One Mystery Solved
Just saw this on the EW site. I have to say, that's what I had thought all along. I was surprised when I got online and saw people claiming it was some new, final 'twist.'
My thought was what a nice little hommage to where it started.
But there were people on TWOP wigging out that this was some extra final twisty coda.
Anyway, it's official. It had nothing to do with the plot.
From EW:
...ABC just threw those final images in there, and it didn’t actually have anything to do with the show’s plot. ABC told the LA Times that the network - not executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse - added the shots of the beach simply to soften the transition from the emotional ending of the series finale to the 11 p.m. news and didn’t realize that viewers who had been obsessing over every detail of every scene of every episode might have considered the series’ final images as having some hidden meaning.
“”The images shown during the end credits of the Lost finale, which included shots of Oceanic 815 on a deserted beach, were not part of the final story but were a visual aid to allow the viewer to decompress before heading into the news,” an ABC spokesperson told the Times.
Mystery solved.