Please excuse the info drop. It's akin to me thinking out-loud and trying to put it all together myself.

I like that too. Smokey as "Christian" and a Christian ghost. "Christian" on the freighter was directly preceded by The Whispers, so we can say that was Christian's ghost.

Its hard for me to see even bit players in other roles; it seemed "Alt-timeline" weird to see Stuart Radzinsky coaching kids basketball in the commercials for this weeks Modern Family.

I will definitely miss looking forward to Lost week-to-week. The show will, and does, play great on DVD but being forced to ponder and feel excited between episodes & seasons is something I will miss.

Or is Alt-Claire still at the hospital? Did she decide to not induce labor with Ethan? I'm blanking…

I think your probably right. It seems to be time to moving multiple pieces forward at once. Weren't the episode titles released in separate chunks, too - the first batch being up through "Everyone Loves Hugo"?

@stackenblochen: I posted a link to this back on April Fools Day; didn't you come up with this in a "prop" discussion a while back? You willed it into (fake) existence! If enough people get on the email list they may make it for real:

Christian has appeared since Smokey took Locke's form. He appeared to Sun and Lapidus in Dharma-ville while Smokey as Locke was with Ben and the Arija crash folk on the other Island (and as we now know he can't "just turn to smoke and fly his ass over the water").

I get the line of thinking that it's unlikely it diverges directly from '77 (I've argued it myself in previous spots). Ben and Roger, Ethan Goodspeed, Pierre Chang, Charles and Eloise all being alive in the Alt-timeline seems to indicate that they didn't die in a nuclear bomb explosion, so the timeline must diverges…

Interestingly, it was the same actor. But I think we were suppose to see him as an older version of the character. His hair was definitely darker.

and Alt-Hurley did win the lotto. He told Alt-Arzt on the plane he became a chicken magnate because we won the lotto, liked chicken and bought Mr. Clucks.

There have been a few other appearances by The Numbers in the Alt-timeline. I remember noting that in Recon the time on the clock when Officer Ford got up was 8:42. I'm sure there have been some others I haven't noticed.

"Wouldn't Dr. Chang recognize Hurley from 1977?"

Exactly! Charming accents are also a sure-fire sign that one can do no harm. As the saying goes around here, "No one who speaks German could be an evil man".

Maybe we'll see Mr. Friendly as LAPD, flanked by Kahana mercenaries as his back-up, stop Zoe Bell from committing suicide by talking her off a ledge. While Tricia Tanaka reports, live on the scene!

@ Meta Godzilla

As someone who argued for the 'epilogue' theory, I hear what you're saying NickSlaughter.

What's interesting, to me, about the Dr. Manhattan comparison is that the way Doc Manhattan experiences Time is similar to the way that Desmond experiences time-travel (which I've always thought as being similar to Billy Pilgrim becoming 'unstuck in time' in Slaughter House Five).

Re: Penny not screaming; I chock it up to Desmond knowing her name as he approached, his generally pleasant, non-rapist, demeanor and a strange deep-down familiarity between them (she does ask him "Have we met before?"). That said, they should have thrown in a "I work for your Dad" from Des just to cover their bases.

@Szude