Here's who we saw in the church: Locke, Jack, Kate, Sayid, Shannon, Rose, Bernard, Sun, Jin, Hurley, Libby, Juliet, Sawyer, Desmond, Boone, Penny, Charlie, and Claire. As Christian Shephard explained to Jack:

"This is a place that you all made together so that you could find one another. The most important part of your life was the time that you spent with these people. That's why all of you're here ... You needed all of them and they needed you."

So which negligible castaways' invitations got lost in the mail? Off the top of our heads: Richard, Lapidus, Miles, Ana Lucia, Daniel, Charlotte, Eko, Ilana, Zoe, Widmore, Arzt, Nikki, Paulo, and Frogurt. But we guess they all had their own lives and families, so it's plausible they'd have wanted to ascend to nondenominational heaven with people closer than the ones they were marooned with on a magic island.

But is there anything that explains the absence of Walt and Michael? They lived in New York — did Desmond decide that waking them up wasn't worth the cross-country flight? Would it just have been too awkward for Michael to be in the same room as Libby?

Yeah, I'm still going to chalk the LOST ending up to accident.

The writers had no grand plan going into the final season, and they failed spectacularly in answering a lot of the questions that emerged as the show progressed.

I was JUST talking about the LOST ending! My husband and I were watching Revolution earlier today. Juliet and Jacob from LOST are on Revolution. I mentioned how the end of LOST ruined the show for me. I have the entire series on DVD and we both want to watch it again, but I keep thinking about the way they wrapped it all up. I felt like I needed to learn more about The Dharma Initiative, Desmond's time traveling flash backs/forwards, why Walt had special powers, etc.

AGREE.

Dina, I've been thinking about watching evolution. This makes me want to watch it more.

I think the writers of LOST decided early that they would not answer every question, and not make everything fit neatly together, so if you watch it again, don't look for a big payoff.

Instead, delight in all the well-placed details, and the ongoing themes of good and evil, science and faith, being lost and being redeemed, destiny and free will, cause and effect.

The narrative arc of just John Locke is a mind bender once you realize the strangeness of the causes and effects in his life, which is regularly being meddled with by outside forces.

It is the interconnectedness -- the tapestry of peoples' decisions -- that makes the show so interesting and thought provoking.

I wondered about Walt and Michael too! My husband and I figured it was because of Libby.

Libby makes a little sense. On the other hand, this is the afterlife and they should be letting go and forgiving.

That lack of resolution hurts the show's central theme of redemption, I believe.