Given how TV pacing works, the episode wasn’t really able to convey a sense that thousands of years had passed by on Earthly time between Jack’s on-land death and his arrival at the church, with everyone inside existing independently from universal dimensions like time and space.
And while his explanation isn’t a game-changer that will win everyone over, he adds some further abstraction to the events of the flash-sideways that definitely helps.
Especially with all the stories overlapping as the episode goes on.
Michael Emerson’s theories on Lost’s ending came from a video taken at this year’s Walker Stalker Convention in Atlanta, where the actor joined the usual lineup of stars from The Walking Dead, a show that has had its own share of viewer backlashes.