Ben: "Since I can't kill you, Charles, I am going to kill your daughter. I am going to find Penelope and kill her."

We haven't seen the last of Desmond and Penny. :X

No, I'm just saying that was from Ben's flash-forward episode a couple weeks back. He swore to Charlies Whitmore that he would kill Penelope.

ha!

It ended how it was broadcast, but these other two were possibilities they were thinking about.

 

SPeaking of time warps...it'd be funny (Star Wars-ish) if the writers ended the show in Season 5 and began back-tracking for us through time until the rescue.
Wait! They're doing that already! 

ok my guess is that whitmor was on the island with ben and one had to stay and one had to go. whitmor was the one to go and ben stay.

so whitmor wants to get back to the island. but he cant for some reason. i am guessing lock is the same. he wants to get back but he knows he can only do it with everyone going back. so he was seeding the idea in everyones head.

there is a question that is if you leave the island are you imortal. ie wintmor cant be killed and wault's dad. but that will come into question with Lock. as it is poinient to see that he falls out of favour with the island.

and waults dad getting told that he can go now. do you think he died?

I think Ben can't kill Whitmore because they are each other's constants.

I also think that Michael is dead. The Island released him because his job was done. Further, Lock really is dead and will be resurrected if he goes back to the Island. My theories!

Yup...they are each other's CONSTANT...that was a theory put forward early this year by many. I agree with it too.
Its not for sure though, so I'll add it to my QUESTION LIST!

My thoughts on the dying/immortal theory is that it's not so much the island keeping them alive for its own agenda, rather that those people who can't die are stuck in a time ripple/disturbance having left the island. Specifically, I would contend that the smoke monster is some kind of time correcting function... getting rid of redundancies in time where people are active in more than one place at a time. Remember poor bunny #15 in the Orchid Orientation video? The same bunny occurring in the same time/space. NOT GOOD. That's why our scientist friend freaked out and said "don't let them see each other!". Who knows...maybe he feared smokey showing up to 'fix' things. Anyways, I think our friend Michael, and Jack for that matter (dont forget he tried to commit suicide too), couldn't kill themselves because they had affected things in the future already ... in other words, you can't kill them because they've already done something in the future which means they have to stick around until those deeds happen (in the future). Its like I go ahead and pick an apple that hasn't grown yet, and I eat it. Then when I go back in time to pick the apple, TIME expects me to eat it and I can't do anything until that "DESTINY" is fulfilled! This show is about DESTINY....and I think this has to play into this immortality thing somehow.