Aye There's the Rub: an explanation of the last episode by John M.

Season 6 has been nothing other than one big long con. But don’t worry! I don’t mean that as a criticism. The long con was employed as a story telling device and as a nod to the show’s overall eerie Twilight Zone flavor.

Check it: we were lead to believe that there was this alternate universe in the flash sideways. Now at first, I thought the season was going to be about how the LOST castaways had fixed something which caused their plane crash to never happen, and the problems they were all plagued by in their lives would be fixed so that they weren’t all the same troubled, lonely people they were when they arrived on the island. I think this is what most people thought, and rightfully so. I mean, there was the initial trick that the bomb detonation fixed this. But then we realized that it only fixed the time-travel dilemma. So during season 6 we were all just basically waiting to see how reality got fixed and who the hell Jacob and the Man in Black was. As for the whole “touching people and remembering the island days” thing, I was just a cool bonus ( I think we all wanted this kind of closure even before we saw it happen). I mean, I was thinking “well if they fixed the problem, and the crash never happened, then they are all strangers to each other and all the time on the island where they were working through their personal battles with these people, well all of that was for naught.” But then they solved that problem by making them remember. BUT THEN the writers have to throw us a curve ball and be all “they remember each other because THEY’VE ALL BEEN DEAD!” BUM, BUM, BUM!!! And then people started speculating: were they dead the whole time, right from the beginning, or from the bomb blast, or what? And some people got pissed, and some just accepted it blindly like a loving parent. And some (this guy) said:” hey, something’s wrong here. This ending doesn’t jive with the rest of the show. Too schmaltzy. I mean they’ve had schmaltzy moments before, but there’s something fishy about this all-too-easy explanation. Lost has rarely been about easy explanations! You gotta put in work.”
So here’s my theory, put down in numbered format in no particular order of importance (my brain is kinda feeble and plus: this is a TV show, not my doctoral thesis), inspired by, but far more inferior, than Bob Harris’ Sopranos ending explanation:

