It’s Jacob!

When does this opening sequence take place? Mid to late 1800’s presumably since that is when the Black Rock apparently went missing. What’s more interesting though is the suggestion that Jacob in fact brought the ship to the island, if that’s the case did he play more of a part in bringing Oceanic 815, the Nigerian drug plan and Henry Gale’s hot air balloon to the island as well?

Who is Jacob’s enemy?

Jacob wasn’t alone in the open sequence, there was a second, unnamed, character on the beach with him. Who was he? There is some suggestion that he could be Esau, the biblical brother of Jacob. Also interesting to note that his clothing is black/dark and the complete opposite to Jacob’s white/light clothing.

It only ends once, everything that happens before that is just progress

Interesting quote form Jacob, hinting that here is some ultimate end-game that we are on the path too, and perhaps we haven’t even seen any indication what this end game may be yet.

What is the statue?

It has been confirmed by ABC that the statue is of Taweret, the Egyptian goddess of birth, rebirth and the northern sky. Still no real idea how old it is, only that it was there in the 1800’s and mostly demolished by 1974.

Why did Jacob visit the losties, when did he visit them.

These moments served as Jacob’s flashbacks for this episode. Interesting that some were pre crash and some post crash.

He visits Kate (and her friend Tom - the one with the toy plane) as a kid after she tried to steal a lunchbox. He asks her to promise not to steal anymore.

He visits James at his parents funeral, and provides him with a replacement pen which he uses to write his letter to the real Sawyer.

He stops Sayid in LA (after returning from the island). Sayid is with Nadia, who steps out onto the street and is hit by a car. By Jacob stopping Sayid he quite possibly saved him from a similar fate.

He sitting outside the building that Anthony Cooper pushes Locke from. After Locke falls Jacob goes over and squeezes his shoulder. Did he just do it to wake him up, or did he use his magic powers to revive him?

He is at Sun and Jin’s wedding.

He meets Jack after that first major surgery where he stuffed things up and did his whole count to 5 thing.

He meets Hurley in a taxi outside the jail. Hurley is the only one to which he specially mentions anything to do with the island. Its possible that Jacob also bailed Hurley out.

Eloise is pregnant

Well, there goes my (highly unlikely) theory that there was an infant Dan hiding somewhere on the island.

The swan station was Radzinsky’s experiment

I kind of got the impression that Pierre Chang wasn’t too pleased about this, and that the two of them aren’t exactly friends.

Alpert says that its because of Jacob that he doesn’t age

After Alpert tells Locke that he’s never seen anyone come back from the dead on the island, Locke retorts with “I’ve never seen a man that doesn’t age”, Alpert explains that this is thanks to Jacob. So could Alpert have been around at the same time the opening sequence took place? If not how old is he?

What/who is the candidate?

Bram and Ilana mention that they should keep Frank because he might be the candidate even though he didn’t know the answer to their question. But a candidate for what? Jacob’s replacement?

Horrace’s Dharamville house leads to the tunnels

Given that Horrace was the leader, and so was Ben, is this the house that would have been Ben’s in 2004? Given Ben’s affiliation with the Others its highly likely that he knew about the tunnels.

Ben’s dad shoots Sayid

Revenge I guess.

So that’s where they went…

Sawyer, Kate and Juliet arrive back on the island (after busting out of the sub) and find that Rose and Bernard have been living in peace in the jungle for three years - with Vincent.

Jacob’s cabin

The Ajira folk arrive at Jacob’s cabin to find he isn’t there, it looks like someone else has been using it, Christian Shepherd? Ilana finds a piece of Jacob’s tapestry that indicates he’s at the statue.

I’m not going to kill him you are

Locke tells Ben that he will actually be the one that will kill Jacob, and when Ben asks why Locke is happy to oblige with several perfectly good reasons, easily convincing Ben. Those reason were, despite his loyal service and the powers of the island he still got cancer, he had to watch Alex die, he followed blind orders and yet was still banished, and not once did he ever meet Jacob. Locke suggests Ben should be asking why wouldn’t he want to kill him.

Driveshaft

On their way to the Statue Locke, Sun and the others come across their old beach camp. Sun finds Aaron’s crib and finds the ring that Charlie left for him before he set of to meet his doom in the looking glass station.

What is done is done

Sawyer gives Jack the “what is done is done” speech. Explaining how both his parents died when he was a kid, and that relative to them (in 1977) it happened a couple of years ago, and that if he believe that he could have actually prevented it (ie. been able to change the past) that he would have left the island when he had the chance.

