THE STATION UNDER THE CHURCH

In 2007, after Ben murdered Locke, he found his way to Eloise's church. In the basement was the Dharma location station, the Lamp Post.

This has always been an odd set.

Eloise's church was also the same church found in the sideways world conclusion. Open question: whether they are one in the same, meaning in the afterlife time period. If so, then would not Locke been the only one to get to the Dharma location station since he was the only one "dead." Unless of course, death is nebulous concept that we don't fully understand.

Meeting her one night at the church, Eloise urged Ben that he had only 70 hours to reunite them—else "Then God help us all."  Ben brought Jack, Sun and Desmond to the church,  whereupon Eloise escorted them down into the Lamp Post and explained that it was built as the DHARMA Initiative's means of locating the Island. Eloise then supplied them information about Ajira flight and the warning that they must be aboard that flight and must work to recreate the conditions of Oceanic Flight 815 as nearly as possible. She also gave Jack Locke's suicide note and explained that Locke's body would have to be aboard the flight as well, serving as a proxy for Jack's dead father, and would therefore have to carry something of Jack's father on him.

Now, in retrospect, none of that makes any sense. Jacob was the one power that could bring humans to the island, not some mythical, complex "recreation" of prior events. Even MIB confirmed that it was Jacob's power that brought people to corrupt the island. And at the Lighthouse, Jacob himself inferred to Hurley and Jack that he was the sole power on the island as it guardian; that he spied on all his potential candidates prior to bringing them to the island.

Why did everything have to be "re-created" in Ajira to get the castaways back to the island? Clearly, this was false because the passengers and pilot were different on Ajira. And there were "new" survivors of that crash landing.  Then also, how did Ben "know" about the "need" to build the runway on the Hydra Island "years" before the actual event?  Recall, when Ben had Kate and Sawyer in the bear cages, their work detail was scraping the jungle to create a runway.

No, Eloise "story" or "magic spell" elements does not make sense. Sure, it was a con-job to entice the O6 back to the island, but that did not work either considering Aaron never returned with the group. The "substitution" of Locke's body for Jack's deceased father also made no sense since there was no substitute on the plane for Locke.

So why would it be necessary to con the O6 people?

More importantly, when did the "con" start?  It may have started early on prior to the rescue of the helicopter crash survivors and the arrival on Penny's boat. If you try to tie Eloise's church and the sideways church as the same (in time and space), logic would conclude that the O6 never "survived" their helicopter crash. Penny's boat was an illusion - - - the ferryman to carry the lost souls to the after life (the sideways world). Because the Coast Guard, press conference and their "life" afterward (especially Kate's trial) were all messed up fantasy. If the O6 had died, they needed to be brought back to the island to be "reborn."   So the direction was coming from the sideways Eloise from the beginning.

Even today, some theologians are unsure whether heaven or hell exists; and some believe that people living on Earth are actually living in heaven or hell, depending on their circumstances. We just believe that this is Life, but in one respect we cannot prove it one way or the other.

The symbolism of using a church as the Lamp Post (itself symbolic of giving light in the darkness, death) and in the sideways reunion hall is a key clue. When Christian told Jack that some people lived and died well before and well after Jack (and Jack's island's death was still to come) that may mean that Jack died during the freighter story arc with the O6. The reason Eloise wanted Jack and the others to return to the island was simple: to make them "forget" about their deaths caused by the island - - - in order for her to keep up her sideways world illusions of life in the afterlife since she was desperate to keep her son, Daniel, from knowing the details of his own island death. In this theory, Eloise is the supreme puppet master, who created the mythology of the island, Dharma, an evil husband trope and the ability to suspend logic and intelligence in her subjects. But like all lab rats, the characters had retained enough free will to muck up Eloise's plans.

Another factor is that if the island could not be found without the Lamp Post, how did Widmore find it? Eloise must have told him about it since she controlled the station. It also goes to what the island really was: was it a cloaked space craft or a portal to a different dimension in time and space. More evidence seems to point to the latter, as in life and afterlife.

The island was a prison, but for characters that Eloise needed to keep at bay in order to keep her illusion with Daniel alive. That would mean that even Jacob and his brother were pawns in an elaborate scheme - - - tricked into becoming candidates and guardians for eternity. That could mean that everyone on the island had a connection to Daniel and his mother - - - like Dogen at music recitals because Daniel was into that. Or Jacob, Patchy and the Others were former teachers, students, colleagues in business that Daniel had met. The idea of erasing Daniel's past and implanting the perfect sideways memories in him was Eloise's ultimate goal. She turned time and space, physics and energy against the laws of nature and human evolution to make it happen.

