LOST - PREDICTIONS

Okay, just 4 episodes left (the finale, The End, is a 2-hour ep):

The Candidate
Across the Sea
What They Died For
and The End

Time for predictions:

The Candidate - Jack is a candidate for both MIB/SmokeMonster/Locke and Jacob and he must choose to be on the side of good or evil, which will determine the fates of everybody else. Likely, he will be given a Faustian bargain by MIB/S.M./Locke that goes something like this: "You can go back to your life, and have no memory of any of this, but you must A. make sure I get off the island; B. Kill all these other people." But Jack will opt for C [see below].

Across the Sea - This will probably focus almost entirely on the Alt+B timeline [see post below for Alt+B] and how Desmond battles Eloise's order with his bringing of chaos - to send reverberations to the island reality that can fracture the balance and free the souls trapped there to live out in the Alt+B timeline. There will probably be Penny in this ep, and she'll probably have to die. Desmond will reveal to some (at least Jack and Penny) in the Alt+B timeline what he knows about the island reality.

What They Died For - The title implies we'll get explanations, but probably not fully satisfying ones, or else there is no mystery left for any movie versions. Something along the lines "maintaining the balance" is probably what we'll hear - Smoke Monster remains trapped and they can carry on their lives in Alt+B. The science will probably come into it here, Jacob intervened in all their lives because in a future timeline he met them all and thus knew these specific people had to be compelled to fit into that island timeline ... it could be that MIB/Smoke Monster has been messing with electro-magnetism and time to try to free himself all along. The Dharma people were drawn by the strange magnetic properties and physics anomalies and were trapped in his web.

The End - The "end" is, of course, an open end - A, because they have a movie to make, and B, because the struggle between good and evil is never-ending in the minds of most people who believe in that kind of thing ... Desmond will let everyone know that their lives exist in other time streams and urge them to let go of what happens to them on the island - doesn't really matter if they die, so long as they accept it so they don't remain trapped like Michael and the other "whisperers." Hurley and the rest of the gang, most of them, will let themselves get killed. Desmond will let Jack know that he must stay and his life on the Alt+B timestream will have to end - he will only live on the island.

Now, a recap from The Candidate that factors into the finale - Jack is a candidate for both MIB/SmokeMonster/Locke and Jacob and he must choose to be on the side of good or evil, which will determine the fates of everybody else. Likely, he will be given a Faustian bargain by MIB/S.M./Locke that goes something like this: "You can go back to your life, and have no memory of any of this, but you must A. make sure I get off the island; B. Kill all these other people" ... since Jack is our ostensible hero he will choose the noble course, C., and sacrifice himself and take over the Jacob role and be forever locked in perpetual struggle with MIB/S.M./Locke