What...the....F***?

Did they all die in the crash? Nope. The island was real, and it wasn't purgatory. Rather, Season 6's sideways world was heaven's holding pen. Ben's reluctance to enter the church suggests he wasn't finished atoning for his misdeeds. His chat with Hurley also indicated they had cared for the island for a while.

What was the island, and why did it need protecting? Still sort of a mystery. If you believe the mother of Jacob and the Man in Black, it was the spiritual and physical nuclear power plant for the Earth. Hence, "if the light goes out here, it goes out everywhere."

What was the Smoke Monster? Jacob created Smokey by tossing his brother, the MiB, into the cave. He knew the outcome would be bad — though not how bad — and his protection of the island was a part of his guilt trip. But why a sonic fence (or ash, or for that matter, the ocean) would keep Smokey at bay, we never learned.

What were the numbers? They were the numbers of our castaway "candidates" for island protector-to-be. The dial at Jacob's lighthouse had names assigned to each degree mark; turning it to 23 allowed Jacob to observe Jack as he grew up. Had he not smashed the mirrors, Hurley might have seen his house or Mr. Clucks when it was turned to 8 degrees. But the sequence's significance in the Dharma computer and on the roofs of police cruisers? Who knows?

Why couldn't babies conceived on the island survive to term?Fertility had been a major plotline since Ethan kidnapped Claire in Season 1 so the Others could study her. Ethan himself gave us the most plausible answer: His safe birth in 1977 indicated that the prenatal problems were likely caused by the Incident, when the Swan station construction crew drilled into the energy pocket, requiring the discharge of electromagnetic energy every 108 minutes.

What was the Ben-Widmore beef? Soon after the Dharma purge, Ben ousted Widmore as leader of the Others. His sins? Leaving the island regularly and fathering a child with an outsider. Ben also believed Widmore sought to exploit the island's healing properties for financial gain. Their chess game went to the next level when Widmore's thug Keamy shot Ben's daughter.

Why did Widmore bring Desmond back? Desmond's ability to withstand all the electromagnetic energy that resulted from turning the hatch's failsafe key made Widmore realize that his son-in-law could be a failsafe himself. By turning out the island lights, Desmond made UnLocke mortal — and vulnerable.

Where was Waaaaaaaaalt? Reality probably made his return impossible; as Jimmy Kimmel pointed out,Malcolm David Kelley is like 8 feet tall now. Yes, we would have liked to know what made him so special (cue the polar bear), but that mattered a lot more in Season 2.

How did Hurley stay so heavy? Remember, the Losties were on the island only four months at first, during which he claimed to have dropped a couple of belt notches. Once home, he continued emotional eating to assuage his guilt about the Oceanic Six's lie. And back on the island, he ran the kitchen as Dharma chef.

Thanks, USATODAY