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Flash-forward to Los Angeles, 2008: Hugo's hangin' at the hat factory when he gets a visitor, an older black lady who wants to know if he is dangerous or just plain-vanilla crazy before she lets her grandson speak to him.

She turns out to be Grandma Dawson, who's brought Tall Walt from New York to visit. "You're getting big, dude," Hugo tells Walt, whose spectacular growth spurt since 2004 makes perfect sense now. The kid's four years older, and Walt's storyline is finally synched up again with his age.

Walt tells Hugo that he's hurt that none of the Oceanic Six have bothered to come see him -- but that one "Jeremy Bentham" has visited. Walt wants to know why everyone's lying about what happened on the Island and afterward. Hugo confides that it's necessary to lie in order to protect everyone who got left behind.

"Like my dad?" Walt asks. Hugo looks stricken, then agrees. Obviously no one has told poor Walt the truth about Michael being on the blown-up freighter.

That night, a sleek-looking Sayid blows away the apparent Widmore operative who's been lurking in his car outside Santa Rosa Mental Institute, surveilling Hugo for the past week. Sayid sneaks in and finds Hugo up in his room, playing chess with an invisible opponent who turns out to be the ghost of Mr. Eko. Not that we ever see Mr. Eko's ghost, but Hugo says, "Checkmate, Mr. Eko," so we know.

Sayid wants Hugo to come away with him, to a safer place where they will not be watched and listened to. Hurley hasn't seen Sayid in "like, forever" and questions why he should go. Sayid tells him "circumstances have changed," because "Jeremy Bentham" is dead, an alleged suicide as of two days ago. Hugo hesitates, then agrees to go, so long as they are not going "back there," meaning the Island.

Flash-forward to London: Sun chats on her cell with her mother in Seoul and with Ji Yeon, who's by now a toddler. She then watches as Charles Widmore leaves a restaurant, approaches him and introduces herself as Mr. Paik's daughter and also as the managing director of Paik Industries.

Widmore is affable until Sun tells him she knows that he knows who she really is, where she has been and what happened there, "We have common interests," she says, handing him her business card. "When you're ready to discuss them, call me." She also alludes to them not being the only ones who left the Island. Widmore asks why she'd want to help him. Sun doesn't answer and leaves, holding back her emotions.

Flash-forward to Los Angeles, 2008: Kate awakens to a noise in the house; then the phone rings. An odd, seemingly recorded male voice speaks in gibberish, just like the whispers; the backward speech actually says, "The Island needs you. You have to go back before it's too late."

Kate hears another noise in the house, gets up and pulls a gun from its hiding place in her closet. She discovers someone bent over Aaron's bed and tells the intruder, "Don't touch my son!" before realizing that their visitor is Claire.

Claire approaches Kate and warns her: "Don't bring him back, Kate. Don't you dare bring him back!" Kate then awakens and realizes it was a dream. When she checks on Aaron, no one is there, and she whispers, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

The finale began with a flash-forward back to where the Season 3 finale left off (in "Through the Looking Glass"), with Jack yelling "We have to go back!" at Kate as she drives away from their evening meeting at the LA airport.

This time, we see Kate abruptly put her Volvo into reverse, and she returns to tell Jack a thing or two about his calling her up over and over for two days while he's stoned on his pills, and about his general insanity over the subject of returning the Island. And about the death of "Jeremy Bentham": "You believed him! Him, of all people!"

Jack whines that he only did it to save Kate and Aaron, which she dismisses with a smart slap to the kisser. She's still trying to explain to Aaron why Jack is no longer around to read to him, she says. "I've spent the last three years trying to forget the horrible things that happened the day we left. How dare you ask me to go back!" She refuses to listen any more, gets in her car and zooms away.

The finale's cliffhanger ending: Jack, still visibly drunk/stoned, leaves the airport and returns to the Hoffs-Drawlar funeral home where he had earlier seen the coffin of "Jeremy Bentham." It's after hours, the place is locked, but Jack breaks in and approaches the coffin, which is still there but now with a clipboard placed on top, which Jack tosses aside before opening the top half of the coffin lid. The clipboard holds papers, as yet unsigned, to release the body.

Ben suddenly arrives and his greeting startles Jack, who tells him that "Bentham" informed him Ben had left the Island. Both Jack and Kate had been approached by "Bentham" a month ago, he says. Bentham also informed Jack that after the O6 left, some "very bad things happened" on the Island -- and it was all Jack's fault for not staying, so he has to come back.

Ben says he's heard about Jack using Oceanic's "golden pass" to fly aimlessly across the Pacific in hopes his plane will crash. "Very dark," Ben says. He tells Jack he has come to let him know that "all of you have to go back," and it won't do for Jack to try to go alone. Jack demurs because he can't possibly get everyone together, but Ben says it's the only way, and he (as usual) has a few ideas about how to help get it done.

Not only must all of them go, Ben adds, but they must also take along the body of "Jeremy Bentham" ...who, when the camera pulls back to show the open coffin, is revealed to be John Locke.

In addition: ABC repeated the previous episode and added a minute or two of footage from the Oceanic press conference. Jack identifies the three fellow passengers on 815 who were supposed to have survived the crash but died later: Boone Carlyle, who was said to have sustained "massive internal injuries"; "a woman named Libby" who "only lasted about a week"; and Charlie Pace, who was said to have accidentally drowned shortly before their "rescue."

In other new press-conference footage, Sayid was asked if he would return to Iraq and he replied, "There is nothing for me in Iraq." Jack was asked about his own plans, and he said he didn't really have any but would like to put his father to rest, even though Christian's body had been lost in the crash.

Also, the "enhanced" rebroadcast revealed that Sun is six months pregnant at the time she goes to confront her father at the Paik headquarters, making that about three months after the "rescue."

To protect the finale's secrets against fansite leaks, two alternate endings were filmed, one showing the coffin's occupant to be Sawyer and the other showing Desmond. The two brief clips were shown on Good Morning America today; you can see them here.