The Dharma office might have been abandoned due to the fact that the others were apparently shooting Dharma Initiative members on sight.

I think the biggest thing I'm curious about is who Richard and the original hostile natives are. I'm pretty sure some of them had modern day type tattoos and haircuts, so I can't see them being from some ancient society. I'm guessing one of the original military detachments that was sent their originally to scout it. Then they pulled an Apocalypse Now and went crazy/native.

There's something more than that going on with Richard. A few weeks ago he was referred to at "Old". You could hear the capital "O".

I'm looking at "Captain Eyeliner" as an agent of the islands power, instead of the power itself (but yes, extremely old. If we ever see the statue again, I'll bet we see Richard too...). My guess is that he's the one that rallies whatever new faction comes onto the island to overthrow the old one. He encourages the Others to go after the Losties, and the Dharma's before them. I'm also guessing some of the army folks from '54 are in his group that wars with the Dharma folks. Guy seems to have a lot of misplaced agression.

Maybe it's just my experiences with another well written show, but doesn't Lost seem to be falling into a "this has happened before and will happen again" kind of pattern? I wouldn't be surprised to find out Jack's a cylon at this point.

Did we ever learn from whence the black nano-cloud came, or is it still a mystery?

Still a mystery from what I can remember.

All we know about the smoke is that it's part of the island's "defense system" though whether it was created by the Dharma folk, the hostiles, the others or is native to the island is unclear. Ben activates it using Dharma technology, so presumably there is some degree of control over it. Beyond that, it's still big, loud, scary, deadly and strange.

Maybe some of them came from the Black Rock as Pirates, which would help explain their ruthlessness. Is the Black rock still intact or was it blown completely apart when the dynamite went off?

As for Richard, a friend pointed out how eyeliner was de rigeur in Ancient Egypt so perhaps that's a clue. On the other hand he could just be a modern zealot who fetishizes the style. We'll just have to wait and see.

That's not eyeliner, that's just how Nestor Carbonell's eyes are.

I LOVE that the LOST writers listen to their audience enough to play with it, though. Having Sawyer refer to him as "Eyeliner" was a thing of beauty.

Speaking nicknames:
Sawyer's nickname generator

Mine's "Oliver Twist"

Damnit, why the hell does my computer always not let me do the fun stuff??
Nothing happens after the link loads. (I did block a pop-up, though) :(

Mine is "Gizmo"

Don't fret about it, that thing sucks. I put the same answers in twice and got two different nicknames.

Something that's been bugging me since the "Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham" episode...

I had assumed that Sun knew about Ben's (partial) responsibility for Jin's (assumed) death because Locke made it off the island and told her. But apparently Locke never does visit her - he keeps his promise to Jin.

How does she find out? What happens before her first meeting with Widmore?

I'm not perfectly sure what you're asking, but I think you're asking about how Sun "knew" Jin was dead?

Sun assumed Jin died because she saw the boat that she knew he was on explode while he was on it. Fairly reasonably, she assumed that when she saw that explosion that it took him with it. She didn't need Locke or Ben or someone else to go and tell her. I'm pretty sure if I saw a boat blow up I'd assume the people on it didn't make it, too, but who knows.

Now, a question that I'd like answered about Sun is that Ben promises to bring her to someone who can prove that Jin is still alive. As far as I remember, Mrs. Hawking never says a thing about Jin, to say nothing for proving that he's still alive. What do you think it was that convinced her to get on the plane?

He brought her to himself. Linus was the person he was bringing Sun to. When they got to their destination he said he had to make up a story about someone to get her to come. Then Linus showed her the ring and she knew Jin was alive.

I assume she got on the plane because she knew Jin was on the island still.

No, not quite what I'm asking. I'm asking how it was that Sun knew to blame Ben for Jin's death. Who told her that Ben killed Kearny?

Oh, huh. I don't know why I totally forgot that. I guess that's what I get for multitasking. Thanks for the reminder.

Whoa.

Wait, so what does this mean for the continuum? If Spoiler: 12 year old Ben is dead, does that create an additional time line or does it alter the existing time line?

Do we know that Spoiler: Ben is actually dead? It seems to me that all we know right now is that Spoiler: he was shot.

If Sayid is involved, I have a good idea.

