I have only questions.

[COLETTA FACTOR: LOST-CURRENT]

Jacob is a real person, but he's also some kind of deity, a God of Light who guides people along their destinies. Jacob has a nemesis with John Locke's face; the nemesis seems to be Jacob's opposite number, a God of Darkness. Question: Did Smokey Dead Alex know that John Locke was not himself, or was Smokey fooled as easily as Richard and Ben? Perhaps the impersonation is so complete that only Locke's body can be proof? Widmore said there is a war coming. Who are the bad guys? It seems like everyone is a good guy. Jacob can count among his allies Bram, Ilana, Richard, the Others, and, probably, Eloise and Widmore. (Widmore now seems to have been a red herring. Not to say he's not important, but he is certainly not the Big Bad Guy.) Ben is probably going to stick with the Nemesis, if he survives after Ilana finds out what he has done. (I wouldn't want to get on her bad side!) Who else? If the 1977 castaways come back to the future, will they all come down on the same side? Remember, Jack was pretty close to Ben this season, while Hurley and Sayid hated him. Sawyer is going to be a mess now that he's lost Juliet, but he may be the only character who has truly redeemed himself and become a better person on the Island. This would put him in league with Jacob, and if Jack is with Ben and the Nemesis, what will Kate do? It would be great to see the ongoing Jack-Kate-Sawyer-triangle-that-used-to-be-a-quadrangle finally have some relevance to the story.

Time travel? No more, please. Let's just take it as given that the Incident was always Jughead blowing up at the Swan Site. There's an idea out there that Ajira 316 was the universe's course correction to put the survivors on the Island after the erasing of 815 from history, but that would suck. If the first 4 seasons never happened, why did we watch it? If Lost has a point, it is this: Everything has consequences. We are the way we are because of the people in our lives and the choices we have made. I'm reminded of a great TNG episode called "Tapestry," in which Jean-Luc Picard is given the chance to relive an incident from his past, only to find out that he needed to make a stupid, near-fatal mistake in order to become the man that he is. "There are many parts of my youth that I'm not proud of... there were loose threads... untidy parts of me that I would like to remove. But when I pulled on one of those threads... it had unraveled the tapestry of my life." Didn't we see Jacob weaving a tapestry in the opening scene of "The Incident"? (The Lost folks are Trekkies; "The Constant" was based, in a very real way, on TNG's series finale, "All Good Things.") If 815 never crashes, it negates the story; it's the equivalent of "...and it had all been a dream."

The showdown at the Swan site was fantastic, epic in scope and import; the shoot-outs and the awesome fight between Jack and Sawyer were exciting, and the final scene, man! Juliet was never my favorite, but that will be one of the most memorable scenes of the show 10, 20, 30 years from now. Right up there with Locke pounding on the Hatch, Shannon screaming amid the 815 wreckage, and Daniel crying at the news of 815's (fake) discovery.

Juliet really got a raw deal. She thought she would have an awesome 6 month job on a tropical island, and ended up on an Island, with a bug-eyed megalomaniac who was obsessed with her. Things were going well for her and Jack, until he left the Island without her and shacked up with Kate. She was happy for a while, until Jack and Kate came back and destroyed the life she and Sawyer had built. It's just haunting, the sight of her, hundreds of feet underground, bloodied, banging on a nuke with a rock. And that fade!!! Is it another flash, sending everyone back to the future? Is Sayid gonna die? I bet Jacob or the Nemesis can heal him.

Rose and Bernard!! Vincent!!!! They're retired! But is Vincent really ready for retirement? Isn't he just waiting for Walt to come back? I'm gonna be really pissed if Walt doesn't come back to the Island next year.