Black and white

During his meetings with all the losties off the island, is it just me or is Jacob wearing dark clothing in most cases? Does this mean anything, was this really Jacob? Or was it Jacob’s enemy doing everything he could to get the path of time to lead to the point where he would find his loophole and be able to kill Jacob…

“see you in Los Angeles”

Jack was very confident that the bomb theory was going to work, big change from when he used to butt heads with Locke of the whole science vs. faith argument.

Miles - saying what we’re all thinking

“Has it occurred to your that your friend (Jack) is going to cause the thing that he’s trying to prevent…” - exactly.

Wheres the kaboom, there was supposed to be an Earth shattering kaboom

Jack dropped bomb and… nothing happened, Sawyer joked that “this doesn’t look like LAX”. And then the incident started, metallic objects flying all of over the place, Chang’s hand got crushed, Phil got skewered with a bunch of metal rods (yay), and Juliet got caught in a chain and dragged down the shaft.

What lies in the shadow of the statue?

Ilana and the Ajira folk arrive looking for ‘Ricardos’ (Richard), she asks him “what lies in the shadow of the statue?”, with out a second of hesitation he answers “Ille qui nos omnes servabit”, which means “he who will save (or protect) us all”. Which “he” is this referring to? Is Richard the “he”, or is Jacob, or is Jacob’s enemy (unlikely) or is the one who will save them all the “candidate” that they were referring to earlier? Then they tell him they have something to show him, they open the crate they’ve been carrying around and tip something out. What is it? It’s Locke’s dead body, that’s what it is. Meaning that the Locke that’s gone in to see Jacob isn’t Locke at all. Uh oh.

What is the loophole?

Jacob says that his enemy has finally found his loophole, meaning he’s probably aware at this point that his about to get killed, but what is the loophole? Is it something simple like Jacob’s enemy could be the one to actually do the killing, and had to convince someone else (Ben to do it for him)?

How did Jacob know that Locke wasn’t actually Locke?

He seemed to know instantly that it was his enemy and not the real Locke. Could this have been because he knew that Locke had been killed by Ben and that there really was no way possible that Locke himself could have been alive, or did he just have some weird 6th sense thing happening?

“You have no idea what I’ve gone through to be here. ”

See my comment above, is it possible that it was Jacob’s enemy that was visiting the losties to return them to the island for the purpose of finding the loophole he need to get rid of Jacob?

Ben meets Jacob. Finally

He asks him why, no matter how much he followed order, or how many time she asked, he was never able to meet him before now, he says “what about me?”. Jacob’s reply? “what about you?”. That was enough for Ben, he then got all up close and stabby.

They’re coming.

Jacob’s dying words to his enemy, “they’re coming”. Who are ‘they’, is he just referring to Ilana, Bram and the others or is there another group we don’t know about. After this Jacob’s enemy kick Jacob into the fire to finish him off.

Out with a bang

The final scene we travel down the shaft of the swan station, at the bottom we see Juliet, suddenly her eyes open. She either did really well to survive the fall… or she was being reanimated by the island/Jacob. Juliet sees the bomb and picks up a rock ad starts bashing the bomb with it. After exactly 8 hits. Bang. White. LOST.

Now we just have to endure several months of waiting to find out what the hell happened. Did the bomb go off as planned after Juliet hit it? If it did, what did it do? Are they going to be in LA as though the plane never crashed on the island? Will they still be in 1977? Will they all be dead as previously foretold by Alpert? Will they be back in 2004 at a time prior to them leaving the island? Who knows, they’ve left it pretty open. I can’t wait.

Are/were there two Dans on the island?

I originally based this on the assumption that Dan would have been older than Charlotte (and Miles), and that the Eloise we see with a young Dan playing the piano looks no much older than the Eloise on the island, meaning it would have to have been reasonably soon after leaving, and also we know that Charles is the father, and he remains on the island for longer than Eloise.

According to Lostpedia Dan was born in 1978 but there doesn’t appear to be any references for this date, its also suggested that if he were, then the scene with young Dan (approx. 10) would have been around 1988, then when we see Dan graduate from Oxford in 1996 (which would in theory make him 18 - not impossible) the character of Eloise has aged a lot in those 8 years, yet doesn’t age much at all between 1996 and 2007.

From this I believe there must be a baby Dan toddling around the hostiles camp, plus if she already had a son named Dan it would explain why Eloise was fairly quick to accept Jack’s explanation of things about them being from the future etc. I’m probably way off, but its fun to theorize a little.

Is Richard building a model of the Black Rock?

Maybe. It is a large ship with sails and a hull…

How did Locke find the others’ beach camp so easily?

I’m guessing “the island told him”, or maybe he just traipsed along the beach until he found them.