That's true, people tend to Spoiler: cheat death on the show quite often.

Spoiler: The paradoxes (which they've thusfar ardently avoided) become altogether impossible to sort through if Ben is actually dead. I will be VERY disappointed if he actually is dead and this creates an alternate timeline in which Ben never does anything, the purge doesn't happen, Dharma continues. It'd be a hell of a waste of years of development, and so I think the Island will have Ben well in hand.

I mean, seriously. If Ben dies, then he doesn't get to wake up and face Locke. Or we get one timeline that living Ben, Jin and Locke are stuck in and other timeline that the "Dharma" losties are stuck in where Sayid has murdered Ben. It's too messy and too ridiculous. I don't think it's gonna play out like that.

He won't be dead. It would ruin the entire time plot of the show. The island will keep him alive like others in the show.

I agree. I highly doubt that he'll die in the literal sense. I don't think they'll do multiple timelines (they better not!) I think the real question now, has Ben been (hehe) undead? Christian, horus, and probably claire, they've all basically died "officially" not to mention locke if we count that gunshot. Are they really shades? Or maybe they all are. People cross over life and death too easily in this show to not think that its nothing more than the island healing them.

That's just it, though, the last time I put 3 rounds into the chest of a 12-year-old, there was nothing the doctors could do. Not even his mom's bitter tears could save him.

Short of "Lost Island Magic"™, I don't really see how this works.

The "Lost Island Magic®" started 3 seasons ago. :)

Yeah, they better have a damn good explanation when all this is over.

If only the Dharma initiative had a world class surgeon like Jack, then maybe they could save him...

Oh. Right.

In theory, Jack could save the young Ben if they get to him in time. However, since Sayid put a bullet in his chest, more likely in his heart, the chances of him surviving are low. But, this is a world where time jumps around and people come back from the dead. For example, Locke should have been killed, but survived being shot in the kidney area because he had his kidney removed for his father. Except, when Shannon was shot in the chest in season 2, and died. So, either the young Ben will live or the young Ben will die and the Dharma initiative does not get killed off.

If they break the time continuum and change history through his death then the show will officially start to suck.

I wouldn't worry about it.

The simpler plot (Jack saves Ben) offers a lot:

1.) This will be the SECOND time Jack saves Ben's life.

3.) It explains Ben's desperation to get the Oceanic 6 back to the Island.

2.) We don't know if Jack knows about little Ben so It'll be a great TV moment and a bit of a moral dilemma when he's told who the patient is.

4.) Jack stepping up as a Doctor will expose the Oceanic 6's real identities to the Dharma folks and cause all hell to break lose. (= story moving forward in a big way.)

On the other hand, Little Ben could just get up unharmed like Locke after being left to die in the Dharma mass grave. This to me is less satisfying but it would reinforce Ben's connection and loyalty to the island.

On a side note, I think last night's episode may have been the first time a prime time network show has ever shown a minor getting shot; at least in my memory. Make that of what you will.

Great points all, fres. That would be a really lovely direction for the show to go. I would be equally satisfied with "The island doesn't let important people die" and I don't really ever need them to explain that. Part of the Island's magic *is* its mystery. It can heal people, just like it can release weird electromagnetic energy. That's why it is a special place. I'm perfectly ok with never figuring out why. Also, there are Daniel's "rules" that must be followed. He couldn't change the future to prevent Charlotte from coming back to the island. It seems unlikely that Sayid could have a much more dramatic impact on the future (at least as it concerns us) by killing off Ben.

On the other hand, if they decide to do something else, I will adamantly agree with Lasereth. Split timelines or changing history....do not want.

And remember, Ben's the Chosen One right now. He's headed toward being Jacob's right hand man, head Other, and keeper of Smokey. Of course the Island wants to save him.

Hmm so I wonder what happened to ben when richard took him? Something about losing his innocence. The others definitely must be something supernatural or inhuman then.

When Claire was a teenager and she got in that car accident, I thought she killed her mom in that accident? I think I'm just misremembering something though. Anyone remember correctly?

Claire's mother was seriously injured but not killed in the accident. She was hooked up to machines, and all of her medical expenses were paid for by Christian. This is when Claire met Christian.

I don't know that Ben or the Others specifically are magical. The only person that I'm convinced is magical or superhuman is Richard.

