Wow, how did I forget that all those other people died on the second plane. The oceanic 5 are sociopaths.
The fact Widmore just showed up in his sub afterwards makes it even better. Guess they didn't
really need to sacrifice innocents after all, huh? Ah, well! They came back to the island, and that's really all that matters (to the characters, the writers, and sadly, most of the audience, it seems)!
And I love how the writers didn't even bother to explain how all those people who survived that second plane crash died soon after
at all. Who murdered them? Why? Nobody gives a fuck, apparently. I guess those flaming arrows that took care of the extras from the first plane still weren't lazy enough for Lindelof and Cuse.
Iirc, they were killed on the island by Widmore, no?
No explanation was ever given. Sawyer accused Widmore, Widmore said that wasn't him, and that was it. Never mentioned again.
WIDMORE: Do you know who I am?
SAWYER: Of course I do. You're the fella that sent a freighter to the island loaded with guys to kill us all.
WIDMORE: It's sad, really... how little you actually know.
SAWYER: Well, I know you murdered all them people out there and dropped 'em in a ditch.
WIDMORE: We didn't murder those people. But I don't expect you to believe that.
SAWYER: Good, I don't
[Incidentally, gotta love that "it's sad, how little you actually know" bit... "Yeah, let's
hint at there being some kind of deeper motive for Widmore to send those mercenaries... and just stop there, because
eeeh, writing good plots and coherent character motivations is
haaaard, man... why not simply try and trick our audience into believing we did, as usual?"]
The actual plane landed on the island safely.
I'm not sure if some of the passengers died (seems a bit odd that they'd all survive, especially considering the idea was to reenact the circumstances of the first plane crash as much as possible ("which is why we really need your father's shoes, Jack!"), and a bunch of people died then... but
let's say). but the co-pilot absolutely did.
Besides, our "heroes" should know how dangerous that island is, and that even if you somehow survive the crash, you might still die a violent death later on anyway. So... that's really fucked up no matter how you look at it. Especially considering their reasons for coming back to the island were extremely flimsy (and it turns out the Man in Black needed to kill the candidates, so simply keeping those
off the island would have been the better idea... guess Hawking just didn't know what the fuck she was talking about, huh?)...
Also, Hurley had purchased a ton of extra tickets to avoid having as many innocents on-board as possible.
How sweet of him.