Alpert the Adviser

Sun asks Ben who Locke is talking to, he explains that his name is Richard Alpert and that he serves as an adviser of sorts, a role which has had for a very, very long time. Ok, we get it, he’s old, but how old? Did he help build the Statue? Is/was the Statue of Alpert? Does Alpert come from a time/place where man only had 4 toes?

I watched them all die

Sun asks Alpert if he met Jack, Kate, Jin etc in 1977, he tells that he remembers them well because he watched them all die. So I’ll assume they didn’t die from the detonation of the hydrogen bomb because you would expect that that would take Alpert too (maybe). When he says “them all”, who is he referring to? Does he mean everyone on the island, or everyone in the Dharma Initiative, or just Jack, Kate, Jin and the other losties? And for any of those groups, how did they die?

The bomb is under Dharmaville

Eloise tells Jack that the bomb if underneath what is now Dharmaville. To get to the bomb they go through an underwater tunnel into another mysterious, hieroglyphic laden chamber which Alpert refers to as “the tunnels”. Tunnels? interesting. Could these be the same tunnels that Smokey uses to makes its way to all parts of the island? I’m guessing that the “magic room” Ben goes into to summon smokey is also connected to the tunnels. Are these tunnels the same thing, or at least connected to the “cerebus vents” that were marked on the blast door map in the Swan station?

I really hate Phil and Radzinsky

Just saying.

Who’s he talking to? That’s me

Locke takes Ben and Alpert to the drug plane where Locke had appeared after Ethan shot him. Turns out that Alpert was told by Locke to talk to Locke and that it was Locke’s instructions for Alpert to tell Locke that would have to leave the island and bring the others back, and that he would have to die to convince them to do so. Awesome.

Impeccable timing John

So, the island told him when to be at the plane, really? The island and Locke seem to be getting very chatty of late, wonder what it thinks of his future plans…

I’ve already changed the future

Sayid still thinks that he was successful in killing Ben, and he’s far from impressed when he finds out that Kate and Sawyer saved him by taking him to the hostiles.

We all live in a Dharma submarine, Dharma submarine, Dharma submarine…

After Pierre Chang finally believe that Miles, Dan, Hurley etc are all from the future (and that Miles really is his son) he organises for all the women and children to be evacuated on the submarine. This includes baby Miles and his mother and young Charlotte. After agreeing to trade information for a a sub ride, Sawyer and Juliet are also on the sub… oh and who should hop aboard at the last moment to spoil things, Kate, of course.

Ok, now what

Sayid’s reason for going with Jack, Eloise and Alpert is that the plan “might just save us all, and if it doesn’t at least you’ll put us out of our misery”. Alpert tells Jack that they will have to get it out the same way that they got it in. I’d say that since its a huge bomb, it would have been easiest for them to just lower it from wherever it was into “the tunnels”, this means it was located where Dharmaville now stands, and in order to get it out they’ll need to lift it out into the middle of Dharmaville. I sense a few problems ahead.

I’m going to kill him

Apparently Locke isn’t interested in being reunited with his people, he just wants to find Jacob so that he can kill him. Good luck with that. Although, does he mean kill, like the way that Eloise killed Dan, or just to kill everyone’s belief in “Jacob”, to break their faith and use it to his advantage? Probably not. Who knows its the season finale of Lost anything could happen.

Des is alive

After being shot by Ben he’s rushed to hospital, while in surgery Penny meets Eloise who explains that she thinks its her son’s fault that Des got shot. Later on we find out Des is in recovery and going to be ok.

Why is Dan back?

He tells miles that its because he saw the 1977 recruit photo with Jack, Kate and Hurley in it. However the real reason is that he knows about the incident and he wants to prevent it from happening.

Destiny? no.

Dan tells Jack and the others that they don’t belong here and that his mother was wrong when she told them it was their ‘destiny’ to go back to the island. Is destiny a faith thing and is that why it doesn’t sit well with Dan, a man of science?

You need to order the immediate evacuation…

When Dan finds Chang at the Orchid (he also notes that he arrived ‘right on time’… did Dan already know that he’d be there at that exact time…) he tells Chang to evacuate the island immediately because there is going to be a massive incident in 6 hours at the swan and he knows because he is from the future. Chang isn’t amused and thinks he’s joking. When Dan tries to explain that Miles is his son and also from the future Miles just flatly denies it.

Do what he’s supposed to do?

Dan tells Miles that he’s trying to make sure he gets Chang to “do what he’s supposed to do”. What is that exactly? I’m assuming that he just means evacuating the island?

