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.

REALLY LOST

One of the nagging small points was the myth that the island was hard to find.

Ben made numerous trips off the island and returned without a problem.
Ethan and Alpert recruited  Juliet and returned with her without issue.
So did Mr. Friendly from NYC with Michael.

So the island was never really lost.

But you remember, the island time-space skipped after Ben turned the frozen donkey wheel. That is why the island was lost; it moved. Except that Ben had turned the FDW wheel before, and landed in North Africa and stayed at the same hotel. And in those earlier time jumps, he returned to the island without the help of the Lamp Post station or Eloise.

So there is a major inconsistency in the story lines.

It was a plot convenience to add tension by making the island "vanish," but it runs contrary to pre-existing facts about the island and how it worked.

But then, the answer must lie with Jacob. He was the "only" person who could allow individuals onto his island. That would mean that Jacob would micromanage all the comings and goings of the Dharma Group, the Others, and the 815 survivors. But Jacob really was not shown as a "hands on" guy. In fact, he delegated any supervision of the island inhabitants to Alpert. Jacob may have allowed people onto the island, but gave them the free will to make their own choices to see if corruption would lead to their demise.

So if the island was never truly lost or hidden, what was the point of the O6 return?

Filler.

We were shown more of the O6 mainland stories than the three years in 1970s Dharmaville.
It is probably because the writers had run out of island stories or were bored with re-running the Horace vs. Others theme.

It also gets to an odd clue that the smoke monster as Christian told Locke when he turned the FDW. Locke had to die in order to return his friends to the island. Locke could not get his friends to voluntarily return. Eloise could not find the island location. But when Locke was killed, Eloise found the island and Ben with Jack reunited the O6 to return on Ajira 316. If there was a cosmic puzzle box to unlock the location, Locke's death was the key to open it. It is a sinister conclusion that a man must die in order for the island to be re-located. What a demanding toll for those travelers, who never realized what, if anything or anybody, was left on the island. It is these questions that show that it was not the island that was lost, but the continuity and forethought in the scripts.

LOCATION SET QUESTION

There was some concern about how LOST would be shot. Since the setting was going to be on a tropical jungle, the idea of shooting the series outdoors in Hawaii would be a daunting task. Hawaii has been the venue for various other shows, including the original Hawaii- Five-O and Magnum PI series, who used location shots as well as sound studio sets to tell their tales. The practical shooting (and therefore show cost formula) was extremely important to network executives. The pitch-writer's guide attempted to address this issue:

TV SHOWS NEED HOME SETS - SO?

We all realize that attempting to shoot a weekly TV series with no interiors would be...
challenging. So how do we create standing sets for a show that takes place on a tropical island? The first three episodes (or perhaps as few as two) focus on a growing concern amongst our castaways - rescue isn't coming. The food on the plane is gone. There's no fresh water. So... 

The mission is clear - Despite the inherent dangers of the jungle, they have to RELOCATE.

Our idea is to build a jungle inside a soundstage. And in this patch of jungle, our characters will begin to build their own "mini" sets. Call it a primitive "Melrose Place." 

This new "camp" will become our home set. A set where we can regulate time of day, weather conditions, etc. This is where our thirteen characters live, eat, sleep - it is their base of operations. It is their Precinct House. Their ER. Their Law Firm. 

And as we mentioned earlier, if and when these sets grow visually tiresome, some or all of the castaways may relocate to the vast UNDERGROUND COMPLEX they uncover, although this might not happen until well into the second season.

The goal for LOST is this - structure each story so that half of the episode plays out at HOME (the camp) and the other half plays out AWAY (any where else on the island). "Home"stories will traditionally be more character-driven and survival-based while the "Away" stories will obviously have more action/adventure elements. 

Cost containment on the "home sets" seems to be a selling point to the network. Half of the stories would center around character interaction at the camp (home set) and the other half would be the action-adventure in the jungle. The whole series would be moving toward permanent locations such as the camp and the "vast" underground complex the survivors would find by the end of Season 2.

It appears that the producers tried to make this set/location map work.  

Hawaiian island of Oahu was used for most of the  diverse filming locations.  The original island scenes for the pilot were filmed at Mokuleia Beach, near the northwest tip of the island. Later beach scenes take place in secluded spots of the famous North Shore, the big wave surf area. Cave scenes in the first season were filmed on a sound stage built at a warehouse. In 2006, the sound-stage and production offices moved to the Hawaii Film Office-operated Hawaii Film Studio^, where the sets depicting Season 2's "Swan Station" and Season 3's "Hydra Station" interiors were built. Various urban areas in and around Honolulu are used as stand-ins for locations around the world, including California, New York, Iowa, Miami, South Korea, Iraq, Nigeria, United Kingdom, Paris, Thailand, Berlin, Maldives and Australia. For example, scenes set in Sydney Airport were actually filmed inside the local Convention Center,  while a World War II-era bunker was used as both a Republican Guard installation and a Dharma research station.  Several scenes in the Season 3 finale, were shot in Los Angeles, including a hospital set borrowed from Grey's Anatomy. Two scenes during season four were filmed in London because actor Alan Dale (Widmore) was at the time performing in the musical and he was unable to travel to Hawaii.

Very few people would criticize the look and feel of the LOST series. The photography and sets used in the series really transported viewers to a tropical island. The transition shots between vast island valleys, to the close, dense jungle vegetation led us to believe that the show did create a real environment that the characters had to live in. It was probably shot more "on location" that originally proposed, because the main characters never moved everyone from the beach camp into the vast underground bunker. In fact, the beach became less and less a focal point as the series moved forward. The remaining survivors did not set up a functioning "town" at their original camp as inferred by the guidelines above.

The show's original idea that the 13 main characters would have two leaders (Jack and Kate) would have a home base for story structure seems to have been abandoned toward the more action-adventure elements of finding new mysteries, exploring the jungle, being attacked by the unknown and hiking about the jungle on sometimes dubious missions. Then things get really skewed when the O6 gets rescued by Penny's boat and a good chunk of story is removed from the island to LA. 

But all in all the stage and setting of the series did work.