Another solid episode and next week's looks to be even better.

Y'all are also forgetting that Ben killed Locke back in the world and Locke is once again alive.

They were being screwy with the "timeline" explanation again too. The "how did 'old' Ben not know who Sayid was when Sayid tortured him if Sayid shot him when he was a kid" thing.

I'm still convinced that if it had not yet happened in some one's past according to the Oceanic 6's timeline then the person would not yet be aware of it in their "future" present.

Like when Desmond suddenly awakened with the memory of having to find Faradya's mother. Before the moment Faraday told him in his "past", as part of an Oceanic 6 linear timeline, no matter what date they were passing through, Desmond was not yet aware of it happening in his "present."

Exactly, tricks. They gave us the deal there--when Des woke up with a new memory that had just happened in his past (my brain!), that was a big old hint. That also implies that all the island escapees (not just the 6, but Desmond and probably Frank too) are somehow temporally joined--otherwise Daniel's "now" in the past couldn't sync up with Desmond's "now" in the present. That's going to be useful, because it'll me that the O6 (plus Locke, Ben, and Frank) can still communicate somehow even though they are split into two teams in two times.

Richard also gave us an out when he said that whatever he did to proto-Ben in the Temple was going to erase his memory. I sort of thought that was cheating.

I was going on the assumption that Ben DOES remember the whole past and that's what has given him the edge all this time. For example, I like the looping that Ben tells Sayid he's a killer because Sayid told him he did and wonder what other relationships are locked (heh) together through time. The 70's plot line will hopefully reveal some more goodies like this, especially with Faraday.

IMHO a more conventional but equally important development in this week's episode is Jack breaking his trust with Juliette.

I also really enjoyed Hurley and Miles' discussion of Back To The Future.

Exactly. How better to know that someone is a killer than to know that they tried to kill you.

I'm just looking forward to Ben being "judged" next week. He's long overdue and I'm tired of not knowing if I should like him or not. Is he a good guy or a bad guy?

Good episode this week. I liked the resolution on the Aaron/Kate storyline and more forward motion on the whole "Kate/Sawyer/Juliet/Jack" stuff (which I'm not crazy about, I just want it out of the way).

Oh yeah the timeline is still making sense if you ask me. I think the MOMENT 815 crashed, Benjamin Linus already knew who all of them were. Benjamin asked specifically for Hurley, Jack, Sawyer, Kate, etc. in the earlier seasons when they were kidnapped by the others. He also knew all of their history and everything about them. He knows this because he grew up with the damn people in the 70s.

I really like where they are taking this show.

Maybe. At the time they were strongly alluding to having agent-types on the outside that gathered information about all of them and put them into files. Ben mentions the files multiple times. Juliet reads one of those files to Jack (before Ben's back surgery) about Jack's ex-wife, which Ben never met in the 70's.

Oh yeah, I just remembered another thing that caught my attention last episode. When Richard takes Ben from Soyer and Kate, Richard say's something like "I don't answer to Charles or Eli(?)" in response to one of the Others saying "if soandso finds out.." So Charles is obviously charles witmore. Who is Eli or Uli or whatever the other name was?

Ellie was one of the Hostiles that we saw in 1954 when they stumbled into the former army camp. I had to look her up, too. Lostpidia link: Ellie - Lostpedia Suffice to say we know virtually nothing about her.

Some people think that "Ellie" is a nickname for "Eloise" and that she, therefore, is Daniel Faraday's mother who we know in her older, matronly form. At this point, though, that's pure conjecture (even if it sounds good.)

I think it's safe to assume that Ellie is Elloise.

EDIT: Damn, Frosstbyte and Lasereth beat me to it.

I am glad at least Hurley questions their time/space loop problem to anyone who will listen to his theories. I mean everyone else is kind of in the moment waiting for some other exciting adventure to happen.

Wow another great episode last night. I'm guessing that Benjamin Linus didn't understand why they were in the picture because they were gone before he was healed by Richard and the Others?

Maybe they will have been gone by the time he gets back. They were there before he sprung Sayid, but only just barely, and probably not enough to register. They were just "those new recruits".

"Because I have no control over what's about to come out of that jungle."

Gotta love that part.

That was pretty funny.

