—We now know the inhabitant of the coffin is John Locke/Jeremy Bentham. I will not pretend to be smart enough to have realized at the first mention of Bentham that the real Bentham was a 19th century British philosopher… and a successor to the real…John Locke.

Thank you, obsessive-message-board-posters-whom-I-would-never-mock-because-you’re-incredibly-entertaining (http://abc.go.com/primetime/lost/index?pn=mb&cat=33026) for pointing that out.

But who re-named Locke and submitted his obituary to the newspaper? And didn’t Sayid’s explanation to Hurley about Locke/Bentham’s death – “they said it was suicide” – seem a bit suspicious, like maybe Ben’s new killer-for-hire had something to do with this “suicide”? And why this hatred toward Locke? In last season’s finale, Kate snarled at Jack that the deceased “was neither friend nor family.” You would think that she would have considered Locke a friend…until we see what happens next season for her to feel otherwise, I guess.

—So Ben was capable of moving the island – or at least making it disappear in an awesome CGI moment of the ocean swallowing it like a Tic-Tac. And Christian Shepherd appeared to tell Michael the island was finally ready to let him die (the dude has made numerous suicide attempts, yet he doesn’t have a second to ponder his fate when he finally bites it – somehow, that seems unfair).

But where are Daniel Faraday and the others who were on the raft headed for the freighter? And what happens to Shirtless Sawyer, Juliet, Locke and his new flock once the island is sucked into what is likely some kind of time/space continuum?

And IS Jin dead? I’m still taking the optimistic route on that one, partially because Sun’s heartbreaking reaction to the freighter explosion unnerved me so much, I had to go back and watch it three more times, and also because of her flash-forward hatred of Jack, whom she blames as the second person (along with her father) responsible for Jin’s death.

My guess is that Jin dove off the freighter immediately before it exploded and survived the blast, but something happens between the Oceanic 6’s arrival on the island of Sumba and their return home that leads to Jin’s death. And somehow Jack is responsible. Or something like that.

—The Penny/Desmond reunion. OK, come on. Even for a show rooted in suspension of disbelief, that Penny’s boat just happened to stumble upon the Oceanic 7 was ludicrous (yeah, I know, she has a “tracking station.” Whatever). But, since her reunion with Desmond was the only shred of happy news in two hours of plane crashes, freighter explosions, deaths, leaping Sawyers, morose Juliets and creepy Claire dreams, here’s a photo to keep the romantics placated.

But also, have we seen the last of Penny and Desmond, or will they try to find the other castaways, despite Jack’s instructions to the contrary?

—Speaking of Kate’s creepy Clarie dream… Some of the techno-geeks (love you guys!) already decoded the disturbing backward audio from Kate’s phone call (what is this, the “White Album”?).

Hear it here (and check out some cool hi-res screencaps):
http://losteastereggs.blogspot.com/

Or I’ll save you the effort: “The island needs you. You have to go back before it’s too late,“ is what understandably spooks Kate.

And why does Kate tell Aaron, “I’m sorry”? Does she already know that they have to return to the island – and presumably Aaron also falls under Ben’s mandate that EVERYONE, even the coffin-bound Locke, must return or else the island won’t allow them back?

It’s a good thing we have eight months to obsess over all of this. So while you’re thinking about it, theorize on these topics, too.

—What did Sawyer whisper to Kate – which was obviously the directive that we saw her carry out in “Something Nice Back Home” (my vote for the season’s best episode, excluding the finale), which set Jack into a booze-fueled tirade?

—Who is following Hurley – and possibly the other returnees? Is Widmore at work?

—What is Sun’s ulterior motive in cozying up to Widmore?

—And, um, has anyone seen Vincent the dog lately?

On his background:

“I started in bands at 15 in Kansas City and played in and around there quite a bit. I traveled around the Midwest on occasion. Then I graduated college and the opportunity to continue music presented itself in Tulsa…I played acoustic gigs a couple times a month, full band gigs a couple times a month. I kinda hoofed it around the Midwest for 10 years.”

On getting ready for the finale:

“You’ve got to prepare for the best, but expect the worst. That’s pretty much how I operate…I made sure that I was prepared to win, but Archie did a great job and I’ve said it the whole time that if you were basing it off of Tuesday, that he deserved to win. He came out and did three amazing songs.”

