What a show! Here are my thoughts:
Did anybody catch the name of the guy at the beginnign of show who was talking to Jacob? Since he said that he was going to find a loophole to be able to kill Jacob, I'm going to call him "Loophole Guy".
Well, now we know why they showed us that it was Locke who took Richard thru the jungle to when Locke was shot in the leg and Richard told Locke that he had to die. It wasn't Locke, but Loophole-Guy-Locke who needed Locke dead so that he could use Locke's body. I'm thinking that the loophole was that the true leader of the Hostiles had the ability to kill Jacob. So Loophole Guy took over Locke's body. When he found Richard again after 3 years, he asked Richard "I AM still your leader, aren't I?" and Richard said "absolutely".
Sad about Sayid and Juliet. But I don't really think either of their deaths was on a par with Charlie's death (like somebody had posted in a spoiler a while back). Yes, Juliet died very similarly to Charlie - she realized that while she somehow survived that fall down the hole that she was going to die anyway so why not get that bomb to detonate.
The most heart-wrenching part of that whole thing was Sawyer's grief. Such great acting on Josh Hollway's part.