THE BIG LIE

LOST was hailed as the best written and filmed show in its television era. Fans expected a the intertwined mysteries to unwind in a tight script of revelations and satisfying conclusions. To say there were stumbles along the way would be an understatement.

The biggest problem was with the biggest lie.

Recall, Daniel is sitting in his chair watching television when the news breaks that searchers had found the remains of Flight 815 at the bottom of the ocean. There were no survivors. Robotic cameras showed footage of the wreckage.

Recall, Naomi parachuted onto the island from the Widmore freighter. She told the 815ers she met that Flight 815 had been found - - - that there were no survivors - - - they were all dead.

Later, we were told that Widmore "faked" the Flight 815 crash site in order to "hide" the island. Except there are several problems with that lie within a lie. First, every aircraft has detailed serial numbers on its parts. One cannot buy one and change the parts IDs. It was totally implausible for a fake wreckage to be made with an actual plane because each plane is also registered in the U.S. Second, if the plane and bodies were found, the authorities would have recovered them for the sake of closure for the families. The impossible explanation was that Widmore dug up 248 graves to deposit bodies on his fake wreckage. Third, the freighter captained showed us the alleged black boxes from Flight 815. However, if they were recovered, they would never have been released to a private individual. The FAA and government would have kept them as evidence. So none of the "fake" plane wreck is real.

But the real kicker is that after the world wide Flight 815 found story was the Oceanic
Six showing up in Hawaii. If the plane wreck footage found all passengers and crew on board died, then how did six survivors wind up in Hawaii? The passenger manifest cannot be altered to add five more people after the fact. Further, when Kate was arrested in Sydney, the authorities would have noticed whether or not she was pregnant (as she alleged in the press conference). None of the O6 story arc made sense.

The reasoning behind Widmore's elaborate plans, including the extermination of everyone on the island, was also flawed beyond belief. There was no reason for the O6 people coming back to the island. If Widmore wanted to keep it a secret, that was already done when the island "moved" prior to the O6 rescue. The O6 people did not know where the island was; and more importantly, the world had stopped looking for the wreckage because it had been "found."

And there was no reason for Jack to concoct the Lie that the O6 were the only survivors of the plane crash. The miracle that the five survived the crash and washed ashore on an unchartered island was enough to "verify" the Widmore lie where the wreckage site was located and found. The exact opposite should have been said - - - to save their friends left behind the O6 should have mounted a public rescue effort to beat Widmore back to the island.

And the reason why the O6 or Widmore had to come back to the island was unclear. The O6 wanted to come back for the vague notion of saving their friends - - - but they did not know whether they were alive or not. Widmore wanted to protect the island by killing everyone on it. But if everyone was to be eliminated or exterminated on the island, there would be no protectors left.

In fact, only one person had the means to actually find the lost island: Eloise. If one really wanted to protect the island from outsiders, all you had to do was take out Eloise.

So, none of the elaborate lies makes any sense, individually or as a scripted collaboration of plot points.

THE SECOND ACT

“I once thought that there were no second acts in American lives, but there was certainly to be a second act to New York's boom days,” - - - F. Scott Fitzgerald 

The Second Act in anything is not a guarantee.

In the series, the First Act was clear: the elements of surviving a plane crash with no hope of rescue. How would average people cope with extraordinary circumstances? It was like the survivors were thrown back to primitive mankind - - - little technology, hostile environment, dangerous beings surrounding them at night.

The Second Act was more tenuous: "we gotta go back" was Jack's scream to Kate. The idea that the O6 would want to "go back" to the island after they had been rescued defies basic human instincts of self-preservation. There was no real reason to go back. The people they "left behind" were mostly still strangers in a strange land. They had only known each other for a few months. For Jack, he had a life to actually go back to: his mother and his medical practice. Kate had a personal mission: to raise Aaron for Claire. Sayid had lesser bonds with the people left behind on the island. He actually received his dream when he was rescued: Nadia and a new life. Hurley had the least need to go back. He had a family and enough wealth never to work again. 

When Nadia was "killed" by Jacob's agency, one would have thought that Sayid's pain would be with him forever. If it was truly real, he would have wound upon reunited with Nadia in the sideways church. But he did not. Once he lost Nadia, he would still have no reason to go back to the island because there was no one there he cared about to save. 

