Not being Sheldon Cooper, I can't really keep up with the physics or math required to really understand this stuff, though I've always found it to be interesting. I've always suspected that inflation was hand waving by physicists to make up for the fact that they can't really explain what happened that soon after the big bang.
Possible. Inflation explains some things better than any other theory so far, for example the smoothness problem. That said, it might get kicked to the curb for a better theory. Probably will sooner or later. Nothing is ever settled in real science. (Which of course puts the lie to the “settled science” of Gorbal Warming...)