The details being explained are all fine and good (well, knew Kate had given Aaron to his grandmother-no brainer there), but this "they're in 1977 and we aren't" is just weird.

I think the young Ben said something about not being able to remember what had happened when he woke up from being shot. So either the trauma, or the Island's/Other's healing process erased some of his memory.

Is anyone else starting to think the island may be evil?

Also, now we know for sure that there were people there back in the time of Egyptians. Could anyone gather anything from the hieroglyphs? I'm pretty sure I saw Anubis, god of the dead, above the holes where the smoke monster came from.

Anyone else think the way Ben summoned the smoke monster was a bit of a cop out? I mean, he sticks his hand in a puddle and drains it....

I am starting to think the Island has its own agenda and that the agenda doesn't necessarily care if individual people live or die. I don't think the island's agenda is "evil" in the sense that it wants to kill people ro destroy the world or something, but I guess we'll just have to see.

Richard said that Ben wouldn't remember what had happened to him after he brought him to the temple, so I have to assume that in the lag between when Ben gets healed and when he re-joins the Others that Jack, Hurley and all the rest of them leave. Though, how exactly that will happen remains to be seen.

No more of a cop out than Locke going into the hole to fix the wheel of time simply by putting it back on its axis....

I know, that was even worse :shakehead:

Good point! I've been assuming all along that the island is at the centre of some cosmic balancing force (time, fate, karmha etc...) and that one of the main themes of the show was how the main characters (all damaged in some way) fare in the face of it.

I don't think I'm far off, especially now that it's seems to have taken on a godlike judgement role, but giving the Island an UNbalanced personality adds an intriquing layer.

Also, given that we now know the Monster is something ancient and not modern technology, the question of its origin becomes wide open. I'm quietly hoping for Aliens. :thumbsup: It would be a helluvan ending if the entire Island turned out to be a spaceship and the final scene revealed it tearing itself up from the ocean floor and launching into the sky, shaking off the earth as it went.


And now for something completely different:

A fun theorythat I read online is that the Locke we have now is actually a manifestation of the Monster (and the island by extension), just like Alex in the Temple and perhaps Christian or Jacob. We never see him and the monster together and in a cute way, the scene with him coming out of the forest after Ben called it fits the theory.

I saw that movie on opening night, and I'm still trying to forget it....

Nah, it's not Aliens....


The island is Limbo and everyone is dead, no one survived the crash. Kate giving Aaron to his grandmother was a wish. The smoke is judgment day/God/whatever. Once someone has repented or done good, they're history, so that means they have to atone or answer for their sins before they can go away. (That's why so many who seemed to be favorites, like Charley and Ekko, died so soon-they'd repented fully)

OK, I haven't worked out the details....:D

Nicely put NG. I'm much more open to that sort of storyline now. It doesn't quite explain the Dharma Initiative and all of the connections with the mainland but as with Miles, the supernatural is obviously allowed in the Lost universe.

For whatever it's worth, the show's creators have explicitly stated numerous times that the island is not purgatory or limbo. Of course, they also said there would never be any time travel, but I think there's enough interaction between the Island and the "real world" for it to be all but impossible for everyone to be dead.

In the early seasons when we were really limited to events on the island, I would've agreed. Now we have many characters who were once on the island but now aren't (Ellie, Charles, Walt, Desmond), we have many characters who have left and come back (the six, Ben, Michael, Daniel), we have people who have been near it or made contact with it but not been there (Penny). If this entire thing is some limbo and everyone on Oceanic 216 is dead, there are going to be a lot of glaring holes and a lot of fully realized characters who have to be explained away as elaborate delusions.

So I'm thinking the island is evil and they'll all have to destroy it in the last season. I'm basing this off the fact that it killed Echo and let Ben live. Plus they need a big twist and the Island turning out evil is one of the few they haven't written themselves out of.

That would be quite the twist indeed. Guess we'll have to see.

how many more seasons does lost have?

One more after this. This season is 5, it'll wrap up in six.

I haven't posted much in this thread because I am too damn lazy to pay attention to all the minute clues and details (theory stuff). I've been watching Lost since the 1st episode and us fans have had enough gaps of new episodes (writers strike notwithstanding), that I was seriously pissed off with tonights airing.

All the commercial's that were airing for tonights episode were crafted to make it out as if they were going to give us new "insight" into the "true" story of the Oceanic 6.

