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