Frozen on a tropical island

So here's the thing.

Today the season finale of Lost airs, and I cannot wait. It's been an astonishing season, driven I believe largely by the fact that Lindelof and Cuse came into the season with a firm commitment and deadline - 3 more seasons, 16 episodes a season - that allowed them to really get the storytelling going without any of the padding that they had to use when they were trying to the story without a fixed airdate. The strike may have knocked a couple of episodes off the season, but it's still going well And now we're at the finale - and if there's one thing Lost knows how to do, it's how to make a mindblowing oh-my-gosh finale.

The big thing I'm looking forward to seeing is, if the Oceanic 6 do leave the island in the finale (Lindelof and Cuse have said they do, but there is a chance they may have been referring to last week's flash-forward), how do they come together, since they're scattered across the island?

In addition, there is the question of the big codename scene. Each season, they have a major surprise scene that they give a codename to.
* Season 1 was the "Bagel" (Walt is kidnapped)
* Season 2 was the "Challah" (the Portuguese guys in the monitoring station)
* Season 3 was called the "Snake in the Mailbox (surprise! it's not a flashback, it's a flash-forward)
* Season 4 has the codename "Frozen Donkey Wheel". No, I don't understand the name either, or know where it came from. But I can't wait to find out what the scene is.

At the moment, having very carefully avoided any spoiler sites and having no knowledge of the episode beyond anything officially released, I'm fully expecting
(a) the Oceanic 6 to somehow regroup and leave
(b) Locke to then use the Orchid station to move the island forward in time, probably meaning that for those on the Island no time passes, but it's suddenly 2008, not 2004, which means
(c) time will have caught up with itself. Suddenly the present-day for season 5 on both the island and off will be 2008, starting at the point when Jack told Kate "We have to go back". The story will progress in a linear fashion from there. Any more details about what the Oceanic 6 got up to in their first few years will be filled in as flashback (although I think we've got the general story for most of the characters already). In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if season 4 was the only season to regularly use the flash-forward device.

So there we are. That's what I'm expecting to happen in Lost. Of course, I'll be entirely wrong (much as I was when I confidently told everyone that Michael travelled back in time a few years), but half the fun of Lost is trying to predict where the show is going, and then being pleasantly surprised when they do something much more interesting.

It's going to be an exciting night.