What bullshit. Why didn't they advertise it as yet another "recap" episode? Oh, that's right, no one would watch. In the grand scope of things, this is nothing, but in the little microcosm of loyal fans to a show, it's just down right deceptive. Any person that has never watched the show would still be completely in the dark about the Lost universe except an extremely dumbed down synopsis of the most recent past.

For those of us that have been fans for some good length of time, it was like a zerbert! Na na, we know you know all of this already, gotcha to watch anyway!!! Good thing I DVR'd it so I could FF through most instead of watching, once I realized what was up. I actually FF to about a half hour and it seemed to be getting pretty current with recent events and I thought "okay, the second half hour will give us the new, present stuff". NOT. GAHH! Just fucking play a re-run so we know what's up, don't try to wrap it in a pretty bow and tell us it's not the same ol shit!

/bitch over

We Tivo'd it, and after about 2 minutes we realized what was up and watched our Tivo'd Lie to Me instead. There was no clue that this was going to be a recap episode. A agree with everything you said, alicat.

Considering how complex this show is compared to, say, Smallville or Law and Order, I think it's fine they have a recap episode now and again. Sure, they were dishonest in their advertising for the episode, but you can't really blame them. Ratings for Lost aren't good, and if things keep up the show will be cancelled. I don't want that and neither do you.

I guess I don't totally know how you guys didn't know that it was a recap episode. It didn't advertise like a new episode to me at all.

Edit after seeing will's post: there is no way Lost will be cancelled before the end of its run. The show's run is inked and done through the end of next season, which is the end of the show. There's not really any reason to freak out about its future.

You guys are crazy. After last week's episode I thought it was painfully clear that last night's episode was gonna be a recap. I remember thinking last week "crap, a recap episode." To me it didn't seem like it was trying to trick anyone in any way.

I'm so mad I'm going to punt the last 5 seasons, skip the rest of this one and never watch again.....

While I wasn't a 100% (I still checked for the first minute) I was pretty sure it was a recap based on phrasing from the week before. Advertising has always been a slimy business, I'm not seeing anything new.

I can't tell if you're serious or sarcastic? If on the off chance you're serious...why? So it was one hour of recap that you thought would be new. Why would that turn you off the entire series?

It was false advertisement, plain and simple. They mislead the fans of the show into believing that we were going to see things from a new perspective like we've never seen before. I have no problem with it being a recap show, I just don't think they needed to lie to get what little fanbase they have left to get them to watch. I liked Stargate SG1's recap episodes better :)

Honestly, it would have taken you less than 15 seconds of watching to realize that this was a recap show. Or it would've taken 15 seconds (like it did for me) to check any of 1000 lost sources online when I heard the advertising tagline which sounded meaningfully different than other "next week on Lost" advertising taglines and found out it was a recap show. Or it would've taken 15 seconds to look on your TV guide and see that the episode was called "Lost: Story of the Oceanic 6". Seriously.

Give me a fucking break. Last week's episode, at the end, it said "LOST returns in TWO WEEKS." How is that for explaining that the next episode is a recap???

Besides, next week is a Faraday episode!!

because people are stupid....that's why....i don't know how anyone didn't know it was a recap...but there are people out there...

What is wrong with Daniel Faraday? I mean seriously, you would think a super intelligent guy would think about what he is doing before walking in the hostile camp with a loaded gun demanding to see his mother and threatening to shoot Richard Alpert in 3 seconds if she doesn't show up. I am not upset what happened to the guy, more annoyed with his and the other Lostie's behavior.

I'm willing to excuse it because:

A) For the first time in a long time, he didn't know what was going to happen.
B) He's was in a near panic because of the imminent "incident".
C) The Others are really scary and vicious. Imagine walking into a biker-gang clubhouse, desperately needing to make an outrageous demand. How exactly would you do that?

I'm sad to see him go but it serves the story. I think the time travel looping is coming to an end and that by the end of this season (if not sooner) everyone will be synced up in present day and moving forward together.

*Wild theory Alert*
Unless a future generation is coming back to meddle with the present, like say all those children who have gone missing.

For as super intelligent as he was, I think this past episode showed very definitively that Daniel was not a stable, balanced fellow. I kind of hope he's not gone for good, because I think he'd be a great candidate for the Island either to restore or to appear as.

