This is going to be an extraordinarily long post, because I’ve been writing these questions down for quite some time as I’ve re-watched the first five seasons of the show (and this list barely scratches the surface). Some are ponderings, some are genuine story questions, and some are facetious. I’ll leave it to you to figure out which they are.

Who are the bodies in the cave? My guesses: Rose and Bernard, Eloise and Charles, Jack and Kate, or Sawyer and Juliet.

Are John and Ben half-brothers? (I believe Emily Locke and Emily Linus are the same person.)

What did Desmond do that got him court-martialed, put in prison, and dishonorably discharged from the Royal Scots Brigade?

What happened to Claire?

Who was the “man in black” with Jacob?

What is the smoke monster? Is it the smoke monster that’s appearing as all the dead characters?

What role will Desmond play in fixing things?

Did Ben marry Annie, and did she die in child birth, leading to Ben’s obsession with finding out why women on the island die during pregnancy?

Was the explosion of the nuclear bomb at the end of Season 5 the “incident” mentioned in the Swan station orientation film? Did the bomb actually explode or did the electromangnetic phenomenon create a “time flash” in which everything reset?

In what way(s) is Walt “special,” and will he return to the island in some form/time?

What lies in the shadow of the statue?

You guys got any milk?

Who, exactly is Richard Alpert, and how is it that he never ages? Did he come to the island on the Black Rock?

How did Jacob get off the island?

What roles are Aaron and Ji Yeon to play? Is there something significant about the four children that have been born since the beginning of the show (Aaron, Ji Yeon, Clementine, and Charlie)?

What is the significance of the off-island crossovers of the characters before the crash?

What/who are the whispers?

What is Tom’s—Aaron’s father—connection with Charles Widmore?

Why did Radzinsky kill himself?

Did Ben really kill Jacob? If the explosion of the nuclear bomb resets time, will anything on the island ever have happened?

Why is Eloise Hawking working with Ben Linus to get everyone back to the island? Is she hoping that by helping them she can change time and won’t kill her own son in 1977?

Where do the Dharma food drops come from?

Did anyone ever find the seagull with the SOS note Claire sent in Season 3?

What is the significance of the “lists” and who’s on them and who isn’t?

Are Desmond’s flashes caused by the same phenomenon as Daniel’s memory loss? Is the reason Desmond can’t remember the year he visited Daniel at Oxford the beginning of the memory loss phenomenon?

What is the circle of ash around Jacob’s cabin for? Why did Jacob say, “Help me” to John? (Was it really Jacob?)

Is Jacob the “magnificent man” Ben and Mikhail spoke of?

How did the Others get such detailed information on each of the survivors?

Did Claire agree to stay on the island in exchange for Jacob healing her mother?

Who was Libby?

Why was ABC/Disney so chintzy on the packaging for the Season 5 DVDs? Seasons 1–4 have nice plastic sleeves for their outside packaging—but Season 5 has a cheap cardboard sleeve.

What’s up with Christian Shephard?

Is Richard Malkin really a psychic? Did he put Claire on that plane because he “knew” it would crash on the island and that’s where Aaron was supposed to be born?

What happened to Desmond’s vision of Claire and the baby getting on the helicopter and leaving the island?

What is the “sickness” and the vaccine?

How did the journal of the Black Rock‘s first officer get off the island? Were the “pirates” on whose ship it was found connected with the Others?

Why is Ethan’s last name Rom and not Goodspeed?

How is Desmond Daniel’s Constant? How did Daniel know about Desmond before Daniel ever got to the Island? Was it due to the consciousness-time-travel experiments Daniel did on himself, causing his breakdown?

What are the numbers? (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42)

How is Sun’s father connected with Charles Widmore?

Are Walt’s appearances on the island the same as those of Christian, Ben’s mom, and Yemi?

Stuff found in the Arrow station: glass eye, Bible with part of the Swan orientation film in it, radio. Why were these things left/placed there?

Why did Radzinsky edit the Swan orientation film?

What’s the significance of the silver bracelets worn by both Naomi and Elsa in the episode “The Economist”?

How many copies of the picture of Desmond and Penny are there, anyway?

Is Hurley really communicating with the dead?

Who is Matthew Abaddon?

Who is the Economist? Is it Ben playing one side against the other? or is it Charles Widmore? or is it some yet-unknown person/force who’s really the one who’s bringing the “war” to the island?

If John Locke’s body is still in the crate, who is the John Locke leading the group to the statue? Is the entity that is posing as John the same thing that took the form of Alex and told Ben he had to do everything John said? (The black smoke monster? The man in black?)

“The Constant” and “The Variable”—huh?

What/where is the “magic box”?

Will John’s statement, in the episode “Exposé,” of “things don’t stay buried on this island” come true?

Whose side was Juliet really on in the beginning?

Since Ben admitted he’d never talked to Jacob, did he really “cure” Juliet’s sister, or did he lie to Juliet about her sister’s cancer being back just to keep Juliet on the island?

