You've got ink on your forehead.

Jack pulls an Alice and goes through the looking-glass. Claire tries out as a “Before” model for a Pantene commercial, and then gets all “The Shining” on Justin. Jacob looks constipatedly at Hurley throughout the episode. Jin finds out that Alt Dogen imparts parenting wisdom. Oh, and Alt Jack’s got a teenage son. No biggie.

LOST 6x05: The Lighthouse

Vacation and work challenges have delayed the publishing of this recap. (Ep. 6x04 will go up next - sorry.) The season sadly is chugging along, with another killer episode in The Lighthouse. We find out what Infected Claire (Clousseau) has been doing on the island all these years – mostly going batshit while evading the Others – and we learn of a mysterious lighthouse that’s somehow been hidden from view in all their time there.

What did you think? Hit me with your comments below

2004 Alt Timeline

Jack’s on the phone with his mother discussing his father’s will, and somehow becomes acutely aware of his appendix scar. He asks his mom about it and it seems as though he doesn’t recall having the operation, although he was apparently 7 or 8 at the time. A kid that age would have a vivid memory of such an event. Is this a nod to the fact that this is a false timeline?

Jack arrives at the St. Mary’s Academy and picks up his son (what?!), David. (David – another Biblical name.) David storms up to his room in Jack’s house and is giving Jack the cold shoulder. Jack picks up The Annotated Alice by Lewis Carroll and asks David if he’s reading it, reminding him that he used to read the book to him when he was little. He said that he always wanted to hear about Kitty and Snowdrop.

Nerd alert: Kitty and Snowdrop were Alice’s black and white kittens in Through the Looking-Glass. Black and white are the recurring theme on LOST. Good vs. evil. In the book, the black kitten, Kitty, is connected to the Red Queen and Snowdrop, the white kitten, to the White Queen. Wikipedia has the following to say about Through the Looking-Glass: “Through the Looking-Glass [is] a kind of mirror image of Wonderland: the first book begins outdoors, in the warm month of May, (May 4), uses frequent changes in size as a plot device, and draws on the imagery of playing cards; the second opens indoors on a snowy, wintry night exactly six months later, on November 4 (the day before Guy Fawkes Night), uses frequent changes in time and spatial directions as a plot device, and draws on the imagery of chess. In it, there are many mirror themes, including opposites, time running backwards, and so on.”

Nerd alert: Post Oceanic 6 rescue in LA, Jack was reading Alice in Wonderland to Aaron. So as things are mirrored in this alt timeline, it makes sense, I guess, that he would have read it as well to David. Alice has been a consistent theme throughout the series.

David storms off and Jack tries asks what’s wrong. David replies, “we see each other like once a month, can’t we just…get through it?”

Mrs. Shephard offers Jack a drink while they are looking for Christian’s will, which he refuses. They find the will on a shelf, and as she reads it, she asks Jack if he’s ever heard of a Claire Littleton. (Question: Was there a slight glimpse of recognition when she mentioned Claire’s name?)

Jack gets home with pizza and David’s gone. He goes to his mom’s house to look for him and hear’s an answering machine message confirming David’s audition slot at a music conservatory. The second message was one from Jack calling from Sydney when he went to pick up his father’s body. The message, I believe, was the message we saw Jack leave from Sydney in the original timeline, though the original message clearly couldn’t have been for David.

Nerd alert: The house number is 233 - one of the few references to the numbers we've seen in the alt timeline). And the key to David's mom's house is under a rabbit. Another allusion to Alice - down the rabbit hole and/or a visual reference to Ben's rabbit on the island?

Jack rushes to the conservatory to hear the end of David’s audition and is clearly dumbfounded that he had no idea this was happening or that music was this important to him. A random kid tells him that David’s really good. Then the boy’s father – Dogen! – says that the kids are too young for this pressure and that it’s tough to not be able to help. (A nod to Jack’s role of the perpetual “fixer”?)

As David is unchaining his bike, Jack commends his performance and they have their first real conversation of the episode. David says that he never told his father that he was still playing piano because he didn’t want to Jack to see him fail. He tells David that his own father used to say that he “didn’t have what it takes” and he spent his whole life carrying that around with him. But Jack tells him that he just wants to be a part of his life and all a wall seems to have been broken down.

