A Simple Reconciliation of the Sideways-Verse Inconsistencies by Cory C.

Miffed though I am at how the entire season 6 flash-sideways falls apart under the weight of narrative logic upon examining the switcheroo that it is, I thought of a very simple explanation that, for me, satisfies as to why/how it happened at all:

The bomb DID split the timeline, and everyone DID live to separate lives (one plane-crashed, one plane-landed).

When everyone in both timelines die, they are "re-merged" into single entities in the afterlife (purgatory) holding the memories of both places. (This has several parallels to quantum theory, if you like.)

What WE saw in Season 6 was a 3rd place -- created by the LOSTies, like Christian said, but *based on that alternate place that they had also been*. In this universe, everyone's lives are as they appear in the S6 sideways-verse, except Desmond isn't going around making everyone remember, and there are no strange hints that they're really dead (which they're not).

This can help account for so many of the inconsistencies/improbabilities. Two examples:

- Sayid & Shannon: In that split timeline we never saw, they could have, after realizing he and Nadia wouldn't work out, meet up (different than in the finale) and perhaps have spent the rest of their lives together. Thus, in death, they have that greater emotional connection

- Anything involving "bad guys" or hurt love ones: I never bought that Keamy, Omar, Mikhail, Paik's men/Sayid's bro-in-law's hasslers would exist in a place that the LOSTies created to be happy together in, how matter how you spin it. With this theory, they COULD have been in that unseen LA-verse, and when everyone created the sideways-verse, those memories carried over.

Problem solved! No muss, no fuss, covers all the S6 sidewaysverse plotholes. At least for me.