Lost "316" = Best Episode so far

(Warning: this is a rambling-stream-of-consciousness post, little cohesion will be found here)

- Here is my grand theory about what Lost will look like once we have the last episode. A lot of this theory is based off of last night's episode so stop reading this until you have watched episode '316'. I think that the original Oceanic flight 815 centered around Christian Shephard. I think that he needed to get back to the island, just like John did. And just like John was a proxy for Christian, Christian was a proxy for someone else (Jacob?). Most people on the plane had a connection to Christian, the rest were collateral damage. Obviously there were his kids, Jack and Claire, and there was Ana-Lucia, Sawyer and Kate, but then there were the others who, just like the Oceanic 6, had to get back to the island. These were the people who were taken by the others in season 1 like the stewerdess and the children. They were on Jacob's list and Jacob was replaced by Christian, who will be replaced by John.
- The time-traveling Losties (Sawyer, Juliet, Miles, Daniel, Jin) were caught in the 1970s Dharma heyday when John fixed the donkey wheel and had 3 years (the time from when John fixed the wheel to when Jack and others made it back to the island) to incoporate themselves into the Dharma Initiative. (sidenote: I bet Jin will speak fluent English now)
- John fixing the donkey wheel made them stop jumping through time and now they will continue growing old and passing through time normally until 2004 when Oceanic 815 crashed on the island. I bet the show is going to end when the plane crashes and they see themselves after the plane-crash and it will end with the same scene that started the series and last night's episode, i.e. Jack's dilating pupil in the forest.
- I think Daniel built the island-finding Lamppost station.
- I think that the errand/favor for a friend that Ben had to run before joining the O6 on the plane was to go kill Penny. The look on his face when he saw Desmond showed that he realized Penny was not far, and the fact that the next scene shows him all bloodied and on a payphone that happened to be on a dock makes me think that he tried to keep his promise to Widmore to kill his daughter. However, the fact that he came on the Ajira Airlines plane in an arm-sling makes me think the blood all over him was his and that Desmond saved Penny and kicked Ben's butt.
- best line of the whole season so far was Lapidus "We're not going to Guam, are we?"
- The O6 made the plane as similar to Oceanic 815 as the could: dead John took the place of dead Christian, Jack was Jack, Hurley had a comic book like Walt and a guitar like Charlie, Sayid was in the custody of (presumably) a US Marshall like Kate, Ben showed up late and made a bustle just like Hurley, Frank took the place of the-pilot-whose-name-escapes-me, and (I think) that gestating Aaron was replaced by a knocked-up Kate who waylayed (pun not intended) Jack the night before. If we are to take this correlation to further, then is the marshall going to die a horribly painful and long death? If Kate is pregnant, then will she give birth on the island? Will John wake up and haunt the island like Christian did? Will poor Frank suffer death-by-smoke-monster like the other pilot?
- I think that Sawyer's outrigger crew from a couple episodes ago were being shot at by the two people who we saw with the O6 on the Ajira flight.
- new questions sparked by last night's episode:
Who are the two mysterious people in business class with the O6?
How many other off-island Dharma stations/pockets of energy are there? Is there one in Australia by Isaac of Uluru? Wherever Penny's Portuguese friends were? In Tanzania where Ben and the polar bear (and maybe Locke) ended up after turning the donkey wheel?
Did Penny's Portuguese-speaking compatriots have the same island-finding technology as the lamppost station?
Who are the true powers that are using all of our lostie friends as the pawns that Desmond described? Ben and Widmore? Mrs. Hawking and Isaac of Uluru? Jacob and Widmore?
Who convinced Hurley to get on the flight? Maybe Libby?
What did Sayid do to get captured by the Marshall?
Why is Ben on the flight? I thought he told John that whoever turned the donkey wheel was not allowed back on the island?

Lastly, I am so stoked about next week's episode entitled "The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham." The writers have said that this week's and next week's can be are 2 parts of one episode and can be viewed in either order. But, if you saw the preview last night, John goes and talks to Widmore and Ben is there when John hands himself (maybe convinced him to hang himself?)

What did you think about last '316'?