But...I do think that his death shows us that the plan to detonate the bomb MUST fail. Daniel's entire life has been about the fact that the past has already happened and can't be changed. Daniel died in 1977, and nothing could ever be done about that. The hatch was built, the incident happened, the plane crashed. None of that can be avoided. I think we're going to be seeing a different way of getting everyone back into the present.

Before he got shot, he talked about how they were the variables that would disprove his mother's statement that destiny couldn't be changed. By his death, she was right so far. Had he set off the bomb, the island would have been gone, the plane would have landed in LA, no one would have ever crossed paths and we'd be watching something else. :p

I rather liked that his Mom ended up shooting him. Now we get to wonder why she still sends him back when she knows he's going to die.

Can't say the episode was too great otherwise, most of the mysteries they revealed I could see coming a mile away.

Am I the only one who... I mean...

Look. A Bad Thing happens in what is going to be a station to research a pocket of energy. Accident. Bad juju. So cancel the scientific mission there--it becomes about containment, cemented-down like Chernobyl. Gotta push a button to keep something really bad from happening again.

Until the day that button DIDN'T get pushed. And then the "Failsafe" key got turned, at which point the whole station imploded... evidently neutralizing the massive pocket of energy?? Because we don't need to push that button anymore. Whatever we were preventing happening with that button either quit being a problem, or once and for all happened, and now we're done with it. So then... why would Dharma build the station at all? Why not just fire the "failsafe", whatever that is, let the sky turn purple for a few seconds, and save a bunch of concrete?

Could it be that the "failsafe" IS the hydrogen bomb? Even so, why not just blow it up, rather than building the whole Swan station and locking a two-man team down there in perpetuity? It'd save them having to come up with a snowman-based joke, and eliminate one supply drop from the route.

---------- Post added at 10:40 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:30 PM ----------

Yes, but THAT history wasn't written yet. Remember, for our Losties, 1977 is the present, not the past. So, things from the PAST 1977 can't be changed (except, Farraday implies, by way of the variables), but the people who are in their PRESENT in 1977 (because they haven't lived past the "current time" yet) are completely up for grabs.

Eh, couple reasons. By failsafe they don't mean it in the more common usage, more as in, latch ditch effort to neutralize the energy, sure hope it works...
I'm also guessing they thought the failsafe would destroy the island. It was a failsafe to save the world, not protect the island, so I'm guessing they got "lucky" when it didn't destroy everything. That, plus they mention doing experiments to try and use the energy, so I'm sure they didn't want to destroy a very possible font of knowledge and power.

But ya, it's still a little silly.

PS thinking some more, maybe the failsafe was the H-bomb, and we're going to find out it should have destroyed the island when it went off but the island is sentient (Jacob?) and protected itself when it went off. Containing it.

Also, my memory is a little fuzzy, didn't something else happen when the sky turned purple? Could that have been part of the reason the island got unstuck in time (more than once) when Ben moved it? Maybe that failsafe ended up creating that loop. It sure did something similar to Desmond on a smaller scale when he relived his own life in flashes.

I don't think Dharma fully understood the nature of the energy in 1977 and were spooked enough by "the incident" that they simply panicked. Perhaps enough scientists were killed that the workers had to make the call instead.

I look forward to finding out what the fallout of the incident is beyond a big explosion, general destruction and likely sending the survinging '77 Losties back to the present.

I also think the bomb is still safely in the hands of the Others as it was in the 50's. I doubt they would let Dharma get their hands on it.

Good call. Plus it's not clear that the Others even knew about the Swan before Ben was brought there.

They seem to know everything. I'm sure they know about it. Also, I could see them working with Jack and Kate to get the bomb there.

Hey, I love LOST but sometimes you just have to laugh. :)

http://www.tgsa-comic.com/comics/012.jpg

Yeah. I sometimes wonder if the writers feel they need to re-introduce the characters' names every episode, just in case this is anybody out there's first time watching the show...

Heh, I might be the only one that appreciates how much they use names. I've noticed I use peoples' names when talking to them far more than most other people. No idea why.

Another awesome episode tonight and looking up to be a hell of a season-ender. I haven't the slightest idea what I hope happens, but I think it's going to be pretty goddamn cool. I have to, of course, say that I don't care about Sawyer-related love triangles at all, but otherwise it's a damn fine set up

Indeed!