Shall we stay or shall we go

The Losties convene at Sawyers place, to discuss what they are going to do now, they’ve basically got two options, try and take the sub and leave the island, or flee back into the jungle and start from scratch again. General consensus is that they spent too long trying to get back only to leave again so soon.

One of them is my Mother

Dan tells the other he needs to find the Hostiles because one of them is his Mother and she’s the only person that can help them get back to where they are supposed to be. Sawyer protests, but after he calls Kate ‘freckles’ Juliet gives Kate the sonic fence codes so that Jack and Her can take Dan out to the hostiles (she’s probably also hoping that Kate doesn’t come back…)

Why are you telling me this?

Dan is sitting watching the news about the discovery of Oceanic 815, sobbing without knowing why. Is this because somewhere inside him he knows why that plane crashed, and that he was unable to prevent it? Anyway, Charles Widmore shows up and introduces himself, he proceeds to tell Dan that the plane is an expensive fake and that plane really crashed on an island. When Dan asks why he would tell him this, Charles says its because he won’t even remember it tomorrow. He wants to send Dan to this island because it can help further his research and because this island has healing powers that may restore his mind to its former state.

Dan also mentions that he never meant to hurt her (his lab assistant) and that he’d tested it on himself first. Is he says that he used his time travel contraptions to transport his consciousness elsewhere? And if so, where/when did he send himself…

Young Charlotte

What does Dan tell Charlotte this time, does he tell her anything additional to try and prevent her returning in her future? I see this event as a good indication that no matter how hard he tries he can’t change things from happening. Remember after Charlotte died and they ended up in 1974 he said that he wouldn’t tell her this time, yet now he’s just said that he tried not to tell her but maybe it will work this time.

Radzinsky is a pain in the…

Every time we see Radzinsky he gets a little more annoying, I’m just hanging out for the time when he (or someone else) blows his head off in the Swan. This time he has a shootout with Jack, Kate and Dan as they collect guns prior to heading off in search of the hostiles, then after this happens he rocks up at Sawyer’s to discover Phil (who’s also highly annoying) tied up in the closet. Damn Radzinsky ruining everything.

Should I go?

When Dan asks Eloise if he should accept Widmore’s offer and go to the island, you can tell that she would rather have said no, because she knows what’s going to happen once he gets there.

Four hours is blast off

Dan tells Jack that in four hours the incident will happen at the site of the Swan hatch, and its this one thing that he’s traced everything back to, he thinks that preventing the incident will prevent the plane crashing in 2004… and somehow detonating a hydrogen bomb can make things “better”. I won’t repeat my thoughts again here see my last post (Our Present, Their Past) for more talk about this.

He’s my son too *slap*

When Eloise leaves the hospital she runs into Charles, shes say that she had to send her son back to the island knowing full well what would happen, Widmore reveals that Dan is his son too. I had already picked that, since there had never been mention of Dan father, and Charles and Eloise just happened to be similar ages and both hostiles.

She’s behind you!

Dan storms into the hostiles camp with a gun demanding that Alpert tell him where Eloise is, and he wants to know where they put the bomb that he told them to bury in 1954. Pretty sure Dan had no intention of actually shooting Alpert (mind you the bullet probably would have bounced off him), but Eloise was behind him and didn’t waste much time in shooting him in the back.

I’m your son

As Dan is dying he tells Eloise that he’s her son, realising that she knew all along that this would happen.

The Comic-con anomaly

Remember the video from last years Comic-con which was Pierre Chang saying that if he can keep this pinhole open long enough that you should see in this in about thirty years (1977 - 2007, that works), and that he and his colleagues are all dead as a result of a violent purge. There’s a voice behind the camera that sounds a lot like Dan, but prior to Dan leaving to find the Hostiles he hadn’t convinced Chang that he was telling the truth, so when would this have been supposedly filmed? I’m guessing that since this was shown in July last year that the planned story for season 5 changed by the time they got to the point where this would slot in and we should no longer consider it canon.

However, and this is where even I get a little confused, those on the island that encounter the losties during that time in their past (both 1954 and 1977) still have memories of their meetings in 2007. For example, Charles Widmore tell Locke that he met him when he was just 17, yet Locke hasn’t aged a day since then. Locke tells him that its only been four days since they met, despite the meeting taking place in 1954. I’m not entirely sure how this works, is it similar to what Desmond experienced where he just woke up one day with this new memory. In other words, when did Charles remember remembering meeting Locke?

Then in “The Variable” Eloise is telling Charles that she had to send Dan back to the island knowing full well what would happen to him. She knows, because she remembers. How it is that she knows what happens to Dan on the island before she shoots him after she sends him to the island I’m still not sure (and yes, I’m aware the sentence didn’t make much sense). I can work it out in my mind, but couldn’t explain it in words if my life depended on it.