On the frenzy that’s surrounded his every move – including that “Guitar Hero” commercial (now available on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ12-bNpHpk):

“I can’t believe the level of support that has come out of me doing this crazy TV show. All I can do is try to embrace it…the sky’s the limit right now.”

On performing with ZZ Top on the finale:

“You know, those guys were so nice. You hear horror stories all the time about established rock bands and musicians being about them, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth with those guys. They made it so fun and so easy, given the fact that there were 90 million other things going on. I couldn’t have asked for a better scenario.”

On whether he really thought he would win:

“I thought Archie was probably a little bit ahead of me, if I’m being honest…I attribute the finale vote discrepancy to my fans just being awesome…but my hat’s off to Archie for the whole scenario. He handled himself with a lot of grace, but more importantly, he’s just an amazing human being and I was just honored to share the stage with him.”

On the emotional roller coaster that is “Idol”:

“This show has been great for my diet. I’ve lost 10-15 pounds since the start of the season…There was a lot of intensity the last few weeks…The crying after I won was like an exhale. This whole experience has been about eight months, including auditions. I felt like that whole time I was holding my breath, and to be able to breathe and enjoy the moment was the main thing.”

On what to expect from his future musical endeavors:

“The covers were great, but I’m ready to get back into the creative process of writing songs and baring my soul on these records…I’ll probably put out a rock record because that’s the music I enjoy playing. That was the exciting thing about this show—I loved knowing there were things I could do that people never expected I could do. Andrew Lloyd Webber night was fun for me. I loved the fact that everybody was like, “WHAT?” I’m going to try to recreate that imagery with this record—I want it to have some twists and turns on it. I want people to feel like they got taken on a trip from beginning to end.”

On how he was inspired:

“There was a short article that Debbie, our stage manager, hung up in the red room that talked about Frank Sinatra and how he would go about the song process. Before he listened to the music, he would read the lyrics and try to tune into the lyrics and try to tune into what the lyrics were saying, what the song was about and then he would go into the music aspect of it and figure out the melodies and all that.

So for me, that was really an eye-opening article. It made me think, OK, I need to step back and before I even try to learn this song, I need to read the lyrics and that really helped as far as trying to find the vibe…With the Mariah [Carey] song, I loved it that the lyrics had a little bit of longing in them, but then it was still packaged in this upbeat pop song. For me, that was a very natural transition to just slow it down a little bit.”

On whether he thought NOT winning might have been better for his rocker cred, a la Daughtry:

“I definitely went into this to try to win it. Daughtry’s success is amazing, but I’m not trying to be Daughtry. I’m just trying to put out a solid record. Even if it doesn’t do well commercially, as long as I can put out a record that I’m proud of, that’s the goal right now, and hopefully if I can do that, the success will follow.”

Yeah, Archuleta is going to win. But I’m still holding out a teeny bit of Hillary Clinton-like hope that David Cook’s jackpot is going to hit.

Watching the cougar magnet prowl around that rampy thing behind the judges table while singing U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” (nice choice, Clive Davis), he looked like a star. You felt his passion, and saw his rock star swagger. And swagger, but the way, is a lot different from the unappealing cockiness displayed by “Idol”’s other major rock star who shall go unnamed but was surprisingly ousted during Elliott Yamin’s season.

Little David, meanwhile, did what he always does. He gave Elton John’s “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” a smooth texture, added a few too many refrains that aren’t in the song to begin with for good reason, concentrated really hard on not blinking too much (and welcome back, Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, the bestest mentor in all the land!) and…yeah…what? He leaves the stage with nothing. No soul. No passion. Just a robotic desire to please.

It is amusing – at least to me – that when it came time for the “songwriter’s choice,” David Cook pulled out the guitar and galloped through a not-entirely-awful pop-rocker called “Dream Big,” at which I jotted in my notes, “Wow, not a gloppy ‘Idol’ ballad.”

But then there it was! Leave it to Archuleta to Disney up the night with “In This Moment,” an insufferable ballad not only, as Simon pointed out, incredibly self-centered, but also as simplistic as a nursery rhyme – without the cleverness ( “Give me a chance and I’ll show you what’s real…I’m stuck in a moment and no one can take it from me.” )

Ack. I think I just coughed up a hairball.

