S6E17 CREDIT CONFUSION

The images of the plane crash wreckage during the final credits were NOT part of the story, according to ABC. The network put those images in to allow viewers to "decompress" before their evening news casts.

Huh?

When did executives get final cut? Why would the producers of the show (who edited it) allow it to be re-edited? Let alone add graphic inference that had some fans sour to the prospect that it was all made up, they all died on impact, it was all purgatory, etc. (Some people thought that before the closing credits).

So the network's record "correction" has been labeled that the events on the island really happened (real human beings in supernatural world that included ghosts and monsters). As Christian Shephard told his son that he was dead, he said the sideways events happened too (dead souls having realistic lives in the after life). The sideways realm served as a transition point as the characters gradually met up again and "moved on."

This clears nothing up. It is a chicken or the egg argument: which was created first, the island events or the sideways holding world? Boone, Charlie and Lilly died on the island . . . so how did they "create" a sub-space in their deaths to gather the other people to the sideways world? And once you died, why would you need to be "awakened" by island events in order to stop the sideways world from continuing forward? Dead is dead. And if these main island characters who consciously created this sideways place "move on" does that mean the sub-space sideways world collapses? Is that why Eloise's spirit was so adamant that Desmond not awaken the 815ers? Then what happens to Ben's soul who is not ready to move on? Why did it take Jack so long (from a sideways perspective of literally re-writing his old life with a different ex-wife and a high school son) to make it to the church reunion? Why stuff a long, detailed, drawn out fantasy after life in order to somehow re-boot or sync an important event to force your soul to acknowledge your own demise?

The sideways world fantasy of collective memories really did not have a religious context. If it was purgatory, shouldn't the souls of the departed try to make better moral decisions than having affairs (Sun & Jin), killing people (Sayid), or bribing police officers (Hurley) in order to "move on?" Oh, the standard answer is "it doesn't matter."

If you accept the premise that the final survivors left the island on Frank's plane, it would mean they would have lived out fairly meaningless lives for the next 30-40 years if the island events were "the most important part of their lives." Sawyer and Kate would spend the rest of their natural lives pining for Juliet and Jack? They meet no one else who can fill their lives?

The more I think about the ending, the characters gathering happiness may have been an illusion.