I wanted to post this here since I hadn’t seen it discussed yet. Jeff Jensen at EW has an interesting theory about the island’s role in Lost. I hadn’t thought about the story in this way before but it kind of makes sense to me. It’s rather long.
Well, that how I read the Sideways storylines. Each character was the creator of his/her own world, working through, or experiencing what was needed to bring each one to the point of being ready to move on.