A Reasonable Scientific Explanation ceti

Many of the recent post-"The End" theories have focused on the metaphysical and spiritual explanations for the sideways universe. While I'm in the camp that has found these thoughts and ideas more than satisfying and not at all mawkish (such as Jack fulfilling his Dharma, and all the characters coming to constitute a Karmic Jati in the Bardo), I believe a (pseudo) scientific explanation can also fit with what we know.

Since the beginning of the season, I have been firmly with the "What Happened, Happened" camp, i.e., Miles was right in that Jughead was always part of the Incident. A lot of clues pointed to this including bits of dialogue from earlier in the series about the construction of the Swan (built to shield radioactive radiation at the level of Chernobyl), Pierre Chang losing his arm, and the beginning of the childbirth problems on the Island. Daniel Widmore/Faraday further confirmed this with his bit of remembrance in the sideways universe where the nuclear explosion was necessary to prevent something bad from happening, i.e., Radzinsky's drilling and release of the electromagnetic energy of the Island. As such, rather than changing fate, the nuclear explosion neutralized the EM release and sent the Losties back to their right time period in 2007. Thus in the earlier version of this theory, the temporal integrity of the main timeline was maintained, while the sideways universe constituted a separate timeline devoid of the Island that sunk without interference by time travelers in 1977, but slowly enough to allow Roger, Ben, Daniel, Eloise, Charles, Charlotte, Pierre, and Miles to leave the Island. How they were connected remained a mystery.


Therefore, what if in doing this, the Island had other problems to resolve which resulted in the creation of this sideways universe? Perhaps while the Island managed to physically absorb the energy of the Jughead blast and thus maintain WHH, it couldn't resolve the temporal paradox without spawning off this bubble universe outside of space and time (the "Imaginary Time" in Daniel's notebook that had to do with exotic quantum mechanics). As such, the Incident "worked" by allowing the characters to consciously create this bubble universe that they would live at some point, but not in the current universe and timeline -- hence the "afterlife" ("only fools are enslaved by space and time!" -- Room 23's brainwashing video has many easter eggs in regards to the theme of the show).

Since the characters were trying to change their fate by detonating the bomb, this intentionality could have transfered over to the bubble. Moving on from this quantum state involved the rejoining of their consciousness with the light of the Island after they had resolved their internal conflicts and thus wouldn't try to harm the Island by trying to blow up the Source again.

After this bit of contemplation, the ending made absolute sense, both in a metaphysical sense as well as in the mechanics of the show's science itself.