FINALE SPOLIERS So they all died in the original crash....

Exactly. Just the fact that there's something occurring in parts of this show called "flash sideways" makes Lost ultimately really silly.

It's a cheap and phony narrative trick invented by writers who've written themselves into a corner and need to f*ck around with their audiences heads because they can't make square peg characters fit into round plot holes.

Especially when Desmond was subjected to that Magnetic machine and experiencing flash sideways, which turns out to be afterlife, so he was dead for a brief period of time. ROFLMAO.
He was super confident that everyone will be OK in the end. RIP in Heaven. ahahahahaha

It absolutely sucked and was definitely the showrunners last unnecessary attempt at a big mind-fuck.

They should never have gone down that route, everything should have been on the island. You didn’t care about the flash-sideways as we all thought it was another universe with different versions of our characters, just zero emotional investment.

The flash-sideways also robs the deaths of their intended emotional weight. We see Jin drown only to see him walk by Jack in the flash-sideways in the next scene. Jack dying is intercut with afterlife church hugs and going ‘into the light’ when it didn’t need any of that cheesy crap.

As the episode's script says, "The plane clears frame, finally free of the Island. Jack Shephard has done what he came to this place to do. He has found his purpose. He has found love, and been loved. He has finally found a way to love himself. The bamboo sways across the blue sky, and Jack Shephard's eye closes one final time. He is gone. The end.’

Cut out the flash-sideways wrap party slow mo hug fest and that island ending is emotional and brings the show full circle, mirroring the opening of the show.

The show loved ambiguity yet flat out tells you there’s an afterlife. Not very Lost like to me.

Everything that happened after the crash really happened..
In S6 there was a "sideways" flash that confused everyone but it was was meant to have happened years after the real ending when Jack died and Kate and Sawyer and Clare escaped..

[spoiler]The sideways world they kept sprinkling into the last season was actually occurring after everyone had actually died at different times (time has no meaning and is not linear) and they all had created a "sideways" fantasy world that helped them all accept their own deaths and where they moved on together to whatever comes next. ..It didn't matter that they all died at different times ..They met after death together.
.....To go to the next life, the next dimension or whatever you believe happens after you die.....[/spoiler]

And did they make that clear? I thought so..Jack's dead father even literally explained it to Jack.