I think only three years or so. Island-Present was 2007 by the end, I believe.

if Jacob and Esau (Samuel?) can't get off the island

Where was it ever stated, or even implied, that Jacob couldn't leave the island?

I think only Smokey was trapped. Hell, Jacob was the one who made it that way, if I recall.

Fern, I think a lot of the people calling the island "Purgatory" don't mean it in the RC doctrine place-you-go-after-death sense. They're being metaphorical, because it's a place in which the Lostaways got to burn off their sins.

Teppy, in one of my early drafts, I really expounded on that idea and then I grossed myself out, so I cut it out and reworked the whole section. I mean, I had a whole riff on Desmond getting * Toxic Shock Syndrome. *

And yeah, Jacob wasn't trapped. I think CJ is the one who told the MiB that he'd never get off the island, though (so I suspect it was her "rule" at first).

Cindy,

unfortunately, there are people who mistook the end of the series as saying that the whole series took place in purgatory.

I stand corrected on Jacob leaving, thought it was both of them. I think I need to watch from the beginning, and see what makes sense and doesn't. I also missed the end of season three and beginning of four. It's hard to keep track of everything that was said and what happened.

I've also added my own flash-sideways where Sayid works out his conflicted nature and ends up with Nadia. I think he belongs with her rather than Shannon, but in purgatory and heaven, anything's possible. At least in this athiest's version it is.

I realized that flash-sideways was not a "what if" reality, because the lives were too different than what we'd been shown during the flashbacks. There had to be more to it than flight 815 not crashing.

unfortunately, there are people who mistook the end of the series as saying that the whole series took place in purgatory.

Goobers. Wherever else Lost was vague, Christian's speech to Jack and Jack's on-island death seemed to leave no wiggle room to me.

Christian's speech to Jack and Jack's on-island death seemed to leave no wiggle room to me.

Then again, Christian was a dead guy. Wearing tennis shoes.

(I actually am totally on board with the island-was-really-real explanation; I just wanted to pick on a fictional dead guy.)

Plus...how was he wearing the tennis shoes if at least one of them was hanging -- rotting in the tree, at the edge of the beach near the bamboo grove -- AMIRITE?

There was probably more than one pair of tennis shoes on the plane when it crashed.