So, everything that the losties are doing in their “present” always happened in the hostiles past, it wasn’t necessarily the losties doing it but it did happen, for example Ben was probably always shot, and always healed by the hostiles, but in circumstances that didn’t involve the losties. Make sense? No? Didn’t think so.

Dan’s plan was based on his theory that he’d worked out the important ‘variables’ in the complex equation of time, and that these ‘variables’ are the people (not sure if he just meant the losties, or people in general). These people have free will etc etc and should be able to think for themselves, despite what they know, and be able to alter what happens in their future (in the case of the losties). But so far almost everything we’ve seen has really pointed towards time “course-correcting” no matter what the losties or anyone else does. The only thing that went against this was when Dan knocked on the hatch door and told Desmond to go and find Eloise, Des awoke with his ‘new’ memory of Dan that he seemingly didn’t have before.

By detonating the hydrogen bomb, Dan hopes to stop the incident occurring, which will remove the need for Dharma to encase the Swan station in concrete, which removes the need to push a button every 108 minutes, which means Desmond will never not push the button, and that will never cause Oceanic 815 to crash, meaning the losties will never be on the island, they’ll never have to leave the island, Ben will never turned the donkey wheel, the island and those on it will never skip through time and they’ll never end up in 1977…. But, if they never end up in 1977 how will Dan detonate the bomb to prevent those other 47 things from happening. Confused, hell yes. Prediction, don’t worry about it because I don’t think they will detonate the bomb.

With “the incident” just a few hours away, and Dan, umm, not doing so well, what’s going to happen in the last couple of episodes? I’m guessing that the incident will result in the losties returning to the time they belong in (2007), but will it be the same 2007 that they left? Depends if Dan is right or not about being able to alter the future.

When he discovers his “power” it freaks him out, which is fair enough he’s just a kid, but also freaks his Mother out. She mustn’t know why he can hear the dead, and we still don’t know why either. Is it just a side effect of being born on the island? Or did Pierre volunteer his own son for some weird experiment?

Grid 334

Miles is told to go to Radzinsky at “gird 334”, which Miles says is ‘hostile territory’. It also appears to the be the site where the construction of the Swan station is taking place. It being in hostile territory would be why Radzinsky was so worried when Sayid saw the Swan hatch model. Radzinsky, and the other workers are wearing jumpsuits with the Swan logo on them.

Here we go

After Roger discovers that Ben is missing goes says he’s going to tell security, Juliet looks at Kate and says “here we go” but that’s really the last we see of it apart form seeing Roger boozing it up on the swing set and then later talking to Jack. Maybe he never got to security, or when he did there was no-one there (Sawyer off in the jungle and Miles somewhere between the Swan and the Orchid)

Hurley is writing “The Empire Strikes Back”

I don’t even like Star Wars, but I though this was hilarious. I really enjoy the banter between Hurley and Miles especially when it delves into the mysteries of time (which it didn’t really this time) and they each try their best to debunk each other theories.

“That douche is my dad”

After delivering the body (who apparently died after a filling was ‘sucked’ out of his tooth and through his brain by the electromagnetic force at the Swan construction site) to Pierre Chang at the Orchid station we find out that, wait for it, Chang is Miles’ Father. Wow. Totally not surprised. Ever since the Pierre Chang video that was released at Comic-Con last year I think most avid fans had already worked this one out, it was just a matter of time until they revealed it for certain.

Widmore paying miles $1.6 million to go to the island

Naomi recruits Miles’ he turns the offer down initially but swiftly changes his mind when he’s told there is $1.6 million on offer. This pretty much explains why he asks Ben for $3.2 million to lie to Widmore about Ben being alive.

Who is Bram, and who is he working for?

Miles is snatched by Bram (one of the other people that was conveniently on Ajira 316), who tries to talk him out of working for Widmore. Bram asks “do you know what lies in the shadow of the statue” (same question Ilana posed to Frank on the beach), and says that if he doesn’t know the answer then he is not ready to go to island. Bram also says that if he goes with them he will learn why he can do what he can do, and also about his father. Miles says they’ll have to pay him double before he’ll change his mind.

So, who is Bram? And who’s he working for. I was working on the theory that Ilana, Bram and possibly others on the Ajira flight were connected to Widmore, but it seems now that, at least, Bram is against him. I don’t think they are on Ben’s side, or if they are they’ve kept it well hidden. So is there a third player in this game? Who? Both Ilana and Bram have now raised the question about the ‘shadow of the statue’, and the statue seems to be something that only the hostiles/others know about. Are Bram and Ilana others? Are they really from 2007? Who else is on their side? They are against Widmore, so are they also against Ben? Bram told Miles that he was on the side thats going to win. Ben too believes he will win. So many questions.