Hurley's guilt about The Lie the O6 told was enough to get him back into his "comfort zone," being committed to the mental institution and away from the preying public. His best island friend, Charlie, was already dead. His potential girlfriend, Libby, was also dead. There was nothing to pull Hurley back to the island. 

Kate had even less motivation to go back. She "beat" the multiple charges against her. She was accepted as Aaron's mother. She had enough money to live quietly in peace. She never had to run away from any problems. This is what she dreamed about when she was in custody. The idea that she had to go back to the island to "save" Claire was irrational since to the eyes of the O6 survivors, when the island disappeared, everyone on it was dead.

The idea that a few mental jabs, some coaxing language and heart string pulls by Jacob or Widmore would get people who had no reason to go back to the island onto the Ajira plane is perplexing; so much so it calls into doubt whether the O6 story arc was actually real or as the boat in the harbor stated, an Illusion.

The Island's Second Act was more confusion. The time skip by "some" of the Ajira passengers made no physical or logical sense. We were already shown the "longing" by Sun to the loss of Jin, but she saw him blow up on the freighter. There was no evidence that Jin was alive. There was no reason for Sun to leave her baby and go off on a crazy scheme told by a known liar, Ben. 

If the whole purpose of the O6 was to reclaim something lost when they left the island, none of the O6 really got what they were searching for except Kate, who allegedly reunited Claire with Aaron after the Ajira plane took off the Hydra Island runway. Jack did not come back to the island for anyone or anything. He came back to die, something he could have accomplished without returning to the island. Hurley came back for nothing. His island actions saved no one. In fact, the returning O6 folk were merely pin balls going back and forth between camps as followers in the convoluted tale of Jacob and MIB. Only Kate and Jack fought MIB in the end. And Sawyer showed up only to escort Kate to the Ajira plane while Jack wandered back to his martyrdom. But even Kate's mission to find Claire was one of an accident. She did not know Claire would be brooding near the runway.  So Kate really stumbled to her goal of getting Claire off the island. 

So if the first act was all about Jack trying to keep the survivors from killing each other and the second act's only success was Kate getting Claire home, what bearing does that have on the End?

If the Second Act was the pivotal climax to resolve the LOST story, then the LOST story was really only about Kate. That may be hard to swallow that the story was all conceived by Kate as a dreamweaver.  But since Kate was the only person to get her wish upon returning to the island - - - she is the Dorothy in this Oz. And if we try to look objectively at the sideways church reunion, it was Kate's wish fulfilled that Claire would be reunited with Aaron. And the undertone is that Kate true feelings toward Jack would make him be with her forever. She did so by giving Jack a room filled of people who acknowledged his leadership and friendship. She took away romantic rivals by putting Sawyer and Juliet together. Kate's real Second Act was finding peace in the after life.

SIDEWAYS LOOK AT 06

With the reveal that the "sideways" world was something created by the 815ers so they could be together when everyone arrived (awakened) for the next journey in the afterlife, we must ponder one last look at the other flashes. The sideways Season 6 story line was a dream like state, not reality (even though Christian said "everything was real"). This sideways world contained many miraculous, strange or unbelievable medical situations that resolved themselves quickly. In past seasons, we found numerous medical and legal factual errors. Most egregious were the elements of Kate's "trial" in LA after the O6 were rescued.

The resolution of the O6 character's issues mirrors the happy feeling church finale. It was all too good to be true. There were no true consequences for the past bad actions. It was not a reward, but in a way, a child's dream resolution of their problems.

If you take the similarities of the O6 off-island events and the sideways stories, one could conclude that they are one in the same.

When did the O6 turn into the sideways dream world to wait to be awakened?
1. They all could have died when the helicopter crashed in the ocean.
2. They all could have died in the original 815 plane crash. The island was their true purgatory.
3. They could have all died prior to Flight 815. The plane was the symbolic passage to the afterlife.

If one recalls many elements of the island, they are part of the collective memories of the characters. Hurley was reading a comic on the plane that contained polar bears. Polar bears appeared on the island. Locke, as a child, drew a smoke monster picture. The smoke monster appeared on the island.

If you also look at the list of unexplained continuity errors, most could be erased not as factual errors but dream like perceptions of reality if the sideways concept is applied outside of Season 6.