2 different timelines and both are true. Juliet detonates the nuke, and in the timeline where she doesn't, The Hatch gets built over the energy pocket.

Answers exist for pretty much everything (whether you like them is another matter)

I mean abandoning the plot without about an hour to go.

Can't agree with that. From episode to episode there's a 6-year domino effect that's essentially filtering the group down to finally end the standoff between Jacob & MIB.

Regarding the Dharma employees, if it'd been shut down a lot of questions would have been asked. Jacob maintained it to keep it's cover.

The ending to The Avengers was balls.

Evidence? It's a TV show, and one that made up its own rules. I absolutely do not get the logic of arguing with a show when it has explicitly explained itself.

Why would it invalidate what happened? The 2 timelines run side-by-side for 30 something years and to the people involved, they are indistinguishable.
As for purpose, what is the purpose of anything? I'll try to avoid going deep into existentialism here but there's no god or manipulator deciding these things. A nuke…

Yeah I remember how he got the cut but I wasn't sure why he had it in the sideways.
My position has always been that Season 5 ends with the white light and creation of the sideways, and Season 6 ends with the same light as the sideways is ended.

Desmond is on the plane because he can travel between timelines and he's handing the "Awakenings"

* Puffs out cheeks *
Short story, it's a former guardian of the island and her adopted son. He killed her and was then killed by his brother.

That's the religious explanation. The scientific explanation is that the sideways is a kind of time-bubble created by the nuke blowing up a pocket of time-controlling energy and Desmond is able to travel between them due to be blown up by the Dharma station.

Yes

Well seeing as Hugo is immortal by the end… Assigning a timeframe to it doesn't work and it's not like everyone was hanging around in this other place.

Why secretly? Be proud, you're cool.

Well the fans may have seen it that way but the fans were wrong. Christian lays it all out in that speech at the end.

"There is no "now", here"

Nearly 7 bloody years I've been explaining it, and still the morons keep coming.

"Long after"

Obviously they didn't have 6 seasons complete from the start but John sits down on the beach right at the beginning and explains the main story with the Senet pieces.