Phil knows who took Ben

After he finds the video he goes to confront La Fleur, who says there’s a logical explanation. This explanation is a punch in the face. Good, I didn’t like Phil.

He’s back!

Pierre and Miles go to meet the scientists arriving via the sub and who should it be? Dan, he’s back. Miles looks stunned, Dan says “long time no see”. Its dark, but Dan appears to have his long hair back, much like when Desmond visited him at Oxford in the 1990’s. Whether that means anything I’m not sure. He also appears to still have two legs. So where has Dan been, and what’s he been doing during his time off the island. I’m hoping for some time freakiness in this weeks episode “The Variable”. I’ve got this weird theory about 1990’s Dan being the same Dan that’s just arrived on the sub, but since I didn’t write it down two weeks ago its mostly gone now, I had it all worked out too. If I remember my logic, I’ll be sure to post it.

Ben healed by the temple

It would appear that he’s all healed, and with no memory of what happened, but we still don’t know how exactly the temple healed him, or what the temple is. Ben tells Charles that he doesn’t want to go back to Dharmaville, but Charles says that he can go back and still be “one of them” (the hostiles).

Ben awakes to the ‘land of the living’

He tells Locke that he knew that he’d be alive. When Locke asks him why he’s so surprised if he knew, Ben says its because he could really believe it until he actually saw it for himself.

Why did Ben come back to the island?

Ben claims that he came back to be judged by “smokey” for the things that he’s done. I’m not sure I totally buy this, I think he has other reasons, which is probably why he probably wasn’t expecting Locke to ‘help’ him achieve it, and why he was rather nervous about the whole thing.

The French Acquisition

Ben was sent (along with young Ethan) to kill Rousseau, however Ben wasn’t aware she had a baby, so he kidnapped Alex and threatened, but didn’t kill, Rousseau. When Ben got back to camp, Widmore told him he should have killed the baby. So it appear Widmore wanted Alex dead from the beginning, guess he got his way in the end.

Why did Ben kill Locke, after stopping him from killing himself?

Ben says that it was the only way to convince everyone to go back to the island, especially since Locke had failed to convince any of them with his visits. He tells Locke that the reason he talked him out of hanging himself was that he had vital information that would have died with him (I assume that this information was related to Eloise Hawking), he then killed him because it was easier than talking John back into committing suicide.

Summoning the monster

Why is the summoning point for smokey located under Ben’s Dharmaville house (and which Dharma member did this house belong to pre-purge? Horace? Pierre Chang?). The reason this seems odd to me is that smokey appears to have more of a “connection” to the hostiles than with the Dharma folk. For example smokey hangs out in/under/around the hostiles temple, and Dharma have built a sonic fence which possibly has the main purpose of keeping smokey away from the village. And when Ben summons smokey (just as he did when the freighter folk came to get him) why doesn’t it show up?

Widmore was banished because…

Widmore was banished because he left the island repeatedly, had a daughter (Penny) with an outsider, basically he broke the rules. Prior to Ben seeing Charles off at the wharf, he’s playing with Alex on the swings in Dharmaville, so would seem that Widmore was banished sometime after the hostiles relocated to the Dharmaville post-purge.

In 2004 Miles mentions something about Widmore trying to get back to the island for almost 20 years, which places his banishment in the mid 1980’s, making the purge in the early to mid 1980’s which doesn’t entirely fit with the 1992 date that’s been semi-revealed as the date of the purge previously. However Ben’s stealing of Alex, which given Alex is about 16 in 2004, would have taken place around 1989 or so which fits much more logically with the 1992 purge date. If Widmore was in fact actually banished around 1992, then I guess its fair that in 2007 he saying that he being trying to get back to the island “for almost 20 years”… its only 15 but, close enough I guess.

Dead is, apparently not, Dead

Ben tells Sun that he’s seen the island heal people but never bring them back from the dead. Has Ben not had any encounter with Christian? Or is Christian really actually dead dead? One thing that possibly confirms either/or both those points is that if Ben knew about Christian then he wouldn’t have necessarily needed Jack to perform his spinal surgery, he could have just gotten Christian to do it, couldn’t he?

How does Locke know where smokey lives?

He just knows. Ok.

Ben kills Penny

Oh, wait, no he doesn’t. He rings Charles Widmore to tell him that he’s going to repay the favor for Alex’s death, and that he’s going to kill Penny. When he goes to kill Penny, but sees their child and hesitates long enough for Desmond (who he’d already shot) to attack him, so in the end he doesn’t kill Penny but does shoot Desmond. I suspect that’s not the last we see of him.

