Late-night thoughts after watching disc 2. These are somewhat influenced from hearing people talk around spoilers for the ending, so if you haven't seen such discussions, I recommend not clicking on the cut.
Okay, two guesses:
- The Philosopher's Stone will not restore their bodies, at least not the way they think.
I feel pretty confident about this one; last night I remembered Al saying that the Stone was thought to override the laws of alchemy, including equivalent exchange, and that's just all wrong, even just with the episodes to date. It's too easy; even if they find the Stone, they'll need more.
- Ed will sacrifice himself to restore Al's body.
This is just a guess, based partly on an observation that might be incorrect. I got there by wondering what would be sufficiently equivalent to fix things; and a body for a body seems pretty equivalent. The possibly-incorrect observation is that it seemed that all the bridging voiceover is being done by Al in retrospect—at least, I'm pretty sure that Al did all the voiceovers for the episodes we watched last night, but my recollection of the first four might be faulty. And even then, that doesn't mean that the entire show is necessarily retrospective and Al is the only one left to tell it; after all, this arc is all a long flashback anyway.
I almost disabled comments for this entry, because if you spoil me for the ending, I will have to kill you with my brain, and that's just tiring. However, if someone wants to tell me whether I remember correctly and all the narration to date has been Al, or if the voiceover has story implications, instead of just being a convenience, I think that would be okay. Or not, whatever you like.
Also, someone on LJ a while back posted about a masquerade entry from episode . . . three, I guess it is, with pictures and a comment that it was logistically very difficult. I thought it was 
rushthatspeaks, but I can't find it now. Anyone have a link?
Finally, GIP, because I am altogether too enamoured of this icon.