I don't think that the O6's reasons/motivations for coming back were so undefined:

Numbers Appearance
I don't even know if this type of thing is worth pointing out anymore, but in the first Alterna-timeline scene, Officer Ford's mark tells him that the time is…8:42!!

Puddlewonderful, you may be right. Juliet's "It worked" is problematic for this, especially about whether the Alterna-timeline exists "simultaneously" to the Island-timeline or not. The sunken Island is tough to place too. We definitely don't have all the pieces we need to say for sure what's going on there.

The way I've thought about this theory is that the Alterna-timeline is not the result of Jughead exploding but the result of something that we haven't seen yet. To say it another way, the result of the on-Island action we are watching now will be some event that will reset the timeline and create the Alterna-verse.

What kind of deity do you think I am?

Back At The Beach Camp
It was nice to see all those characters back at the beach camp. Back in my first post, I wrote about when my future-wife and I snuck onto/visited the beach camp set (for the Pop Culture Pilgrimage Q&A) and it was cool to see it back in effect!

Yea, I was thinking back to Widmore telling Locke off-Island that there was a war coming and if Locke was not back on the Island, the "wrong side" was going to win.

Agreed. I've always been a Jack fan (even when he's down and out in his whinier moments) and I'm really liking what they have been doing with him so far in S6. The dynamite scene was tops.

Nice motif-spotting, ceraurus. I like thinking of a showdown between NotLocke and the Jack-believing-with-wild-abandon we got this week (Jackob? anyone?)

I need to get better at avoiding the credits along the bottom; the Comcast episode descriptions too.

Hydra Island
Noel, you've been saying for a while now that you want to know what's up thematically with having the second/Hydra island.

MURRAY…Manet…Tippy-Tippy Day-Day

Lobsters, I had the same thought as you (I posted *my* idea last week, where I got some "Simpson's did it!" treatment - looks like you slipped it in there back on What Kate Does. Nice work!). The more I think about it the more I like the Alterna-verse being the result of the Island timeline we are seeing now…

For they looked in the future and what did they see?

Burt Reynoldz, I had the same thought as you; I'm into the idea of the Alterna-verse as the end result of the Island timeline we are seeing now. I like that this seems to be gaining some traction!

and who is the 67th candidate?!?

I'd like Daniel's journal, and not this one, http://tinyurl.com/chfv9j, which somebody found last year. I want the one with all his writings, learnings and theories in it.

"the only future event Des saw (after Locke's speech) was Charlie dying."

"Look out freckles, 'cuz I'm usin' technology"

Matt Wild, from "mill-e-wah-que"; does this guy know how to party or what!?