LOST...here be spoilers

First off I was blown away by the finale and quite annoyed that we have to wait till January for our ending.
Now a picture for those who do not want to be spoiled.




Yes, June JULY 9th.

Back to Lost and my random thoughts:

Just a couple of comments.

Thank you! Finally Bernard, Rose AND Vincent (bonus!) happy and free of the madness.

Well hello Jacob and Silas Adams/Evil Dude in Black (who from now on will be referred to as EDIB...of course we don't really know who if he is evil, if either are evil/good, or if it is just a bunch of shades of gray). If you noticed Jacob touched each of the losties when he made contact with them in the real world. He did not meet Juliet. I think that might have sealed her doom.

The first thing I thought of during the beginning scene was the book Good Omens with the angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley discussing humans and the coming apocalypse, no real link there, just what popped into my mind.

Flannery O'Connor was a devout Catholic and her books are rife with Christian/Catholic symbolism, God's grace and strange ways to redemption. Her collection of short stores Everything that Rises Must Converge is the book Jacob is reading (which I actually have sitting on the side table here in the living room. When I saw the book I told The Boy "oh look, he likes O'Connor too") when Locke falls out of the building behind him. (and I will admit that I guffawed when I poor John fell down behind him, it just struck me as quite comical.)

If you've read The Sandman comics (Sandman, in which the anthropomorphic personification of dreams is locked in a huge glass globe of a prison within a magical circle.) by Neil Gaiman (or The Dresden Files...or any book about magic) you'll be aware that the circle can both be used as a prison OR for protection and is useless once any small bit of it is disturbed. So we can assume that the cabin was a prison for EDIB and Ben must have broken the circle when he brought John to the cabin. I assume he was the one who said "help me" to John.

The statue must be the Egyptian God Sobek. Four toed God with the head of a crocodile:
"Sobek's ambiguous nature led some Egyptians to believe that he was a repairer of evil that had been done, rather than a force for good in itself, for example, going to Duat to restore damage done to the dead as a result of their form of death. He was also said to call on suitable gods and goddesses required for protecting people in situation, effectively having a more distant role, nudging things along, rather than taking an active part."
Nudging things along...reminds me of the God/Gog in Battlestar.
Hmmmmm.

So Richard is/was once named Ricardus (latin for Richard)...so is he old enough to have once used Latin as his native tongue? What lies in the shadow of the statue? "He who will protect us all." or something like that.*

Poor John, nothing but a dupe of EDIB who found his "loop hole". I even felt sorry for Ben, except in the end it was all about HIM. His failing is that he is just so selfish and can only think of himself. I assume that is why he was banished from the island and why Jacob said that last line so coldly. Even after everything that has happened Ben is still only thinking about how it affects him. None of the growth I have a feeling Jacob hopes that humans will achieve, no redemption. That brings me to my last comment.
Is this all just some eternal test that Jacob is playing with man? Trying to get human beings to learn how to get along and prove EDIB wrong?

*EDIT: I forgot that Latin is the language of The Others.
Another EDIT:
I forgot to add Doc Jensen's theory on Oceanic 815 and the Ajira flight:

"Ajira isn't a ''replacement event'' for Oceanic 815 — Oceanic 815 essentially sabotaged the fated arrival of Ajira! Jack is actually correct: Oceanic 815 was never supposed to bring the castaways to the Island. It was Ajira that was always supposed to bring the castaways to the Island! This is the mistake that Fate/the Island has been trying to rectify: The premature arrival of the castaways to the Island! While I'm not ready to pitch my guess for the perpetrators of the quantum hijacking that was Oceanic 815 — my early call: Ben — I'll bet you the pilot of Oceanic 815 was one of their members, which is why Smokey killed him. This could be one reason why Ilana asked Ajira pilot Frank Lapidus the codeword question, ''What lies in the shadow of the statue?'' Because so much was made to establish correlations between the two flights, Ilana's conspicuous question was meant to prompt the audience to consider anew the old speculation that the pilot of Oceanic 815 was part of a conspiracy to bring the plane to the Island."

Hmmmmmm......

and more! Read the first theory here.
Oh snap, Jacob's "failsafes" are coming via Juliet's sacrifice.

and even more:
And since the very beginning, we've been given hints, such as in the pilot, when Locke taught Walt the rules of backgammon. ''Two players. Two sides. One is light, one is dark.'' The opening sequence officially activated this Big Idea. We now we see that the entire Lost saga is contextualized by a centuries-spanning conflict — or maybe just a game — between two beings, enchanted and long-lived but not necessarily immortal.

YES!
I watched the pilot the other day and this scene, mostly because of Walt whom we have seen so little of, stayed in my mind.

Added:
Message board comment:
"Did anyone notice that Juliet was wearing Star Trek red - the color of the uniforms of the dead extras?"
Oh Noes, Juliet was the red shirt in this episode. Totally missed it.