"I Was Wrong"

The Lost season finale ended 12 hours ago, and my head is still spinning. Undigested, half-formed thoughts:

So what did we learn? The button-pushing did have a purpose. It was the Pearl that was the Skinner experiment. (And that image of the hundreds and hundreds of tubes? Maybe the creepiest image the show has put forth yet.)

The button released massive amounts of magnetic energy that build up for those 108 minutes. Don't push the button and that energy builds to a critical mass. A last-resort device has also been built in that will "blow the dam." No more need to push the button, and the world won't end, but the consequences are . . . We're not sure.

Eko and Locke - dead? I don't think so.

In the end, I actually liked Michael's arc here. I believed that he'd do these things to get his son back, especially given his flashbacks and the guilt we saw build up over his abandoning his son once before. Still - are he and Walt leaving forever? It would solve the "Malcolm Kelly will soon be six-foot tall" problem. And it could be argued that Michael's story has been completed. But the notion of his seeking redemption by coming back to help his friends has appeal. And Perrineau is so good. A puzzle.

The "violet light, loud buzzing" thing that happened after the button wasn't pushed was strange as all hell, but we still don't know what it did or really was, do we?

Lots of folks are slagging on Charlie for being cavalier about Eko and Locke's absence at the end. But I wonder if he doesn't have reason to believe they are OK--the way he said "they're not back yet?" almost seemed to indicate that he had seen them. After all, he was almost as near the hatch as they were when Desmond turned the key. We don't know what happened next really, but Charlie might.

The notion of building the season finale's emotional high points and flashbacks around a character we haven't seen for twenty eps, and who we hardly know, should be a bad one. It shouldn't work. And yet it worked. Very well. Hm.

Libby must have been a plant, yes? She's working for Widmore? That's what I'm getting.

The big question for me. Desmond's first button-pushing mishap brought down the plane, right? Cool. But if the crash was an accident, how to explain the myriad connections among the passengers, the myriad hints that these people are connected and were brought here for a purpose? Was Desmond deliberately teased out of the hatch so that the plane could be brought down? Another theory--part of the strange properties of the island and the magnetic energy is to affect probability fields. So all of the connections are crazy coincidences, but all made possible by some strange energy affecting probability itself. Too much? Probably.

So now we know that the outside world still exists. And that Desmond's love, Pen, will be looking for him. All cool. But I hope they don't move the focus off the island, save for the flashbacks. That would be too big a change, I think.

Kate kicked some real ass in this ep, no doubt. Did anyone else think that she had shot Jin? No? Just me, then?

So why did the Others want Jack, Kate, and Sawyer? And are the Others really the good guys?

What was with the look between Jack and Kate at the end? A "we have a plan" look? Or a "if we die, know that I kind of love you" look?

Too many questions.

And yet I still love this show.

Brilliant.

Until Whenever