Jacob is Mr. hands-off/free will. Think of all the lies and murders carried out in his name by the Others…

I think Christian is more than likely a separate entity now.

Also it shows even more how season 1 and 2 were about Smokey trying to manipulate them before (at least some of them) could align themselves with the Others, who did a lot of bad things in the name of Jacob. It also reinforces Jacob's hands off approach.

Oh God, I LOVED her in this. And I also love the way this casts all of Rousseau's action in a completely different light… And explains how she survived for years without ever seeming to have a true grip on the Dharma Initiative or the Others or anything.

I think this version of Hurley was never involved in a deck collapsing and probably won the lottery with completely different numbers than in the prime time line.

There's obviously some rules at work we have yet to fully work out.

This is similar to what I think…

I'm guessing:

My guess is he became stuck as Locke once Jacob was killed.

I think flash sideways is fine because I think the time lines run parallel and in the grand scheme of things and how long this series of events has been playing out, 2004 vs 2007 is close enough to where the skew up or down doesn't matter.

I've been reading up on Backgammon since I think what Smokey and Jacob most likely resembles that since it was pointed out in the pilot by Locke (to Walt) and he mentioned it was the oldest game. Interestingly enough, there's even a Jacoby rule in Backgammon which is designed to speed up play. Which could correspond…