Nerd alert: The sign at the entry to the audition said in large letters: "Welcome Candidates".

Question: Is David possibly a Candidate or future Candidate in this timeline? Both Jack and Christian have connections to the island, and although we don't know for sure yet, we can assume Jack's granddad did as well.

2007 On Island

- Jack and Hurley sory arc:

Dogen tells Jack that he has free will, but he would try to stop him if he did. He asks if Kate, Jin or Sawyer are coming back, and Jack says that they likely aren’t.

Hurley enters the Temple to look for some food, and Jacob is there waiting to give Hurley an assignment to help someone who is trying to get to the island find it.

Question: Who needs to get to the island?

Sayid confronts Jack with a laundry list of questions about why he’s being stared at to what the pill was that they wanted him to take, and Jack tells him that they were going to poison him.

Hurley is in a hallway looking at a wall of hieroglyphs, when Dogen questions what he’s doing there. Jacob appears and tells Hurley to say that he is a candidate, and Dogen backs off. Jacob says that Hurley should have brought Jack too and tells him how to convince Jack to come along.

Outside, Hurley tells Jack, “You have what it takes.” Clearly this was what Jack needed to hear, for reasons yet unknown, and Jack and Hurley set off.

Jack and Hurley run into Kate in the jungle, and Kate sets off to find Claire, even though Jack says that there’s something wrong with her.

Hurley and Jack are talking and Hurley asks why he and Kate never got together and had kids. Jack says he thinks he’d be a terrible dad, but Hurley disagrees. They come upon Shannon’s asthma inhaler at the caves they were living after the 815 crash. Hurley sees the Adam & Eve skeleton and poses the question that we’ve been pondering for years: “What if we time traveled again to - like - dinosaur times and then we died and got buried here. What if these skeletons are us?”

As they trek through the jungle some more Hurley remarks that it’s like old times – on a mission in the jungle they don’t quite understand. Hurley tells Jack he came back because Jacob asked him to. Jack says he thought the island could fix him.

They arrive at a lighthouse and Jack asks how they could never have seen it, to which Hurley replies that guesses they weren’t looking for it.

Question: Didn’t the lighthouse appear in strangely good shape for as old as the architecture appeared to be?

Hurley and Jack ascend the lighthouse and find a fire pit and mirrors – the design certainly seems old. Hurley checks the notes on his arm and pulls the chain to orient the lighthouse to 108^o. Jack sees images in the mirrors and then realizes his name is on the dial at 23^o and turns the dial – at which point he sees a reflection of his house. Amazed that some man he doesn’t recall meeting has apparently been watching him for…years?...he smashes the mirrors with a telescope.

Nerd alert: It seems Jacob has been using the lighthouse to watch the Candidates through the "looking-glass".

Question: Just a continuity error that “Shephard” and some of the other 815ers’ names seem to be so much more darkly written than the other names on the dial and in the cave that UnLocke took Sawyer to?

Nerd alert: Thanks to the diligence of others, here are the rest of the names that appear on the dial.

Jacob shows up and asks Hurley how it went. Although he says he failed, Jacob shows Hurley that he wanted Jack to understand how important he is by seeing the lighthouse. Jacob tells Hurley that he had to get them far away from the Temple because someone bad was coming there, and that they don’t have time to warn the folks at the temple.

- Clousseau’s camp story arc:

Clousseau frees Jin from the bear trap, but passes out from the pain after she says she’s been out in the woods since they left the island.

Jin wakes up in Clousseau’s camp as she’s bringing in Justin, who apparently was playing possum when she shot at him and Aldo in the jungle. She ties him up and Jin realizes that Clousseau’s not right. She pushes Justin for answers on where her son is, thinking that the Others have him. Justin warns Jin that they’re not safe with her.

Nerd alert: The actor playing Justin, Dayo Ade, also played “BLT” on the original late 80s/early 90s Canadian cult kids dramas, Degrassi Junior High and Degrassi High. (Zit Remedy!!!)

