S6E12 DEAD IS DEAD

Unless the writers are going to lie to us to the very, very end, the big answers from this episode were:

1. The Whispers are lost souls of the dead who cannot "move on," most likely because they have done something wrong (like Michael murdering Ana Lucia and Libby on the island).

2. There is more than one "island" of electromagnetic energy on Earth, as Flocke explained to Desmond. In the Pacific, that place where compasses go wild is called "The Devil's Triangle."

Most viewers have been convinced that the island was never a place for the living dead to work out issues prior to final judgment. The reason was TPTB said after the pilot in Season 1 that the show was NOT about purgatory (i.e. how could anyone "survive" a plane crash?) Viewers were led to believe that our main characters were living human beings thrust into a weird island survival situation, somewhere between Robinson Crusoe and Lord of the Flies.

But multiple people speaking with ghosts, supernatural demon beasts, and a shoot first ask questions later mentality against the value of (human) life, adds up to the island being a place of death. Hurley's main concern throughout the episode that he did not want anyone to get hurt or "die." Then Ilana goes Arzt and blows up. Then Hurley blows up the Black Rock. It is not that his friends would "die," but they would "move on" without him. As I have theorized in the past, all the characters have been "dead" since S1E1. It is just that they don't know it. It is only after they realize their plight-situation, comes the enlightenment to "move on" to the "next life," which in most respects apparently mirrors your old life (see, sideways world).

It may not be a fairy tale ending to LOST, but the theme may be that if you make mistakes, bad choices in your life, do not worry, because you will have a second chance in your second life after you pass on.