Faraday's mother is the real mystery for me. She knew way more than everybody else and nobody ever explained why. And Desmond told her that her son wasn't going with him and the gang, but I still don't get why. Most of the important people were there, except the really bad ones - the irredeemable ones (like Keemey.) Faraday wasn't a bad guy.
Walt just left the island as a kid and forgot about them like it was a bad dream.
I hear you and, yes, I heard Harold make that statement on Kimmel last night. It was an important point amid the silliness (Widmore made the other important point: he could never figure out whether he was oriented good or bad). I am tempted to infer that anyone not in the church is not ‘moving on’, especially because people were there who died during the series, Jack who dies at the very end, and those who presumably die later in subjective time. Anyone not on the boat doesn’t go, I guess.
That’s why I thought there’d be a bigger convention at the end, not least to let the actors who made a big mark but were left out of the ongoing plot get a last curtain call (I’m thinking Ana Lucia as the archetype here).
Walt was in season 5 with Locke and, to me, the conversation closed out that character.
Just a thought.
The ALT timeline this season proved to be the world in which the characters lived after their deaths. In that world, Widmore and Eloise (Faraday’s mother) knew that they were dead, but were choosing not to move on. Faraday himself had begun to “see” his life on the island, but had not figured out that he was dead. Eventually he will see that his own mother shot him.
Desmond was the catalyst who was going around facilitating the main characters awakening—the fact that they were dead—and quickening their “moving on”. He was helping them see their deaths, without breaking the rules by telling them outright. I think not telling them also made it easier for them to accept the truth. Eloise, wanting to spend time with her son, didn’t want Desmond to wake up Daniel yet.
That explains the ALT timeline, but the writers never explained anything about the island. Obviously Widmore and Eloise knew about the island, knew about its properties, and how to find it. But, since they never told us any of those mysteries, it makes me ask, “Who the hell cares?”