Justin tries to convince Jin to untie him, but Claire comes in to tend to and stitch up Jin’s wounds. She says that she’s had to move around the jungle a lot to hide from the Others. She says that Christian and “her friend” told her that the Others took Aaron.

Clousseau is interrogating Justin who instists they’ve never had Aaron. Jin steps in to say that Kate’s been raising him and Clousseau is confused and upset. So she axes Justin in the gut, to Jin’s amazement.

Question: Why didn’t Jin explain that Kate was trying to protect Aaron and that they hadn’t seen Claire, so they could rightfully have assumed she was dead?

Jin tells Clousseau he was lying about Kate and Aaron to try to save Justin’s life, and that the Others do have Aaron and he says he’ll take her to the Temple through a secret entrance. She gets all wiggy and says that if he hadn’t been lying that she’d have killed Kate. Then UnLocke walks in. “John?!”, Jin says, amazed. Claire replies, “That’s not John. That’s my friend.”

Drop some comment love below.

-Sean Salo

No. I'm not a zombie.

Sayid gets some complementary electrolysis and a purple nurple from Dogen. Jack’s pill-popping habit goes to extremes. Dr. Ethan Rom Goodspeed does obstetrics right this time. The new flight clearly crossed the International Month Line. Claire takes the place of Rousseau – I claim dibs on naming her Clousseau!

LOST 6x03: What Kate Does

This isn’t my favorite episode, but it was a solid episode where we not only see how the two realities are diverging more, but also learning more about just how different they are. We learn nothing about what's going on with UnLocke, Richard and crew. More to follow on them next week, according to the previews.

What did you think? Comment below with thoughts, questions, recipes or social security numbers.

2007 On the island

Sayid awakens in the Temple, and Lennon and Dogen are genuinely concerned. Sawyer plans his escape, bitter than an Iraqi torturer gets a second chance, while Juliet’s in the ground.

Miles to Jack: “As you can see, Hugo here has assumed a leadership position, so that’s pretty great.” Sayid thanks Jack for saving his life, which Jack denies. They ask Sayid to come with them for a few questions alone.

Nerd alert: This was the same thing they were “asking” of Jack just before Sayid woke up. Was he poised to be tortured until Sayid awoke? Did they think Jack was “infected”? (Thanks Phil)

In an un-LOST-like turn of events, Jack is suddenly filled with questions – “Who are you? Why are you holding us here?...Something tells me you’re not going to tell us anything.” (No answers, of course.) They try to subdue Jack, and Sawyer breaks it up with a gunshot in the air. Dogen begs him to stay as he exits the Temple, and tells them not to come after him. And yet Kate goes following after him as always.

Dogen blows a black powder all over Sayid (the ash to keep in the smoke monster?) and shocks him, then uses a red hot poker on his skin (trying to see if the monster is strong enough to come out yet?). Lennon says that Sayid passed the test, but then says to Dogen, “I just lied to him, didn’t I?”. “Yes.”

Nerd alert: Giving Sayid electric shocks was the same thing that Rousseau did to him when she held him captive in the jungle. Clearly now, she was checking for “infection” then. So it appears they are looking for Smokey in Sayid. (Smayid?)

Kate and Jin are walking with two Others. One of them, Aldo, tells her that they’re concerned about the black smoke pillar. Jin asks if Ajira 316 that landed, and the 2^nd Other, Justin, almost gives up that it had. Kate almost trips up a trap that Jin said was one of Rousseau’s. Justin said that she’s been dead for years. Aldo reminds her that she cold cocked him when she escaped from the polar bear cages several years ago – and she does the same to him again, and then trips up the trap and knocks Justin out. She tells Jin that she’s escaping.

Sayid’s brought out from Dogen’s torture room, and Jack goes back to see him. They don’t try to stop him. They tell Jack that Sayid is infected and give Jack a pill to give him. They say that they weren’t torturing Sayid, but diagnosing him, and that he needs to take the pill willingly. If he does so, he’ll redeem himself from getting Sayid shot.

Question: Did they want Jack to give him the pill because they can’t kill him – is Jack their loophole to kill the smoke monster?

Question: What was in the pill? Was it the black ash?

