BEST OF TIMES

Here is a new question. If Christian was correct in saying that the main characters in the church died well before and well after Jack, why did they all appear in the church as their "island" selves?

The metaphysical question is what is the physical appearance of the dead in purgatory.

It may not be a bothersome proposition because it was just a television show, and the actors aged only 6 years.  But the show did use other actors to play the main characters roles such as in childhood or as young adults. But TPTB chose to represent the dead LOST cast in the church at their island ages.

Can one infer that when one's soul goes to purgatory, its physical appearance is locked in place? This would seem to match the ancient Egyptian concept of mummification of the deceased body and organs for the reconstruction and rebirth of that person in the after life.

Now, Christian also said that the people in the church waiting for Jack were present because they shared the "most important" time in their lives. He did not say "the best" times. The idea of the shared experience of an airplane crash may be important, and the survival of the plane crash even more important, but there were some characters who should have lived full lives beyond the island crash.

For the church scene to make sense, it would seem that all the characters were "locked" in their physical place based upon the moment they went into island airspace. And in the purgatory world, Aaron becomes the problem child. It is hard to imagine that Aaron, who left the island with Kate and was with his grandmother when Claire was rescued, would not have lived a full life outside the island. But the ending church realm has Aaron being born - - - meaning that he was still a fetus when the sideways world was "created." It also creates the massive logic issue of how can a dead mother, Claire, give "birth" to her child in purgatory? (In some respects that pregnancy issue was at the heart of Ben's island research with Juliet, i.e. evidence that the Island could also have been a purgatory state.) Was Aaron really born on the island, or was that a fantasy?

For if Aaron's physical spirit was locked in as shown in the after life (as a fetus or new born), one would have to conclude that Aaron died in the plane crash or shortly after birth on the Island. Otherwise, it would have been more appropriate to have a grown Aaron with Claire in the church, or no Aaron at all.  The idea that Claire "needed" to have Aaron's birth to "awaken" in the after life to reconnect her feelings with Charlie seems to be an unnecessarily convoluted plot twist. It makes Aaron a mere prop for Claire to accept her own death. A death that may have been caused because of a traumatic child birth (which mirrors Ben's back story birth).

And if Aaron's "most important" life moment was being born on the island, that would mean Aaron had no other life . . . his soul represents only a fixed newborn whose life was measured in weeks not years. One cannot say that the best days of Aaron's life were on the island unless those were his "only" days.

Then again, the Ajira escapees would have lived a long lives after leaving the island. Kate, Sawyer and Claire would have aged before they died "long after" Jack. But again, their appearance in the sideways after life was that of the island time of the plane crash. Kate, Sawyer and Claire had life expectancies of forty years or more. They would have had the opportunity to change, meet new people, forge new relationships and put the island terror behind him. Kate could have reconnected with her husband, the Florida policeman. Claire could have reconnected with Aaron's father. Sawyer could have reconnected with the mother of his child. All those pre-flight bonds and relationships were present when they left the island for good. So, one would then have to assume that none of those mainland reunions ever took place. One could also assume that the Ajira people may have never made it back. Or one could assume no one ever left the island, per se.

The physical appearances of the characters in the sideways church and Christian's vague explanation creates more fundamental questions. The sideways plot premise does not seem to be consistent when one looks at the individual characters, especially post-island time. In fact, it leads us down the path to consider one explanation: that the sideways purgatory was also the island purgatory - - - the lost souls were locked in their spiritual and physical forms when Flight 815 crashed on the island.

But then again, the appearance of Christian in the church is also problematic. He was never on the island. He died in Australia. His body was never on the plane. He only had two connections: Jack and Claire. So if Jack's island friends "created" the sideways world as a purgatory holding pen for their souls until Jack accepted his own death, Christian's soul would not have been part of that collective experience (unless of course, they were all souls passing through the same after life gate and Christian, Eloise or some other guardian angel corralled them in place so they could "move on together.") Christian should not have been the master of ceremonies at the end.

It is hard to imagine that the island time was "the best times" for the main characters. That shared experience was so powerful that their souls would be linked forever. For a character like Locke, that seems counterproductive. The main characters abandoned him to die alone (or at the hands of Ben). Locke's soul would have had a better or stronger connection to meet up with his mother or even Helen in the after life. But he wound up with the 815 survivors in the after life, but sadly, he wound up alone without a soul mate. How cruel is that?

There is also an issue of why all the people in the church needed to be together in order to "move on." Was it some kind of reward for destroying MIB? Probably not, because Christian said the characters themselves created this diversion place. Recall, Jacob told Alpert that he could not resurrect the dead but he could grant some form of immortality. So it was probably not necessary to have the characters in the church to complete their journey. In fact, Rose and Bernard seem the most out of place. They specifically told them they did not want any more part of the island melodramas. They went off on their own to build their own cabin and live out their own lives without anyone else. When Rose and Bernard would have died,  one would have assumed they would have moved on together without the help of anyone else.

The problem with the "happy ending" to LOST is that when one begins to drill down through the smiles, it really cannot be considered a happy ending. There are too many inconsistencies and questions to say that the main characters needed each other in order to have true eternal happiness.