Who painted “quarantine” on the inside of the hatch door?

Why did the Swan station continue functioning as a Dharma station after the purge?

Will Kelvin Inman return as an important character?

Who is the musician who programmed the code to turn off the blocking software in the Looking Glass station?

What is the significance of Charlie’s DS ring—other than Sun’s finding it in Season 5—especially given that Liam tells Charlie “it has to stay in the family”?

What exactly did Christian-in-Jacob’s-Cabin mean when he told John that Aaron was where he was supposed to be (with Sawyer and Miles instead of Claire in “Cabin Fever” in Season 4)?

Is there a significance to the pre-island run-ins with Nadia by several characters?

Why did Matthew Fox and Evangeline Lily stop using an upward inflection in the tone of their voices when asking questions (beginning in mid-Season 3 and continuing from then)?

Is there any significance to the multiple use of names: Daniel/Danielle; Tom (Mr. Friendly)/Thomas (Claire’s boyfriend)/Tom (Kate’s childhood friend)/Tom (Christian’s pseudonym); Michael/Mikhail; Charles (Widmore)/Charlie Pace/Charlie Hume (Desmond & Penny’s baby); Richard Alpert/Richard Malkin?

Will there (please, please, please!!!) be a happy ending for Sawyer and Juliet?

If the Oceanic 6 were only on the island for 100 days, how did Sun’s hair grow so fast?

Why do John and Sayid let Ben keep pushing their buttons? Why could neither of them see that Ben is a compulsive liar and never told them the truth about anything?

Why can Hurley see Jacob’s cabin? Who was the “eye in the window” when Hurley looked in and saw Christian sitting in the rocking chair?

Did Desmond make it back with Charlie’s “greatest hits” list and give it to Claire?

Why does Ethan look like he’s in his mid-40s in 2004 when he was born in 1977?

What did dead-Charlie mean when he told Hurley, “They need you”?

Was Daniel’s reaction to the news of finding Oceanic 815 on the bottom of the ocean the result of his consciousness being unstuck in time and having seen something of his future that he didn’t, at this point, quite understand?

Why was Jack so far inland just after 815 crashed, while everyone else from the mid-section of the plane landed on the beach?

Before the plane crashed, Charlie came out of the lavatory and slipped into a seat in first class—but all of the first-class seats ended up in the nose section of the plane (and everyone there was dead). How did Charlie end up with the mid-section survivors?

What was the favor Jacob asked Ilana to do for him? Get Sayid back to the island? Or something more important, like finding a replacement for Jacob once he was dead?

What is the significance of Jacob’s making physical contact with each of the Losties he went to visit in the Season 5 finale?

Why are pregnant women dying on the island in 2004 when they weren’t in 1977?

Is Ben Linus really Darth Vader?

Can Charles Widmore see the future, too? Did he know that Desmond would get stuck on the island and that’s why he tried to separate Desmond and Penny? Or did he know this through Daniel somehow?

Is John’s designation as the leader of the others simply a fluke or a time paradox—is it because in 1954 he tells Richard Jacob/Ben designated him their leader, but he was never really supposed to be the leader?

What’s the true origin of the compass? Or is it, like Locke’s leadership designation, simply the result/victim of a time paradox?

Why didn’t Jack go through any withdrawal symptoms after coming off of alcohol and drugs cold turkey at the beginning of Season 5?

If Daniel’s mum and dad are both British, how did he end up with an American accent (he did go to Oxford for college, after all)?

Is there a significance to the timing of rain, both on and off the island? It seems to rain whenever something bad is about to happen.

How did the polar bear get off the island and end up in Tunisia?

Who told the others to build the runway for Ajira 316?

How/why did Charlotte learn to speak Korean?

If just nicking the pocket of electromagnetism killed a man by “sucking” his filling out of his tooth and through the top of his head, why, when it was sucking in everything metallic at the end of Season 5 didn’t it do the same thing to Jack, Sawyer, Juliet, Kate, etc.?

Will Kate and Jack ever be likable again?

Why did Bram, who is on Ajira 316 with Ilana at the end of Season 5 and is one of the “shadow of the statue” people, grab Miles off the street and try to talk him out of working for Charles Widmore? (And what was with the “empty hole” inside of Miles to which he was referring?)

When Daniel returned from Ann Arbor and questioned Jack about how he got back to the island, and, when Jack told him Eloise said it was his “destiny,” what did Daniel mean when he said “she was wrong, you don’t belong here”?

Who is the “very clever fellow” who built the Lamp Post station in L.A. who originally found the island for the Dharma Initiative? (Daniel, in another timeline?)

Why did Charles Widmore send Daniel to the island when he knew Eloise would kill him there? Or did no one ever tell Charles what happened? Or did he think Daniel could change what happened once the island healed his mind and memory?

What happened to destroy all of the statue except for one foot?

What’s in the guitar case Jacob gave to Hurley to bring back to the island with him?