Question: Does Dogen fear technology like Jacob did in the cabin? He was using a typewriter and appeared to have an abacus on his desk.

Miles asks Sayid, “So, nothing?...there wasn’t anything? No white light?...no dead relatives?” The only thing he remembers was being shot. Hurley asks if he was a zombie. “No. I am not a zombie.”

Question: Moment of levity, or is Sayid a “zombie”? Miles definitely appears concerned, and Dogen believes he’s been infected. Or is it just a nod to the fans who’ve been expecting a “zombie season” since a script page was leaked in the first season with a reference to a zombie Vincent, the dog.?

Jack shows Sayid the pill. But Sayid says he won’t take it unless Jack thinks its safe. Jack tells him that he didn’t have anything to do with saving him and he trusts Jack.

Kate tells Jin that she’s not actually looking for Sawyer, but that she’s trying to escape. (coughbullshitcough) He asks who she cares about her. Kate finds Sawyer at the house he and Juliet had lived in and he’s dug out a shoebox with an engagement ring in it. Kate starts to walk away, realizing that he had actually been in love with Juliet.

On the dock Kate tries to take blame for Juliet’s death for bringing them back to the island from the sub. But Sawyer takes the full blame as he throws the ring into the lagoon. Kate realizes she’s been a fool to think he’d pined over her all those years.

Dogen tells Jack that he doesn’t speak English because he has to remain separate from the people he’s in charge of – that it makes it easier when they don’t like the decisions he makes for them Dogen says he was brought to the island, like everybody else. He tries to get Jack to trust him to give Sayid the pill, and it doesn’t work. Instead, Jack takes the pill himself. Dogen goes medieval on him to get him to spit it out. And he tells Jack that the pill was poison.

Question: Was there the protective ash in the capsule? If not, what was the medication in there?

Question: What was the significance of the baseball Dogen was bouncing? Was it related to the Red Sox winning the World Series in 2004 – a game that Ben had made a point of referencing to Jack when he was being held captive? Reference to Christian Shephard, big Sox fan?

Dogen gives Jack tea and tells him that they think Sayid has been “claimed” with a darkness that will overtake him. And he knows this because it happened to Jack’s sister. (Jack’s tears almost started flowing again.)

Jin encounters Justin and the Aldo, and tries to run, but gets caught in a bear trap. Just then, the Others are shot – by Claire looking raggedy and a mess. And Jin and Claire look at each other with recognition.

Question: So has Claire literally replaced Rousseau? (Clousseau?!) She is on the lamb from the Others, living in isolation, setting up traps on the island. She was also pregnant when she arrived on the island, successfully delivered her baby, and had her baby taken from her.

Random question: All of a sudden, the birds are chirping like mad on the island. But they never did after the crash of 815. It was typically almost bird-less. Why? There was speculation that Walt had something to do with the lack of birds, but is this the case?

2004 Los Angeles

Claire’s taxi driver nearly runs over Arzt. The driver runs out of the car, and Kate hops behind the wheel and takes off, leaving Claire behind, but keeping her purse and suitcase.

Kate gives a mechanic $200 to get off her cuffs and she changes into Claire’s clothes. She finds the photo of Claire pregnant in the bag, along with a large stuffed killer whale doll.

Kate finds Claire – still standing where she was dropped off, I guess? – and Claire says that she was on her way to Langdon Street in Brentwood to find the adoptive parents, who didn’t show up at the airport to pick her up.

Claire has a full-on case of the Stockholm Syndrome and is now BFF with Katie. They arrive at the Baskums’ house (the couple who were adopting Claire’s baby), and Mrs. Baskum tells her that her husband has left her. She meant to call Claire to, I guess, say that she can’t go through with the adoption any longer.

Questions: What forces were working to split the Baskums up? And what made Claire go into labor at that very moment?

They arrive at the hospital – Angel of Mercy – and her doctor is Ethan Goodspeed, aka Ethan Rom! He’s examining her when the fetal monitor flatlines, but he finds a heartbeat again after she yells his future name, Aaron. Turned out that the monitor was in the wrong place. She decides not to deliver early, and they try to slow her down with various drugs.

