawyer as a cop.

The sideways stuff will probably be the most controversial element of the finale/final season (along with all the stuff they dropped like Walt) but I liked how they tried to walk the fine line between giving an emotionally satisfying epilogue for our characters and just indulging in an overly happy ending that negates all of the hardship we’ve seen the survivors go through. I was ultimately grateful for it because of how sad the real world endings were for pretty much all of the characters. In fact I really do think the finale was excellent. I know I was probably more interested in the characters than you were over the course of the show, but it was also just predictably exciting, well-acted, and filled with moving Michael Giacchino music.

Now I’m wondering how many hours of ABC programming we could fill up with awesome Lost spin-offs.
Between the Linus: High school history teacher Dr. Benjamin Linus laughs, loves, and learns with the help of substitute teacher John Locke, science teacher Leslie Arzt, and principal William Atherton.
Lost…Again!: A Fantasy Island for the new millennium, following the exploits of new island administrator Hugo Reyes and his assistant Ben Linus.
Untitled Ford/Straume Procedural: One’s a sexy southern charmer with a secret, the other’s the snarky son of a museum administrator. Together they clean up the streets of Los Angeles.
The B-Team: A ghost-whispering smart-aleck, a laid-back pilot, and a formerly immortal Spaniard travel the globe righting wrongs, romancing the ladies, spending eight million dollars in diamonds, and…delivering cargo with their busted up Ajira airliner?
Cooking with Keamy: Cooking tips from the uniquely hilarious, insinuating, and sometimes plain creepy mercenary/chef Martin Keamy.

I don’t think Faraday being stuck there sucks too bad, though. One thing I liked about the sideways world is that while eventually the characters should be moving on to the next step, it’s not like this trap or prison (which makes it much less purgatory-like to me) — it’s remarkably non-judgmental about matters of whether people are ready to move on. It’s like grad school or something.

I’m far more intrigued about the people who didn’t get to move on, and why, and what that accomplishes. I think Daniel gets stuck in sideways world because his mother has to atone for getting him killed, but that sucks for Daniel. And I don’t really get why Desmond would hit Locke with a car to get him to let go, but he wouldn’t punch some sense into Ben a few more times. It’s the one time in the history of the show when someone opted not to hit Ben in the face! I’d like a clearer delineation about why they weren’t ready, but, given the previous six seasons, I’m pretty sure it’s my fault for wanting Lost to be clear about anything.

Marisa, I’m not sure if you can apply stricter rules to the Sideways World and have it still fulfill that function (or maybe if you did, it would sound to me more like a videogame or a lame screenplay). That said, I think the show gave me enough to answer most of your questions:

Regarding Sun getting gut-shot, the violence, obviously, doesn’t address any problems she and Jin had but: she and Jin did face some horrible violence/death, while hoping to reunite and get back to their kid. In the Sideways world, they come out of a sticky situation united, and get to see that their baby is unharmed, and experience a moment of real relief between them. I can see that relating to the disappointments of their real life. I also feel like there’s a bit of free will going on in this sort-of dream-world; it’s not as if every incident has to work towards that goal of breaking through. Remember, many of them needed Desmond’s help to get that jolt, and likely would’ve gone through that Sideways World a bit longer without him. That does raise the question of why, in the end, it was necessary for Desmond to goad people on; there’s nothing really *wrong* with Locke going on to live his life with Helen, just as Ben opted out of moving on just yet, wanting to work on things a little more with his surrogate daughter. But I think what causes Locke to walk away from this pretty excellent life he has going is acceptance: he feels at peace, enough so that he *can* walk away from this good (fantasy) life, even though it must be tempting. Ben isn’t there yet. I actually thought that was a really nice touch on both counts: to see Locke at peace, and Ben not, quite. It’s less about flaws and more about acceptance.

They also have a pretty good out for not including some people: it may be that this was not the most important section of their lives. I mean, for Lapidus, his actual island time only amounts to a few weeks total, right, with a big gap in between. He could’ve had a whole other lifetime of more important events. Even Daniel and Charlotte probably had a whole other host of events to come to terms with in their lives, and seemed to be on their way to finding each other, anyway. So maybe they’ll make that trip together. (I forget if Miles was there; I don’t think so, though. Freighties reunion!!)

I also don’t read the afterlife situation as them all necessarily spending eternity *together* — I would imagine they move on to some kind of higher state of consciousness or something, rather than literally spending all of this time with Losties and Losties alone. I like that it’s left ambiguous, but if I had to guess, they wouldn’t be headed for some kind of eternal Lost cocktail party.

Finally, regarding (sweet, sweet) Keamy, I’d look at that as Keamy not necessarily being there, just as baby Aaron may not have been experiencing that world himself; it was probably more of a construct of him for Claire’s sake. Keamy was the bad guy in a little segment of Sun and Jin’s life, not really himself with his own pre-death issues. There was a version of Widmore in Sideways World, for that matter; but who knows if that was really Widmore’s consciousness or if that was just something that Desmond or whoever else needed to make sense of that world.

I love the on-island resolution. I thought the Locke/Jack punch-fight was immensely satisfying. I wanted Hurley to be Island Protector from the beginning. I’m glad that Ben finally had someone to toady for. And I’m happy to see that everybody didn’t die, and that some people finally got to leave the island for good. I would’ve liked to know more about what happened to them afterward–and Desmond and Penny, too–but I’m fine with them not telling me.

The sideways timeline resolution was not as satisfying. Personally, throughout the series I liked all of the scientific explanations better than the spiritual ones, even if they were equally fake. (I prefer hearing “electromagnetism” over “magic light.”) So the super-spiritual existence of the purgatory-ish world isn’t really up my alley.

But, besides that, I needed the framework of that world to be more outlined for me. I get that they all met there so they could work through some problems, come to terms with their deaths, and let go. That makes sense. And the events of the purgatory world make sense with that explanation for some of the characters. Jack, for instance, was a good father in sideways-world because he had a poor relationship with his father in real life. Or Sawyer, who was a cop so that he can catch con men. But what about Sun? Getting shot in the gut–that’s a pretty sucky purgatory, and not one that really does anything for her character. (Was she sad that she was not shot in life?) And what happens if you get shot and killed in purgatory (like poor, sweet Keamy)?

The same goes with moving on to the next life together. I’m still not sure why some people moved on, others knew they could move on and didn’t, and still others weren’t invited to move on. This ambiguity left me with a lack of closure for some of the characters, which, in a character-based rather than a plot-based finale, meant a small degree of failure.

In this case, I understand why Sun and Jin would want to leave–they had each other, and there was nothing going on for them in sideways-world. Locke, though, was healed and was going to get married to Helen–why wouldn’t he want to stick around for that? Or, if moving on is the noble thing to do, why does Ben get to stick around with Alex and Rousseau? And why didn’t they get Charlotte and Daniel to join them? Or poor Lapidus? (And why would Shannon want to spend eternity with the rest of them? She never really liked anybody there except Sayid.) I get that some of the most flawed people have to stay behind (or worse, get trapped on the island as a whisper-ghost), but some of the people who got through seem just as flawed. Maybe if I knew more about how they died I’d understand. But I wanted the rules of that whole situation spelled out for me a little more, and the fact that it wasn’t was what was unsatisfying to me about the ending.

I think I’m going to take up this Breaking Bad thing everyone’s being going on about.