(Oh, I just remembered, I can’t make fun of Disney ballads this week because Elliott Yamin’s remake of “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” came out yesterday on the new Disney compilation. Yes. Seriously.)

Anyhoo, to wrap this sucker up, Cooksy performed a pensive version of Collective Soul’s “The World I Know,” sniffed away tears at the end of the song and listened as Simon basically told him that even though he’d been touted all week as the frontrunner, eh, sorry buddy, no deal.

I did love that conspiratorial wink Simon gave David at the end of his slightly stinging critique, almost as if he were saying, “Don’t worry, kid, I made Scary Spice a household name – just wait and see what I can do with you!”

And then Little David pulled out that version of “Imagine” that, when he first performed it months ago, much of the world fell in love with him and I shrugged.

The judges didn’t seem to mind his cracked note toward the end or his habit of emphasizing lyrics on the wrong syl-la-ble (did you catch the “BROTHERhood of man”?). They gushed and praised and Paula said something slightly more coherent than she had to David Cook (“You’re standing in your truth,” she told Scruffy David. Um, what?), Simon continued the dreadful boxing theme to proclaim Archuleta’s performances the “knockout” of the match, the end.

Oh, but wait! The teddy bear himself, Ruben Studdard, was back to atone for Fantasia’s crazy-silly hot mess of last week to perform an appropriately pensive version of Kenny Loggins’ “Celebrate Me Home,” the show’s Stop Crying And Go Home Now song of the season.

I’ll say this – watching those scenes from the season flicker behind Ruben on the massive video screen does remind us that it’s been five months – do you know how much can change in your life in five months? – since we started this year’s journey with these kids.

Yeah, “Idol” has its issues. What show doesn’t? And yeah, some of its past viewers found other things to do during the writer’s strike and never re-committed themselves to watching TV, so ratings have slipped.

But this show is such an emotional investment that even though I say I’m not going to get sucked in, I do. It’s hard to resist.

As for tonight’s winner – well, you know, maybe NOT winning the show will be David Cook’s jackpot after all.

What is Locke supposed to do once inside The Orchid? Ben sort of left him to figure that out on his own. Or maybe Jacob will finally appear and show Ben the way to ….whatever.

Where was Richard “Hot Guy From Suddenly Susan” Alpert taking Kate and Sayid?

Why was the typically jittery Daniel almost passing out from fear upon consulting his notes about The Orchid?

And who thinks Hurley continued to munch on that tube of 15-year-old saltines even after Ben told him they might be a little stale?
I’ll leave the intricate postulating to the gazillion other bloggers out there who are more inspired to theorize about why Hurley might have picked up a Jesus statue to use as a weapon, whether that scene of the Oceanic 6 departing the Coast Guard plane was an homage to “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and if Ben handing Locke his “death stick” thingy was some sort of torch passing.

I also still can’t figure out the reasoning behind the Oceanic 6 sticking to this story of their group initially containing eight members. Any theories?

I will, though, award the line of the night to the Oceanic flack telling the group upon touchdown that the assembled media had already dubbed them the Oceanic 6. “That’s not the best branding as far as we’re concerned, but…it’s catchy,” she said, flinching on the outside and grinning inward at the publicity this amazing rescue will bring the tarnished airline.

One final thought regarding Oceanic. Obviously, based on Sun’s whip-smart, table-turning maneuver on her father and his company, the settlements disbursed to the survivors were some kind of stupid money, like, Hurley-winning-the-lottery money.

Hey, I expect a food voucher and an upgrade to First Class when my plane is 17 minutes late to the gate, so I’m totally in favor of giving giant rewards and golden tickets to a group of people who had to dodge smoke monsters and eat food wrapped in weird Dharma Initiative packages for more than 100 days.

But, even considering this is TV, do most airlines have that kind of dough to compensate plane crash victims? I’m thinking not. But Oceanic apparently does, and who else has a boatload of bucks?

Ah – Charles Widmore, maybe? What do you think?

Some notable “Lost”-centric sites:

http://darkufo.blogspot.com/

http://www.hawaiiup.com/lost/