Hey LOST addicts?

What's up with THAT ending?
There is a neat cluster of posts linked at Rocks in My Dryer. If you haven't seen the finale yet, this post may be a spoiler.
My family and I just started watching LOST a couple of months ago based on a recommendation by my friend Karen. We generally don't watch television, but for some reason this show hooked us! Travis came home last night, we had a quick dinner of BLT's and watched the last two episodes of LOST so that we would be ready for the finale. We were all so bummed. To kill two birds with one stone, here are my 13 thoughts about LOST!

• Nobody in my family understands why Charlie had to die. Although he shut the door to the room he was in to prevent the entire place from flooding, and to save Desmond, Desmond still had to go out the way he came in. Why didn't Charlie just go out the door and swim out together? Is it possible the door only shuts tight from the inside? Still the question remains, why not just dive in and go out the way they came? We were all really irritated that it seemed Charlie just submitted to his death without trying to survive.
  
• Obviously Ben was right about the "ship" that was off shore that they were contacting with the satellite phone. There was something amiss. However, it would appear from the (as Karen called it) "flash forward" that they were indeed rescued. What did Ben know about what would happen? What did Locke know? Why did he kill Naomi - the girl that parachuted in with the phone?
• There was a lot of gruesome killing on these last few episodes. Very cold blooded. It provided some good opportunities to talk about revenge. The best lesson was about Sawyer - that even though he finally killed the man he held responsible for all of his pain, he wasn't any less miserable.
  
• Who is on the good side? Who is on the bad side? Is Locke evil now that he seems to have joined the "others"? Can we trust Juliet now that she has confided in them, and betrayed Ben?
• Why did Jack kiss Juliet with an obvious gesture beyond friendship, and then say he loved Kate? I almost glossed over this - just thinking about situations where you can be torn between two people - but my girls didn't and I am so glad that they saw this as a chink in Prince Charming's armor.
• If the show is called "LOST" and they are rescued, doesn't the show end here? I mean I imagine they can continue on with the lives of the characters as they re-acclimate into their old lives, but the show would change so much that it wouldn't be the same.
• Was Walt dead or alive?
• If it was a "flash forward", why did Jack refer to his dead father, saying "Get my father down here and see if I'm drunker than he is"?
• Also, did anyone get the idea that they may be in some sort of secular after-life kind of place? Purgatory? What was up with Naomi saying that all their bodies had been found in the plane? They have certainly encountered apparitions of dead people on the island - but they seemed separate from the rest of them. Locke's dad (if you can call him that! I really loathe that man!) referred to it as hell. I have this unformed thought stream - thinking about how the "Others" only seemed to snatch the good people at the beginning and wondering how that all plays in together.
• What is up with Kate and Sawyer? It appears that she loves Jack, and is using Sawyer. I have started to think of them as a cute couple, however, I am liking Kate's character less and less. Who was the him that Kate had to get back to? We know it wasn't Jack.
  
• I was devastated to see the sequences of Jack "off" the island were a "flash forward" and not a flashback. I would have thought the island changed him for the better.
  
• Hurley rides in a VW van and saves the day. Did anybody see that coming?
• I can't wait for next season!!!!
  

Anyway - I am sure there will be more ramblings about LOST. I enjoyed it - but the ending TOTALLY left me scratching my head! (No mosquito bites there - in case you're wondering!) What are YOUR thoughts?