I wonder how they end up off the Submarine as evidenced by the preview footage. Also, I suspect the triangle won't exist past this season. Just a hunch.

Does anyone else think Jack is being a colossal dumbass? And the Others sure do act like a cult. Why else would they be so docile under John's whims?

Jack and John have been colossal dumbasses for a good three seasons now. It's kind of sad that they're so integral to the plot. I seldom care or understand what in the flying fuck they're talking about or why they decide to do anything. I mean, John Locke's great plan now is to kill Jacob? Freaking fantastic. Let's wander aimlessly into the forest to try to kill an amorphous entity who may or not be human (or alive) and can only be seen and found by a "person" who has lived on the island for who only knows how long and doesn't seem to age. I'd sure get right behind that plan. And Jack's plan is to follow the ravings of a mad man and detonate a hydrogen bomb on the island. At this point, I'm going to guess that the bomb detonation is what leads to the "incident" in the first place as opposed to preventing it and just letting Dharma drill, but who knows.

I think that's why I like Ben, Daniel and Desmond episodes so much more these days. Ah well.

Boosh. I was dead on about them working with jack and kate with the bomb.

Fross-I dunno, Jack and John have always seemed to make sense to me. And don't judge John's "I'm going to kill Jacob" comment. We don't know what he really means. He may have just said that to manipulate Ben into doing something. Or he may have suspicions that Jacob is fake/a puppet set up by Richard.

Fresnelly-Hmm. Is it a cult if it really is based off supernatural forces? :D More like an occult/religion mixture

Wild speculation: Jacob asked Locke to help him way back in the season 3 finale. What if Locke's method of help is killing Jacob? Perhaps the cabin is actually a prison for him and death is the only release. Given that Locke and possibly Christian were brought back to life by the island, Jacob just might benefit in the same way. And THEN, AFTER he dies, AFTER he's reborn, we'll see his physical form.

A lot hinges on just what the deal is with Locke, Christian, Alpert, the smoke monster, and Jacob. How do they relate?

And I could easily be wrong about this as well, but I don't think Jack will die. At least not yet. He has to meet his dead father face-to-face first. Then again, they were willing to drop the Libby storyline like it was nothing...

And jeez, Alpert and the Others seem utterly perplexed by the time travel thing. The one time Alpert looked calm and understanding, he was under orders from Locke to help Locke. Had they never before tried to move the island? Or was it only this second-to-latest move done by Ben that screwed up time?

I like how the compass formed a causal circle. It's a cool kind of headache. They did Sayid's return nicely, I thought. Kate works well as the voice of sanity. And I loved Ben's reaction to Locke's plan at the end of the episode.

I think there is virtually no chance of Jack, John, Sawyer or Kate dying for real until either the second to last or last episodes of the show.

I'll note that you didn't include Juliette in that list. ;)

WOAH. I hadn't considered that. I thought Christian was an island-driven figment, like Kate's horse, Hurley's loonybin buddy, etc. But you're right--his coffin was empty after all. He's had a very "I have a purpose now"-like zen certainty about him, on-island. Wow. Hadn't thought about that. Maybe he's literally alive just like Locke is.

I LOVE that. All season now, I've been wondering why Richard seemed like he knew what was going on in THAT moment, and the rest of the time has been all "What's going on, guys??" Now we know.

Compass: I kind of lost track of it. I don't know where it came from originally--is it a chicken-egg? Locke gave it to Richard in the fifties, in the era of the live h-bomb. Richard still had it "three years later", when John flashed there and received it from Richard... so he could flash back and give it to Richard in the fifties?? Do I have it right?

Sayid's return was beautiful. How long has he been stalking them, you think?

That last shot of Ben just reminded me what a BRILLIANT actor Michael Emerson is. Absolutely fucking brilliant.

Maybe I am making this up in my head, but isn't it already confirmed that Christian IS Jacob? When Locke was moving the Island Wheel® and Christian was down there with him, and Locke asked for help, etc. didn't Christian say his name was Jacob? And when Locke went to Jacob's cabin for the first time and Claire was in there, Christian was sitting in Jacob's chair, confirmed. Am I crazy or are they the same person??