Would be interested to see how many people spotted this, but as Ben is threatening Penny she say that she has no relationship to Charles Widmore

Dammit, I just wanna see the Temple

What we’ve seen previously doesn’t even appear to be the temple, but just the wall around it. Ben say the wall was built by the hostile to keep people away from their temple, which is located about half a mile beyond the wall.

Can’t go through it, gotta go under it

So we still haven’t seen the actual temple, but Locke and Ben do venture under the wall on their quest to make sure Ben faces his judgment.

“What lies in the shadow of the statue”

When Lapidus get back to the Hydra island he finds that Ilana and some of the other Ajira passengers have found guns, Ilana asks him “what lies in the shadow of the statue”? Understandable, Frank has no idea what she’s talking about. Thing is does Ilana know what she’s talking about, and if so why/how. She says get the others, its time to go. Ok, where are they going? to the main island? to the statue? Wherever it is Caesar won’t be joining them,since he because the first of the Ajira crew to meet their demise thanks to a close range shotgun blast to the chest courtesy of Ben, who was “apologising” for killing Locke.

Under the temple wall all is forgiven

The room/chamber that Ben falls into has columns like those seen in the donkey wheel room, lots or hieroglyphics everywhere. The main hieroglyphic depicting Smokey and Anubis (which is one possibly identity for the four-toed statue) sits above a vent. Smokey emerges out of the vent and surrounds Ben showing him flashes of his life before retracting back where it came from. Ben tells Locke that “it let him live”, and he almost seemed disappointed about it.

Wait, I thought Alex was dead?

Still pretty sure that she is, I think this was probably a reanimation much like when Eko saw his brother Yemi, ie. it was a manifestation of the island. When Alex tells Ben that he must do what Locke tells him and that if he doesn’t “I will hunt you down and make you suffer”, the ‘I’ is not Alex but the island/smokey/Jacob etc.

Ben isn’t dead

Ok, not surprised at all. Miles said that he wouldn’t die, and Faraday said you can’t change the future so unless Sayid unlocked some magic puzzle allowing him to change the future Ben was never actually going to die.

Kate visits Cassidy

Couple of points here, first up why does Kate so openly tell Cassidy that they’ve been lying about everything? Probably because it was the only way that she would have believed that Sawyer had asked her to find her. And why was Cassidy not more shocked to find out that the random woman who helped her with a small con at a service station way back when just happened to be on the same plane with the guy that is the father of her daughter, and that they would both survive the plane crash and he would then tell Kate to go and visit her to take care of his daughter. Come on, seriously, tell me that you wouldn’t be asking a hell of a lot of questions.

Back to the Future

Hurley sitting at the dining table starring at his hands, waiting for them to disappear Back to the Future style because he think that if Ben dies then he’ll cease to exist. Awesome.

Hurley and Miles discuss time travel

In the absence of Faraday (why on Earth is he?) Mile attempts to explain the complexities of time to Hurley, with quite entertaining results. I’m going to search for a transcript of their discussion because it worth trying to understand, but the general idea is that for the Losties the 1977 they are in is their present its occurring after their previous time on the island, for Ben and the Dharma folk this 1977 is their present. Miles explains that Ben can’t die because he’s still alive in 2004, but the Losties can die because this is happening after 2004 for them… you got that?

After Miles explains all this, Hurley asks why it is then that if this is Ben’s past that he doesn’t remember that Sayid shot him when he was a kid, when they meet again after Oceanic 815 crashes in 2004. We get his answer from Alpert.

Kate leaves Aaron with Claire’s Mother

They teased a couple of different outcomes, Kate losing Aaron at the supermarket, and then visiting Cassidy, but the final move to leave him with Claire’s Mother was pretty predictable. Kate tells her that Claire is still alive on the island, how can she say this and then tell her that she disappeared into the jungle never to be seen again? And is Kate really going back to find Claire or is that what she’s telling herself to justify going back to the place that she vowed never to return to.

Kate and Sawyer take Ben to the Others

After Juliet suggested that “they” might be able to save Ben, Kate and Sawyer take him across ‘the line’ to meet with the Others. When they find Alpert he takes Ben but warns them that he’ll never be the same again, he will forget this ever happened, his innocence will be gone and he will become one of them.

The fact that he’s going to forget everything explains why he wouldn’t remember Sayid shooting him. We also now have a better idea of what turned young Ben into the evil Ben we know now.

