Lost Finale: The Flash-Sideways Sound

I just realized something kind of cool. All this season, while fans have been trying to figure out what the flash-sideways were (no one guessed a magical waiting room), there was some debate over why the flash-back noise changed.

For the first five seasons, whenever there was a flashback, the sound was a whooshing sound that we've all become pretty familiar with. But starting with Season 6, whenever they went to a Flash-Sideways, the whoosh was replaced with the sound of a plane flying by. I always just assumed this was because blowing up the Jughead bomb worked, and the Losties were whoosing back onto Flight 815. Or that it was supposed to represent this alternate reality where the plane landed safely in LAX.

Butnow, watching the last scene of the finale and knowing what the flash-sideways really are, I noticed something. The sound of the plane they've been using to jump to the flash-sideways on the show is ALSO the exact same sound effect used when the plane flies over Jack's head at the end of the finale when he dies. He lies down, wondering if he saved anyone, and then sees his friends flying off the island and hears the whoosh of the plane as he passes into the afterlife. Pretty cool.

So as soon as Jack died, he went to the flash-sideways world that began as we saw it begin in Season 6's opening episode. One other cool thing about that: Season 6 actually opened with a shot of clouds, before pulling back through the window of the plane into Jack's seat. Was this a nod to Jack's soul ascending into the afterlife? A nice touch, methinks.