Top Ten Lost Questions Answered in Season Five

With the season finale of Lost's fifth season, viewers have finally gotten some answers to some long-lived questions that lingered from season four and beyond. Here's a look at ten big questions that finally received answers in the fifth season of Lost!

Did Ben really move the island? Yep. When he spun that mysterious wheel in what was apparently the island's private refrigeration center, he moved the island. But he didn't move its location in space; that would be too simple for Lost. Instead, he moved its location in time. Ben's turn of the wheel sends the island jumping off its axis through time, resulting in some pretty weird experiences for our favorite castaways who are left behind. Fortunately, Locke turns the wheel again, stopping the time travel. Unfortunately, instead of stopping them in the present, Locke's turn lands them in 1977. Woops.

"When are we?" This question has two answers; we-that is, the Oceanic flight 815 survivors-are in both 1977 and 2007. Sawyer and Jin, along with Juliet, Miles, Daniel, and Elizabeth, are stuck in 1977 after Locke turned that wheel. When Kate, Jack, Hurley, Sun, and Sayid return to the island-along with Locke's dead body, Ben, Captain Lepidus, and some newbies-Kate, Jack, Sayid, and Hurley get sent back to 1977, while Sun, Ben, and Locke go to the 2007 island. Ironically, either way, for us as viewers, the castaways are in the past. The new question is which era was better in Lost's fifth season? 1977 had Jack, Kate, Sawyer, and Juliet trying to blow up the island with a hydrogen bomb. 2007 had Locke, Ben, and Jacob. But since the events of 1977 presumably made the events of 2007 never happen, I'm going with the era of the bomb.

Did Jin survive the freighter explosion? Yes, and he went on quite a trip in the course of his return to the island. First he runs into a young Rousseau and her crew. Then he suffers through a few time traveling light flashes, resulting in him witnessing Rousseau's loss of sanity, a man being taken by the "smoke monster," and almost being shot point blank by Rousseau before he is finally reunited with Sawyer, Juliet, and the other survivors stuck in 1977. Unfortunately, his wife isn't among them, leaving the question of whether Jin and Sun will ever see each other again for the final season.

What did Sawyer ask Kate to do once she got off the island? Apparently, all the secrecy that created the major wedge in Kate and Jack's relationship off the island revolved around a baby. But it wasn't Aaron, Claire's baby that Kate took off the island after Claire went missing. It's Clementine, Sawyer's child with a woman he scammed pre-Oceanic flight 815. Sawyer asked Kate to take care of his daughter, a request Kate fulfills by giving the baby's money part of her Oceanic Six survivor's settlement. The new question is why Kate thought it would be worse to tell Jack this itty bitty fact than to keep it secret and let it destroy their relationship. Then again, Jack kept it secret that Aaron was his nephew, so I guess they're even.

How does Charles Widmore know so much about the island? Charles used to live on the island. He apparently had a thing going with Eloise Hawking, who was the Others' leader in 1977. We still don't know why Eloise stopped being the leader, though it might have something to do with the fact that she shot and killed her son, Daniel Faraday, while she was still pregnant with him (time travel trip!), which I'd bet is enough to make just about anyone say "No thanks" to a leadership position. However, we learn that apparently Charles took her place. He was later exiled, an event that led to Benjamin Linus taking over. Does anyone else get the idea that either Richard Alpert, Jacob, or the island does a really bad job of picking island management?

How did Charlotte know so much about the island? Okay, maybe she didn't know an extreme amount of information about the island, but after severe hinting in season four that Charlotte had been there before, viewers were left wondering when, how, and why. The answer is that she was there as a little girl in the seventies. She was born and raised there, at least until 1977. During the early season time warps endured by Sawyer, Juliet, Daniel, Miles, Charlotte, and Locke, Charlotte reveals that as a child a weird man told her that if she left the island she could never go back; she tells Daniel she thinks it was him. Later, when Daniel hatches his plan to blow up a hydrogen bomb to fix things, he fulfills this moment in his ... er, history by convincing Dr. Chang (the dude from the Dharma Initiative orientation tapes) to evacuate the island, and having that sad chat with little Charlotte. This wasn't so much a pressing question that got answered this season as much as it was a question that led to some pretty mind-trippy action in the show's fifth season.

How did John Locke (aka "Jeremy Bentham") die? If you stopped paying attention at around mid-season, you errantly believe Locke committed suicide. The truth is that he tried, but Ben showed up at the last possible moment and stopped him. (Anyone else feeling a line from Monty Python's "Quest for the Holy Grail" coming on?) Unfortunately for Locke, he had some information that Ben needed to know, which he spilled, presumably without considering the man he was dealing with. A quick PSA for all you readers: If you're in tight quarters with Benjamin Linus, and you have a rope nearby you just tried to hang yourself with, make sure you pay attention to that rope's proximity to Ben's hands. Sadly, Locke didn't heed this advice, and after getting the information he needed Ben proceeded to finish the job he'd just talked Locke out of.

How is it possible that Locke died, and is alive again? The short answer is: it's not. The complicated answer is, it's not because Locke's body was found in the cargo hold, and the guy parading around the island as Locke is somehow actually the nameless guy who told Jacob he was looking for a "loophole" that would allow him to kill the guy who's been pulling all the strings on the island from the get-go. How that works, we're still not sure, but when we find out, I'll bet it will be amazing. The new question is who the second man is. I'm going to step out on a limb, along with around 90% of Lost's audience, and suggest the show's producers name him "Esau."

What lies in the shadow of the statue? The short answer is Jacob. The long answer is, Jacob lives there (well, in the four-toed foot section at least), but we're still a little unclear as to why and whether or not that is the statue's only significance. The hoity-toity answer as provided by Richard (or, Ricardos, as Ilana calls him) is, "Ille qui nos omnis servabit," a Latin phrase which translates, "He who will save us." Savior complex, anyone?

Why doesn't Richard Alpert age? Because, in the words of Captain Jean Luc-Picard of the Star Trek universe (duly referenced since J.J. Abrams has his hand in both series), Jacob "made it so." We don't know why, and we don't know how, but Richard tells Locke that Jacob made him the way he is. Maybe a bigger question is whether or not we care that Richard doesn't age. I mean, come on, ladies; do you care he stays super hot no matter what the decade?!