I mean, for a guy who reads the Bible a lot, shouldn’t the palm trees have been Richard’s first clue that he wasn’t in hell?

And even though the whole cork stopping evil theory sort of, um, has nothing to do with previous seasons, it does have a nice apocalyptic feel to it, like we’re going to see the ultimate show down between good and evil. Very Buffy-esque, only instead of demons, we have smoke monsters, and instead of dirty California streets, we have beautiful beaches and random statues that get smooshed by random ships.

(Seriously, a ship could do THAT? Not.)

So does that mean that the island is something like the Garden of Eden? That Smokey is evil that released from the beginning of time, and there has always been a guardian of evil? That Adam and Eve had to be cast out from the island, but that evil stayed?

Crazy stuff, but again, much better than time travel. And is this the explanation of the side flashes—what would their lives be like if Jacob had been killed in the blast, and evil was released into the world? Or is it a demonstration of who, regardless of circumstance, still remains the same, and who retains goodness, and is therefore a candidate? Like Kate and Sawyer and Sayid all come back to similar circumstances in the side flashes, whereas Jack and Hurley and Locke’s life are all slightly different—better. I dunno, just throwing stuff out there.

And I’ll admit that I didn’t get the repetition of the line that Dogen gave to Sayid when he asked Sayid to kill Flocke. Same lines as when the Man in Black (MIB) asked Richard to kill Jacob. Word for word, so where does that leave us in regards to who is good or who is bad? Or was Dogen once subject to MIB’s tricks, and used MIB’s own words against him?

Head is still spinning, but again, much cleverer than time travel and polar bears. Just sayin’.