An Objective Look at "The End", and Explaining the End Itself by The_General

First time posting a theory, on the most important night of Lost ever. Not sure if this truly qualifies as a theory, but there are a few points I'd like to speculate on, and more points to entice some discussion.

There's quite a bit of confusion floating around, so I'll clear up what takes place in the last ten minutes as best I can.

Jack opens Christian's coffin to see he's not inside, and enters into a dialog with his father, who appears behind him. Jack asks, "How are you here?" to which Christian replies, "How are YOU here?". Jack pauses, and realizes that he died.

Immediately here, I thought, oh no, not a "they were dead the whole time" ending. Thankfully, that's not the case at all. Christian explains that "there is no now, here". This means, in my mind, that those who still lived on after Jack, lived their lives and died however they did. Further proof of this is in the talk between Hurley and Ben, where they tell each other they both WERE, a great number one, and a great number two. I missed this at first, but this is solid evidence that they did, in fact, live on.

Everything that happened, happened. I find no fault with the ALT timeline being a "purgatory", in fact, I think it's a great spin on the whole theory that they were all dead. You can open up a whole discussion on why Darlton didn't go with a merging of the timelines, or any other possible ending, and theres no right or wrong there, just opinion. I find that it was a sweet and sour ending, which I'll take any day over a sugarcoated "They lived happily ever after."

On to a few things that are left open to interpretation, and theory:

-Jack appearing outside of the cave of light, on the rocks at the waterfall. I fully believe that Jack became SOMETHING, that allowed him to wake up in such a manner. Most obvious, a smoke monster, but theres no proof that smoke monsters are the only thing being exposed to the room can turn you into. I believe this, because firstly, when the water returned and the light was restored, the last shot of Jack smiling showed something happening. There was some sort of build up going on, before the cut to commercial, next time we see Jack on island, is when he wakes up on the rocks. This leads me to my second point, where we saw MIB end up in quite a similar situation when he became the smoke monster, lying dead in a tree. Jack may have actually been dead here, and had a sort of out of body experience, going back to where he first awoke on the island. He may very well have just lived, but people don't end up in places their not supposed to be on accident, some sort of force had to put him there.

-How in the HELL did they get the tree off of Ben Linus? Did I miss something, or was this something relatively insignificant that was cut for time? I very well could have missed it, if so, tell me.

-Why did Benjamin Linus not enter the church? I believe he needed more time in "purgatory". Simple as that, but is important to note that he received forgiveness from Locke, which is certainly a major topic in Christianity. This could very much mean that he was getting closer to his moving on moment, or maybe he was just coming to terms with the things that he'd done in his life, and truly did just want more time. This opens up another can of worms, of "self imposed purgatory", such as how Sayid does to himself, believing that he's a bad guy, and plenty of other cases in the series.

-Last topic, what was the Island like with Hurley as protector, and Ben as his "Richard"? My guess is they got with Rose and Bernard, and Hurley mastered his role, then, brought others to the island. No longer for a game, but maybe to answer some questions about the island? Desmond certainly would have went back to Penny, maybe even bringing his family back with him. This whole untapped story-arc will likely remain untouched, and I prefer it to be that way. Hurley will certainly make a great "Jacob" though, I had a huge smile on my face when he took the job.

See you in the comments!