6 Theoretical Thoughts by MattLoves LOST

1. The sideways was the "purgatory" per say...its was a unreal set of curcumstances that each characters soul had to work through and find redemption before coming together with the others and moving on...none of it was real, except for the final moments when the souls come together

2. They all died at various times before the final scene, that is various times in real time...after death, they all went immediatley to the sideways to work out their redemption...whether they died 3 years ago (Boone), 30 years later (Kate, Sawyer) or maybe 1000 years later (Ben and Hurley) they all "waited" in the sideways for eachother

3. Everything you ever saw on the show was real, as in it really happened in the story...the exception is the sideways we saw this season...that is the "purgatory" where they have to deal with demons, deal with the results of their poor decisions, and let go before moving on...Locke has to let go of hating dad, Jack had to let go of hating dad (by seeing how it is to be a dad himself), Charlie had to give up fame for love, Kate had to see Aaron and Claire together, Claire had to keep Aaron, etc.

4. Not everybody let go, so they were not in the church...Ben was not done (with Alex I guess), Ana Lucia was still a crooked cop, etc.

5. The kids of the show (Ji Yeon, Walt, Sawyer's daughter, etc.) were never meant to be a part of the game...that is why babies weren't supposed to be born on the island...it was never meant to involved kids...that is why, in the end they were not in the church...it is not as though they didn't get to heaven, but that they were spared the memories, suffering, issues of the island life and memory (last season Locke saw teenage Walt and said he didn't have to go back to the island to complete his work, b/c he was a kid he had "been through enough already" )...

7. Aaron, however, was in the church as a baby...does this mean when he died, however many years later, he wanted to go to heaven as a baby? I think, and this is just my thought, the life-altering events of the crash is what brought this group together, and no matter where you were when you died, or how old you were, when you died, if you were part of that group, you went to heaven together...this group, in the ages and scenarios that they were in at the crash, saved the world together, this was a big deal...those that chose to do so, then spent eternity in that moment, the moment when they saved the world...maybe Aaron wanted to be part of that too, even if it meant entering heaven as a baby...it alo meant entering it with two parents who loved each other...for a kid who likely grew up in a single parent home (Claire) that could very well be heaven