A Detective Rasmussen shows up looking for a Joan Hart (the name Kate used when signing in to the hospital – a reference to the actress Melissa Joan Hart, “Sabrina the Teenage Witch”?) and Claire protects her by saying she was just a cab driver. She offers Kate her credit card before she leaves.

Nerd alert: the date on the sonogram printout was 10/22/04. The date of the original Flight 815 was 9/22/04. So this is a full month later. How is that possible that all of these folks’ timelines were pushed a full month? This probably wasn’t even Flight 815. The plane itself was different (rows of 3-4-3 vs. 2-3-2), none of our 815ers were sitting in rows with the numbers, etc.

Nerd alert: The letters directly under the fetus’ image were: WRKSHT. The corresponding numbers to those letters in the alphabet are 23-18-11-19-8-20

Drop some comments below. Namaste.

- Sean Salo

Good to see you out of those chains

Flight 815 flies over the new Lost underwater theme park attraction. Arzt and Frogurt compete for screen time. A mysterious Japanese man hates the taste of English. Kate napped in a tree. Jacob and Hurley are totally besties. Charlie gets caught rehearsing his new track “You All on the Potty.” Claire and Kate share a taxi to help with global warming. Ben practices opening his eyes super wide! Sayid die-id. Sayid wake-id. And Locke gives Richard a piggyback ride to the Temple.

LOST 6x01 and 6x02: LA X parts 1 and 2

It’s been a long 8+ months since the finale of season 5 when Juliet detonated the H-bomb. The premiere of season 6 – the final season of the series – was a two-hour event that had hype levels that were nearly impossible to satisfy. It wasn’t my favorite season opener, but it was some of the most compelling storytelling on television in ages and filled with plenty of WTFery. We’re apparently supposed to believe that we’ve abandoned flashbacks and flashes-forward for flashes-sideways. Though it remains to be seen if that is where the writers are indeed taking us this season.

Comment with your thoughts or theories below.

Alternate Flight 815

We open with Jack on the plane having his drink, just as during the original Flight 815. But immediately we can tell it’s not the original flight. Jack looks around as if something’s wrong. Rose is confident and reassuring to Jack (vs. the opposite on the original flight).

Nerd alerts: There were several other key differences in this Oceanic 815 flight and the characters now vs. the original flight and the characters in the pilot episode. Among them:

• The plane itself. The configuration during the pilot episode had 2 seats left and right and 3 in the middle. On this flight, it was 3-4-3.
• Cindy, the flight attendant/Temple Other, offers Jack a single bottle of vodka, whereas in the pilot it was two.
• On this flight, Jack spills the vodka (he didn’t in the pilot) and is the one who needs calming down by Rose. During the pilot, Rose was calmed by Jack.
• Sawyer is concerned for Hurley and advises him to be careful vs. the every-man-for-himself Sawyer in the pilot.
• Hurley is happy, convinced, apparently, that nothing bad can happen to him
• Even our old buddy Arzt, the science teacher who exploded at the Black Rock, wasn’t a know-it-all, but instead was a gushing, inquisitive fanboy of…a guy in a chicken commercial?

Kate pops out of the bathroom and bumps into Jack (where she pick-pockets his pen). Our favorite obnoxious science teacher who exploded several seasons ago, Arzt, gets Hurley to talking, who admits that he won the lottery. Sawyer tells him people will take advantage of him, but Hurley says he’s too lucky for anything bad to happen.

Jin and Sun are together and Jin is back to being an English-deprived a-hole, asking Sun to button her blouse. (Question: Did Sun have a flash that was something was wrong here – she seemed to be surprised by this, though the Sun from the pilot ep would not have been.) Boone (alive!) strikes up a convo with Locke. Shannon isn’t with him on Alt815 and stayed behind in Australia with her boyfriend.

Desmond, who by the way was not on 815 and had been the indirect cause of the original crash, sits next to Jack.

Nerd alert: Desmond was reading Salman Rushdie’s children's book “Haroun and the Sea of Stories.” (thanks Andrea!) The book is set in a city so old, it has forgotten its name.

The camera pulls out of the plane and we follow it down into the water where we find that the island and everything on it – Dharmaville and even the 4-toed statue – have been underwater for what appears to be years, if not decades.

