Walt was referenced in the last piece of Lost ever made, "The New Man in Charge".

While I don't necessarily believe it, we did hear the Smoke Monster in the background when the spiders appeared.

"He is usually content to let everyone make their choices, but here, he decides just because Charlie has a statue, he must be using heroin again."

And also that the visions take the form of the painting hanging in Charlie's childhood home, which he presumably would have spent a lot of time looking at, implying it might be in his head.

"Now that's what life's all about. Laughin' and lovin' each other. And knowin' that people aren't really gone when they die. We have all the good memories to sustain us until we see 'em again."

Rumors say Desmond was supposed to die at the end of season two. Personally I don't believe them, because of all the Odyssean subtext surrounding Desmond, but another commentator up above mentioned a theory that it was supposed to be Nadia's boat coming to rescue Sayid.

When I said "relapse" I was speaking metaphorically. The theme of the season was that almost everybody, to some extent, relapses on their character development and gives in to their bad impulses.

That was Charlie's major character flaw: he was an addict. He tried to replace drugs with his girlfriend, but he was still an addict at heart. It may be "obvious", but that's because it was consistent with his characterization.

They're not "idiots", per se. The show was a psychological drama about people whose subconsciousnesses are out of control, making them act highly irrationally when their worldviews are threatened or exposed as being possibly flawed.

How so?

I've never understood the hate for that episode.

Yeah, I was under the same impression.

SPOILERS

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Ah, OK. I guess I've always assumed magic realism implicitly portrays the magic as unquestionably real, whereas this show is doing an Umberto Eco and deconstructing magic realism and how people can lose their grip on reality because of their belief in fate and magic.

"Best quote of the episode: 'You gonna hit me with your Jesus stick?'"

The Island might not even have prescience, though. The only reason anybody believed that in the first place is because Locke started saying it after he regained the use of his legs. But correlation does not imply causation (coincidence and fate), especially when his claims of the Island being a magical place where…

That was my point.

"the black horse ties Kate’s past to the magic realism of the island"

You forgot to work the Starjammers in there somewhere.