Back to the long con. We were conned into thinking all that stuff I mentioned above, but what was really going on? I don’t think it was a Purgatory, or an alternaverse (unless you consider a person’s mind an alternaverse). No, the flash sideways of season 6 takes place solely in Jack’s mind as he’s dying after just having saved the world as he lies down for the last time in the cool earth of the bamboo forest. BUM BUM BUM! You see, it’s the Island’s and Jack’s subconscious mind working together to give him a vision that will ease his pain as he dies. It’s Jack’s vision of what happened after he fixed the problem based on everything he knew at the time. I don’t think he’s working on this vision like a writer would, you know polishing it and all, it’s just like one big flash for him, even though it took us a whole season to see. I believe this explanation hews to the overall spirit and logic of the show as I’ve experienced it from day one. Follow me:
!. Jack sees and feels the cut on his neck that Locke gave him back on the island. This is the reality “bleeding” into the fantasy as he dies, much like a ringing alarm clock in reality becomes some other loud thing in your dreams right before you wake up.
2. In the episode entitled “the long con”, John Locke leafs through a book entitled “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”. This is a story about a Rebel soldier who is to be hung on a bridge by Union soldiers back in the Civil War days. In the story the soldier escapes his hanging, flees the scene and ends up at his home in the arms of his wife and children. Just as he’s enjoying his family, he feels a sting around his neck and hears a snap. It turns out that this was all a dream he had a second before he’s hung. Likewise, it is my belief that season 6 has all been like this. When Sawyer says that this has been the longest con somewhere during the finale, I think it’s a little wink to the audience saying 1. The entire show has been a long con of sorts as all fiction is and 2. “Remember that episode “the long con”? It’s going to be important in deciphering this episode.”
3. Everything that happened before Jack lays down in the bamboo field as he sees the plane flee to sweet escape happened for real. Even the plane escaping happened. The smoke monster, Jacob, polar bears, whispers in the forest: this all happened in reality. You see, the Island is mystical, just like Middle- earth in Lord of the Rings. These things were not fantasies. Just like TLOTR had hobbits, the Island has smoke monsters, and powers that make people healthy, etc. These were just the characteristics of this fantasy island.
4. The whole story, pre-Jack’s dream, was nothing more than a gigantic Rube Goldberg device that Jacob employed in order to keep the Man in Black from destroying the world, universe, etc. Jacob was at fault for making MiB into Smokey, so Jacob wasn’t the embodiment of pure good. He was a flawed man trying to correct his errors. Just like Jack. Just like everyone. Sometimes Jacob’s device went astray, so he had to show up and goad people in the right direction.
5. The point of removing and then putting the “cork” back in the hole in glowy cave was to reset the island. This took away Locke/MiB’s immortality and powers and trapped him in a mortal body. Once this happened he could be killed and stopped from 1. Attempting to destroy the world and 2. From killing more people. From day one Jack wore the role of The Leader. Sacrificing oneself for a good cause is what leaders are supposed to do. Jack accomplished his role, which was the biggest most distinguished role ever: to keep the world from falling apart. This was why Jack wass such an important character in the show and why he was given so much screen time. He’s literally the guy that saved the world.
6. The Flash-sideways. This is a term that the writers coined and used themselves to describe what’s going on in season 6. This has deep significance. Think about it: If the alternate world were a Purgatory of sorts, wouldn’t that technically be a flash-forwards, a flash waaay forwards? Instead, I think that the writers intentionally referred to this device as a flash sideways. If Jack has been dreaming this whole season up as he lies dying, then flash-sideways is the best way to describe the action because it’s all in his head, running completely parallel to his final moments on the Island. This seems like a small detail, but if this show has taught you anything it should be that god is in the details. That’s why I refuse to accept the statement “stop worrying about the details, that’s not what the show’s about!” That’s EVERYTHING the show’s been about, ya big dummy! How every seemingly insignificant detail has an effect on every other thing. Puzzles! Puzzles!
7. The Island has been known to give people visions before (check season 1 and Claire dreaming that someone was out to get her baby).
8. Why isn’t Michael or Walt in the church? Quite simply: they didn’t rate on Jack’s subconscious list of people that meant something to him. Ouch! Jack only dreamed up people that he loved. That’s why not everyone was in the church. That also explains why the people from the Island were the only people in the church and not, say, Sawyer’s wife he met after he escaped the island (for instance I mean, I know this didn’t happen on the show). This also explains why Jack was married to Juliet and had a son. This is what the unconscious does during dreams or visions: it burps up a bunch of familiar things and rearranges them in random combinations. E.g. That girl I saw on the park bench last week, in my dream last night I was married to her and so on.
9. Why was the Island sunk in the first episode of season 6? Again, this is Jack’s subconscious’s theory as to what happens after the cork has been put back in place. Also, the last thing Jack has to remember is that the Island WAS sinking before he put the cork in place. Dream logic at work once again.
10. About this whole dream theory: Jack’s dream takes on the characteristics of a polyphonic narrative. This means that multiple characters have multiple voices and points of view. However, Jack is the author in this case. The word polyphony means “many-sounding” in Greek. Another way we can understand this method, and how it applies to Jack, is that we’re all made up of all the voices in our head. Not voices as in “I’m crazy, I hear voices in my head” but in the sense that our identity was formed by all the people we’ve come into contact with throughout our lives. We FEEL separate, but in fact we are constantly sorting through so many things others have said to us or we’ve heard or read about or seen in the world around us. Jack has this vision in precisely this manner, because that’s the way his dying brain is making sense of all the people he’s known on this Island. His brain constructs a narrative to ease his pain and make sense of the world in much the same way we all create narratives, fictional and non-fictional, to cope with life and death.
10. If you’re a Soprano’s fan then you can more easily grasp this whole dream/vision concept by remembering the way their season 6 opens. Tony gets shot by Uncle June in the gut (whoa, I just realized the coincidence!) and slips into a near death state where he has these weird dreams set in an alternate reality where he’s Kevin Finnerty, salesman, not Tony Soprano, gangster. All of this is his unconsciousness’s way of telling him “look, you can change your life. Stop being a douchebag gangster. There are options!” but he doesn’t get this, but that’s another story. Also, Tony see’s heaven as a house in the country that his family and friends who are dead invite him into. He doesn’t go in. It’s kinda like the church, except he goes in and sees a great light, i.e., the sun shining in his dying enfeebled eyes.
Well, this is all I got for now. I think it’s pretty compelling. I wish I could’ve gone the whole Zapruder film route (screen shots, quotes, etc), but I’m a simple man and I’ve got bigger fish to fry. But, god, I loved that show! THE END.