You missed one question:  What is MIB's real name ?

karas - keep in mind though, SLU Ben, while yes was in a quest for power, he was also doing it because the current principal cared nothing about the students.  and in fact Ben's weakness was his caring for the students..well at least one of them anyway

I think the biggest difference in line of thinking regarding Ben, is those who are looking at the characters on the show purely based on a tv show, and those who are judging the characters based on real life laws.  Quite honestly nearly all of our characters would be in jail in the real world.  I'll be the first to admit, in the real world I wouldn't turn my back on Ben Linus.  Just ask John Locke how that works out.

I'd mainly like to know the basic questions that are powering this whole show:

What exactly is the light at the center of the island? How does it work? Does this relate to it's EM and space/Time attributes? How do they work?

Why does it need a guardian?

Why was Mother the guardian and how did she get there? Why did she want the twins to have no contact with the outside world ever? How long have people been coming to/guarding the light on the island?

Who made the statue and other ancient structures? (kind of related to the above question)

How did Jacob get on and off the island?

What is so bad about MIB getting off the island? Could he make the world a worst place?

These are really the main questions on my mind that I think HAVE to be answered for us to put the show's events into perspective.

I guess I'd like to know why that shark in the first season had a Dharma tattoo on it :)

Speaking of  Modern Family's Julie Bowen, I think last week they did a funny little bit with her and her son.   The whole family flew to Hawaii, and I guess Bowen's character was afraid to fly.  There was a scene where her son says to her he hopes the plane crashes on an island like in Lost.  She then gave the camera a deadpan type look. 

xpalandix, SLU Ben may have had good motives but he still resorted to blackmail to achieve his goal.  I'm sure there was some other way that wasn't illegal and imoral  to get Alex into a good school.

11.  Walt is in the finale

10.  Who cares?

09.  Of course not.  It's been answered - Smokey was created when MiB went into the light.

08.  Juliet

07.  No idea

06.  It's been teased that this will be addressed.

05.  It's just a dagger. 

04.  Don't know if we'll have a Sawyer/Juliet hookup again.  Don't care.

03.  Yeah...this is odd.

02.  Maybe it's like salt is on Supernatural.

01.  He's more complex than good and evil.  Everyone is.  He is an asshole, though.

Oh, and Monkeyfoot,

You won't get an answer regarding the nature of the light or its properties.  It just is.  No one seems to know its nature, so we won't find out.  You just have to accept that and fill in the blanks yourself.

Why does it need a guardian?  PsychoMom explained that in "Acros the Sea."  Was she right?  Maybe we'll find out.  As to why she was the guardian, I expect someone else made her the guardian.  It doesn't matter.  Lost isn't the story of the history of the Island.

Who made the statue?  Really old Others. 

How did Jacob get off the island?  He addressed that in the last episode.

What's so bad about MiB getting off the island?  No idea.  At least not like back before he was Smokey, or even shortly after.  Now, I think thousands of years of being the smoke monster and wanting off have made him malevolent and vengeful and he could do a lot of damage if he got to any populated areas.

There are a couple of other questions that have fallen by the wayside that I would like an answer to.

The First: Why can't women deliver babies to full term on The Island in the 21st Century?

It has been made clear on several occasions that up until very recently, there was never any problem with the delivery of babies on The Island.  No explanation as to what caused this to begin occuring, or when it happened has been given.  All we know is that it began to happen sometime between 1977 and whenever Juliet was recruited.  Juliet is never introduced to someone who had been recruited to try and fix the problem before her, so it would seem to be a fairly recent problem.

The Second:  Juliet looks just like who?

In the season four episode The Other Woman, Juliet is told by Harper (Goodwin's wife and the theapist for The Others) that Ben has a crush on Juliet because, "You look just like her."

When I heard this, I ascribed it to all the rumors of time travel that would be coming up.  When the season five episode LaFleur came around I figured I had my answer, but no.  We are never given any indication that young Ben has any sort of infatuation with Juliet, not that it even matters.  In Whatever Happened, Happened Ben is taken to The Others to be healed, resulting in his memory being erased.  He has no idea who Juliet is, and never sees her again in the 1977 era before she is sent forward in time at the Swan Station construction site.  The first time Ben ever meets Juliet is when she joins up with The Others to help their reproductive difficulties.

This thread is going to hurt the numbers on the "What they Died For" review thread (which some predicted some huge numbers for).  Of course, it doesn't help that there's only 5 days between that episode and the finale too.  Based on what Darlton said and implied last night (as well as what Jorge Garcia revealed), it doesn't sound like there's going to be a ton of debate after the finale.  It sounds like they are going to really resolve most of the major plotlines (not leaving as much for speculation as we might have thought).

They also addressed the Walt issue (so question #11 can be stricken from this list).  They explained that the actor - Michael David Kelly - grew way too much.  Damon explained that he started out as a 12 year old playing an 8 year old, then grew a ton.  He's now "like 39 feet tall" he said.  They answered everything about Walt and the kids, too, implying that (thought they did say Walt will be seen in the finale) they weren't going to delve much into that topic in the last episode (they wouldn't spoil anything that directly happened in the finale).  They said the reason the Others were abducting children was because of their attempting to find out why women couldn't give birth on the island.  They said that Walt was "special" just like a couple of other characters (like Hurley who can communicate with dead people and Miles who can read the minds of dead people).  When the actor started growing like a weed, Damon said they had to figure out a way to "get him on the raft...STAT!"   :)

The clip they showed of the finale involves Smlocke, Ben, and Sawyer.  Darlton said that it was specially chosen so that it doesn't spoil too much.  Let me know if you want me to share what they showed (it's longer than what you can see on LOST's official site).

There's gonna be an "answers disc" included in the Season 6 DVD boxed set that will address some of these lingering, naggy questions.

Some people have expressed frustration, but I think its pretty cool. Link to the article below:

http://www.tvguidemagazine.com/kecks-exclusives/lost-to-continue-in-season-six-dvd-5119.html