"It Worked"

No reason to talk about the great episode of Archer I watched (thanks to Tom for recommending that) or the continuing snow. Tonight's all about one thing, so if you watch Lost and haven't seen the season premiere then stop looking at this and go find out what happened when Juliet hit the bomb:

• Putting everything else aside for a second, I have to comment on the idea of answers on this show. There are questions that we've had for a couple of years and there are questions that we've had since the series premiere that aired over five years ago. It's easy to mix them up and think that all of the answers are just as important as one another. So the answer to "What is the temple?", which we first heard about in season three (when Ben sends Richard to the temple while he goes to stop Jack from calling the freighter) is a big one. The answer to "What is the monster?" I mean, that may be the second biggest question to "What is the island?"
• And so we know what the monster is, sort of. We know specifically who it is. We just don't know where that "who" comes from and what his mission is. Where is his "home"? It could be the temple, but I really have no idea. With that, it's easy to jump to the very end of the episode, but I'll step back and try to hit on questions/comments in close to chronological order.
• Did the bomb create alternate timelines or is the landing of Oceanic 815 what happens after Jack and company achieve whatever they need to do on the island after the bomb pushed them back into 2007? I think it's purely alternate and that this will be resolved in some way and probably relatively soon.
• You could interpret Juliet's "it worked" as saying either that it worked in pushing them into 2007 or in putting them back on the plane (and destroying the island so that there's no button for Desmond to not push on 9/22/04). I'm going with that she meant the plane, since she also said something about having coffee with Sawyer. Perhaps she, like Desmond (I think Des was actually on the plane in this alternate timeline, not as a ghost of some sort), will pop up again. No island after the Incident means Juliet is probably chilling in Miami.
• I think Des was actually on the plane because there were some differences from the original Oceanic 815 passengers. Boone couldn't convince Shannon to come. Christian's body didn't make it on the plane. We didn't see any tailies besides the ones that weren't actually sitting in the tail section, Bernard and Cindy. No Michael or Walt. Maybe Sun doesn't speak English. Hurley has good luck. Kate killed a plumber instead of her father (it came from a video that the producers showed at Comic-Con).
• We know for the sure that the ash is used to block the Man In Black (should I call him that or the monster?) from going places. Presumably, the ash was laid down around the cabin to keep the Man In Black there. If so, was the circle always broken? If the circle wasn't always broken, then how was the monster going all around the island?
• Did you notice that when Kate knocked the marshal's head against the sink, the cut appeared in the same exact place that it appeared when he was hit on the head during the original plane crash? That and the absence of Christian's body makes me wonder if things are going to start happening in the "landed plane" timeline to mirror things that happened on the island. My first jump to that would be if Charlie had asphyxiated, though that obviously didn't end up being the case.
• My award for "most cryptic line that I don't think was actually cryptic at all" is the: "Richard, the last time I saw you, you were in chains!" We generally assume Richard came on the Black Rock. We know the Black Rock was a slave ship.
• Finally... What was on the paper that Jacob hid in the ankh? I think it was a list of everyone that he has touched. Why? Because those are the people tasked with defeating the Man In Black? Probably, but there's one more facet to it. Perhaps those are the people that, because of the touch, Jacob can inhabit with his spirit. Do I think that Sayid is now possessed by Jacob in the same way that Locke was possessed by the Man In Black? Probably. Can't say definitively yes, since Miles didn't seem to think, by the look on his face, that Sayid was actually dead (and I didn't buy it for a second).
• The other explanation for the piece of paper is that it is a list of everyone Jacob touched and lists those that can defeat the Man In Black, but only if they work together. Hence, that new Others medicine man, or whatever he is, saying that they would be in big trouble is Sayid died (and Jacob being so particular about Hurley saving Sayid). I'm thinking Stephen King's It here, how the group that faced the monster had their chance of success lessen as each member died.
• What did I miss? What do you think?