LOST - That's how you do a finale!

That was easily the best two hours of TV I've seen in years - at least since the pilot.

So many things were just right:

• Hurley's driving.
• Sawyer's "That's for taking the kid off the raft."
• Sawyer's "I didn't believe him."
• Not Penny's Boat.
• "We should have listened to him."
• Walt. Holy crap, Walt!!
• John Locke.
• Ben taking a beating.
• Charlie manning up. And I mean really manning up. Big Damn Hero.
• Tom and Patchy.
• Sayid's scary feet.
• Why Jack told Kate not to come back.
• "This is your mother."
• Between Dr Hammil (James LeSure) and Naomi (Marsha Thomason) it was like a Las Vegas reunion. Without an actual reunion.

And then there's the 'flashback' - as I posted, I had an epiphany part way through the episode and suddenly realized what was going on. Here's what clued me in:

• Jack drinking 'again' - when we'd never seen him drinking before.
• Jack's peculiar smile when he hit turbulence.
• The woman who crashed into him (and he saved) sure looked a lot like Juliet's sister, and she had an eight year old son - but Juliet had only been on the island three years.
• Jack was a hero "twice over" - once getting everyone off the island, and once pulling the woman and son from the car wreck.

It seems pretty apparent that Ben was right and Naomi was lying; the people on the boat didn't come from Penny, but they did have information about Desmond, suggesting that perhaps Penny's father is behind it. This would back up theories that he was involved with Dharma originally - maybe when the Others took over, they cut off contact with Dharma, but Dharma assumed that they were still there and unable to communicate hence the food drops. And that story Naomi spun about Flight 815 having no survivors? Just to keep them confused.

So where do we go from here? Obviously, they got rescued - legitimizing Desmond's vision. But obviously it wasn't a great idea at least for Jack, who seems to have fallen apart - so addled he doesn't even remember that his dad's dead most of the time, using his dad's old scripps to score drugs, flying round the world hoping to crash again - so what happened when they got off the island?

Who's funeral was it? My money is on either Ben or Locke, hence Kate's 'why would I go?' and not Sawyer as I originally posted. Kate's other half, though, the one who'll wonder where she was? I think Sawyer might be too pat an answer, even if its right. A tiny part of me wants it to be her first husband - because Nathan Fillion needs a gig next year. Will Jack get back to the island?

More intriguingly, what format will the show take now? Will it be:

• ...island-based with flash-forwards showing the lives of the people who got off?
• ...off-island based showing flash-backs to what happened on the island's final days?

And will the main impetus of the show now be getting back to the island? Or perhaps it will be about using Desmond's time-slipping ability to change the past so they don't get rescued, as Seth suggested here? Because there are still a lot of questions to answer such as who or what is Jacob and what the smoke monster is and who the Others really are and...

Let's just take a minute for Charlie Pace. Addict, rock star, hero. There's a surprisingly frank video interview with Dominic Monaghan here - and honestly, I kind of get where he's coming from. Go back and wacth the first episodes; its pretty clear that the 'big three' are Jack, Kate and Charlie - hell, look at the first season's DVD packaging. Along the way, Charlie got shuffled to the back of the deck - but at least he came back into his own in the second half of this year, and went out in a great, moving death scene - even while he kept his head.

Finally kudos to all the cast - but especially Dominic Monaghan, Terry O'Quinn, Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lilly, Elizabeth Mitchell, Henry Ian Cusick, Michael Emerson and Josh Holloway who all knocked it out of the park these past few episodes. Great, great stuff. I expect Emmys, people, Emmys!

And now we have to wait till 2008...if you'll excuse me, I need to go and pre-order the DVD...