Lost Season 2 Finale

Hands down my favorite show for the last two years (and I only caught on midway through the first season - thank god for episode bittorrents on the net!) the 2nd season Lost finale was better than the last one (and the season one cliffhanger was GREAT!). We finally know why they push the button, and that it's a darned good idea to keep on pushing it, and the whole reason their plane came down in the first place was because the previous button pusher decided not to do his job that day!
First off, what's with the huge Lord of the Rings statue of a foot with only 4 toes? They reveal some more connections the crew have with each other (Libby gave Desmond his boat (was that before or after she spent time with Hurley in the Psych ward?). They stumble upon the destination of all those containers carrying the journal entries up the pneumatic tube from the Swan hatch. A ginormous pile of them sitting in a field in the center of a solitary tube! No-one's been reading them!

The revelation that pushing the button discharges a huge natural magnetic buildup was fantastic. This explains why stuff sticks to that one wall on the inside(grin) and how the plane got all mixed up and got pulled screaming to the ground that day Desmond took the afternoon off. Actually, all the action that centered around the hatch was excellent writing. I'm reminded of the season opener where they go down the hatch and Desmond is there, listening to 70's records and mixing himself a drink.

The flashbacks with him and Rudzinski(who plays the voice of Mr Crabs on Spongebob) showing that he and his old partner started the invisible map of all the hatches as well as the revelation of a fail-safe key below were cool as well. Rudzinski also wore a bio suit up above but knew that there was no biohazzard. What's with that?

Then there's the Others who we've been seeing over this season. Or the Hostiles as Desmond's partner called them. At one point, the guy who says he's Henry Gale (dead baloonist) gets asked by Michael "Who are you?" and he goes..

"We're the good guys.."

We still don't know why they kidnap the plane crash survivors, why they are interested in children, dress in rags, wear fake beards etc..

And the coordinates they give Michael when they give him back his son and a boat, 332 degrees (or something like that) and instructions that if he takes that bearing, he'll be free of the Island but he won't be able to come back? Weird..

They blow up the hatch, there's a big hazy wave in the sky that covers everything (no idea).. Mr. Echo, Locke, Desmond, who knows if they made it out..

The best was the ending. The two Brazilian guys in the snowy monitoring station, recording some sort of seismic event, and then calling Desmond's long lost love. What's with that?