The Temple

After they hand Ben over to the Others Alpert takes him into the Temple, hopefully we find out what lurks behind the big stone door in the next episode. Whats going to happen in there? Is there some magic healing “fountain of youth” (which could explain why Alpert never ages), or perhaps Smokey the monster is going to play a part in healing Ben, maybe its Jacob’s 1977 hideout, maybe its none of those.

Welcome to the land of the living

Locke made sure he’d be sitting by Ben’s bedside when he woke up, I guess this is because the last thing Ben would be expecting is to see the man that he killed sitting in front of him. And with the next episode’s title being “Dead is dead” is this going to apply to Locke or Ben, or someone else…

Sayid’s “mission” is completed

In Russia Sayid assassinates another supposed threat to the Oceanic 6 at Ben’s direction, and when he reports back Ben tell him that they’re finished, that they’ve eliminated all of Widmore’s people that posed a threat to his friends. He tells Sayid to o and live his life. I don’t know about this, Sayid has seemed fairly agro of late with regards to Ben, I think there has to be more to it than them just ‘parting ways’. If his hatred didn’t come from how their working relationship ended, it was probably more to do with the work which begs the question why did he continue to do it (apart from the fact that Sayid is a natural born killer).

Who’s their him?

When Sayid refuses to talk, Horrace takes him to see Oldham, who lives in a tent somewhere away from the barracks. I wonder if the reason he’s out there has something to do with the reason that Sawyer refers to him as a ‘psychopath’. When Sayid asks Sawyer who this guy is, Sawyer tell him “he’s our you” ie. the village torturer.

“I am from the future”

Oldham drugs Sayid which they hope will make him talk. When Sayid starts talking, he spills everything, how he’d been to the island before, arrive vis Oceanic 815, lived there 100 days, got off the island, then returned via Ajira 316. He tells them to “ask Sawyer” nodding toward him, luckily Radzinsky interrupts before they notice. Horrace askes him what he knows about the stations, and Sayid tells that that the Flame is for communications, the Pearl is for watching other stations and the Swan is centered around electromagnetism. Radzinsky believes the only way he could know this is if he were a spy, because they haven’t even built the Swan yet. Sayid then tells them that they are all going to die, and when they ask how he knows this he says its because he’s from the future. Needless to say that at this point the seem to believe that Oldham has simply given Sayid too much of whatever crazy drug he was using and what he’s been telling them is just nonsense. Sayid begins to laugh telling them that they gave him just the right amount.

We now know why Sayid was on the plane

After leaving Ben, Sun and Jack at the docks he headed out for a drink, where he ‘picked up’ Ilana. Once they got back to his (or her hotel, not clear exactly) she attacks Sayid and tells her that shes working for the family of Peter Avellino (who we saw Sayid kill early in Season 4) and that she would be taking him to Guam to pay for he’s done. When they arrive at the airport Sayid notices that they are going to be on the same flight as the rest of the Oceanic 6 and unsuccessfully suggests that they take a different flight. So was Ilana really working for Avellino’s family or was she sent by Ben to make sure that Sayid ended up on that flight, given that Ilana is not on the Hydra Island with Ben, Locke and co we might find, or we might not.

Flaming combis

Ben uses the flaming combi to create a diversion so that he can help Sayid escape. He asks Sayid if he’ll take him with him back to ‘his people’. They get clear of the barracks when Jin drive past in another combi and stops to discover Sayid. Sayid tells him that Sawyer let him go, but no-one else knows. Why did Sayid say that Sawyer let him go? I’m thinking it could be so that they don’t know that he was with Ben, so that when they find Ben he may not be the initial suspect, although who else would be the suspect?

‘I am a killer’

As Jin radios Sawyer Sayid knocks him out and bend down to pick up his gun. He says “you were right, I am a killer”, pauses and then turns and shoots Ben in the chest, then just runs off into the dark…

Whoa, hold on a moment! Didn’t Faraday say that the future couldn’t be changed? Meaning that, in theory, Ben can’t die in 1977 if he didn’t die in 1977 before. So does this mean Ben is wounded but not dead, after all Sayid does only shoot him once and doesn’t check. Suppose Ben is wounded, he gets found by the hostiles (this is how he joins up with them), perhaps he exhibits a rapid recovery from the wound that should have killed him and this convinces the hostiles that he’s special (like Locke is ‘special’) and this is how he ends up becoming their leader. This then leads to him already knowing what Sayid is capable of when he encounters him in 2004 having witnessed his cold-bloodedness first hand, and the same reason why he enlists his ‘services’ to wipe out a bunch of Widmore’s men. It’s the whole “whatever happened, happened” thing, and its so confusing I’m not even sure what I’ve written makes sense. Where is Faraday when you need him to explain these things…