OK I'm going to come acrooss thick but here goes, the explained nothing! Yes Flash sideways was a place they found each other in death cough Ashes to Ashes cough. Hurly took over ppl left and lived but here goes.
What was the smoke Monster was he the devil, a human, more??
What was his Brother Jacob?? God, an Angel wot???
How did Darma get to the Island?
What was the Temple?
What was the Point of it?
How come Smoke Monster couldn't pass certain things.
Why the others?
Why were no child able to be bore on the Island??
What did the others want with Walt??
Why could the Island heal?
Why were there polar bears there?
How were everyone connected in some way in their flashbacks???
Why was Desmond pushing the Button?
Why did the light turn the man in black into the smoke monster?
If the boys' mother was good way did she kill their biological mother?
What did she see in the twins?
Why did the plane not blow up when it flew off as Whitmore had it rigged to?
I've probably a few more but seriously I felt like I never got an answer this series but I admit the final was moving and powerful and it was a joy to watch.
first off i'm going to say again that LOST is a mythological story/fairy tale. and true to those roots, there are deeply embedded rules that you shouldn't expect to be expanded on. nobody ever asks how in greek mythology, the sky and earth (the father and mother of all gods) came to be. and no one ever wonders where cinderella's fairy godmother came from. they just are, and that's all there is to it.
also despite what many people think, this show is and has always been about the lives of the characters and not the island. they are the ones we relate to and the one's whose perspectives we follow. and just like them, we'll never know everything about the island. if you thought the main focus was the island, then of course you're disappointed.
the man in black was an entity that was changed by the heart of the island. my theory is that since their mother made it so that they couldn't kill each other, the man in black became that way since he would have otherwise die.
jacob, like his mother, was the protector of the island. the protector always has some god-like powers.
dharma found the island the same way everyone else finds it: by accident. they were just smart enough to figure out how to leave and come back.
the temple was a safe haven for people to protect themselves from the man in black. the island has existed for centuries, so we can assume that some inhabitants built it.
the man in black just couldn't stand sonar sounds.
the others were a society of "good" people. jacob and the man in black had a long withstanding debate about the true nature of humanity: jacob believed that people are inherently good, man in black that they're naturally evil. the are god and satan proxies that even used the same methods (jacob enabled free will, the man in black always used temptation). jacob was the enigmatic leader of the others.
the healing properties of the island treated pregnancy like a sickness and the baby like a parasite (see the quote by juliet i posted before)
the others are unable to have children in their "utopia." so they kidnapped them, like walt, zack, and emma. lindelof and cuse admitted in interviews that walt was a psychic, but they never followed through with that because the actor was aging too quickly.
the island can heal just because it can. one of the rules of the island. maybe jacob made it so.
polar bears were part of an experiment by the dharma initiative to try to see if they can alter their living conditions.
one of the shows main themes was fate vs. free will. no matter what, everyone is just connected because it's fate.
desmond was pushing the button because it prevented the electromagnetic properties of the island to be unleashed. when desmond didn't push it, he caused oceanic 815 to crash. when he turned the fail safe key in season 2, he unleashed it indefinitely to the point that it was gone. the fail safe key was always a last resort since nobody actually knew if it would work.
the heart of the island was described as "life, death, and rebirth." my theory is that the man in black became a physical representation of all those things
the terms "good" and "bad" are subjective in this show. it's up to you to decide if you think she was good
as the protector, she needed to find someone to replace her. jacob and the boy in black were her candidates, as the main cast were jacob's
