So… is Juliet dead, or not?

Elizabeth Mitchell and Damon Lindelof have revealed the answer to this much-feared question. Don’t click through if you don’t want to know!

According to the latest issue of TV Guide Magazine, Juliet did indeed die setting off the explosion of Jughead, the hydrogen bomb. Of course, she will still be seen in Season 6, likely in the alternate timeline created by the detonation, but this seems to cast a dark shadow on any hopes Sawyer/Juliet fans have of the two getting a happily ever after in the end.

“The decision to kill Juliet was absolutely brutal,” according to Lindelof. “We have to really love you to give you a finale death,” he said.

For her part, Mitchell says she “cried for a couple of days” when she found out about Juliet’s fate, and even got drunk with her sister and castmate Evangeline Lilly.

In a separate interview at Entertainment Weekly, Carlton Cuse says that “There’s still something very significant that we have not yet learned about the character.” Added Lindelof, “Juliet basically birthed season 6 by the actions that she takes in the final seconds of season 5. She is completely responsible for the end game of the show. So the character is going to be seen in a slightly different light this year. We gave her that action for a reason, and that’s because she’s so important to the fabric of the story.”

Mitchell also says that she never expected the character to last beyond one season.

What does this confirmation mean to the show’s storyline? If Jughead killed Juliet, then it definitely detonated, and seemingly destroyed the island, creating the alternate timeline we’ll see in Season 6. Yet we also know Season 6 will continue the storyline on the island that we’ve been watching over the last five seasons. So the obvious question is: how can the island still exist if it was destroyed by the hydrogen bomb?

Any theories?