Cindy, the flight attendant from the tail section, asks for a doctor and they find Charlie passed out in the bathroom with a bag of heroin lodged in his throat. Jack asks for something sharp, Cindy says they can’t carry anything like that (post-9/11 realities even affect the Lost fantasy world.) Jack looks for his pen, but can’t find it, but manages to get the back from his throat and Charlie’s back to life.Charlie, now restrained, complains to Jack that he’d wanted to die.

Jack returns to his seat and asks Rose if she’d seen Desmond, who’s now gone. The plane lands successfully and they all exit, including Locke via wheelchair.

Nerd alert: Rose was reading an issue of Weekly World News with an ad (?) on the back for X-Files, with the headline “I want to believe” and an image of a pack of “Morley Cigarettes”, the brand that Cigarette-Smoking Man on X-Files smoked.

In a strangely empty bathroom at LAX (I’ve been to LAX at least a dozen times and never seen a bathroom empty there once!), Kate pulls out the pen she stole from Jack on the plane and tries to unlock the cuffs. She’s unsuccessful, but manages to drop the Marshall like a sack of potatoes. She escapes with his blazer covering her cuffs and gets onto an elevator with a cocky Sawyer. He sees her cuffs, but says nothing as two TSA agents get on and are radioed with a “341”. Sawyer asks what a “341” is as a distraction, but also because he wants to know what is up with the chick with the handcuffs.

Nerd alert: a 341 is a police code frequently used for discharged firearms, but this was a little more interesting to me, even though a stretch beyond belief, I’m sure: In the year 341, the Roman Emperor Constans banned pagan sacrifices and magic rituals under penalty of death. Related? Doubt it. But I looked it up anyway.

Oceanic’s customer service pages Jack, and they tell him they have no idea where his father’s body is. The coffin simply wasn’t on the plane. How is this possible? Is Christian’s body and coffin somehow on the island despite the fact none of the other passengers made it to the island?

Jin and Sun are at customs in LAX and Jin produces a letter from Paik Industries regarding the watch he was carrying, but the agent finds a pouch with lots of cash in it and Jin is taken back for questioning. Sun denies him help and pretends not to speak English.

Kate eludes the police and manages to sneak out of the terminal through a secure area. Frogurt chides her for trying to cut the taxi line, and the Marshall sees her and runs after her. She hops in a taxi – with Claire!! – and forces the driver to take off at gunpoint.

Jack’s on the phone with his mom about the missing coffin, when Locke tells him that he lost a bag filled with knives. He tells Jack that they didn’t lose his father, they just lost his body. (Funny since we have two Locke bodies back on the island, neither of them with Locke alive in them.) Locke tells him that his injury is incurable, and Jack offers a free consult. Here, Jack was the man of faith, encouraging Locke to believe – a reversal of their traditional roles.

---

On the island

Kate wakes up – in a tree! She’s lost her hearing and is hanging on for dear life like one of those posters 11-year old girls hang in their bedrooms of kittens hanging on to trees.

She finds Miles and they discover the “hatch”. They’ve somehow wound up in the post-Desmond-imploded Swan Station time. Jack gets kicked in the face by Sawyer who’s pissed that Jack’s plan didn’t work. Sawyer blames Jack for Juliet’s death.

Jin and Hurley are still with Sayid, though the flash has taken them to nightfall. Suddenly they hear Juliet calling for help from below the metal scrap pile and they rush to get to her.

Back in the foot of the statue, Ben, having just killed Jacob, looks catatonic. Jacob’s body is gone. UnLocke tells Ben to get Richard. Richard is not sold at all on this, and drags Ben over to see the body of Locke that Ilana and crew carted through the jungle to bring there.

Question: What do we call this Locke? Flocke (Fake Locke)? Mocke (Mock Locke)? UnLocke? Smocke (Smoke Monster Locke)? I’m not sure, so I’ll flip flop.

Jacob comes out of the jungle and tells Hurley that he’s dead. He instructs Hurley to take Sayid – and Charlie’s guitar case – to the Temple to save Sayid. Jacob disappears. Jin comes back and they chain up and move the metal beam keeping them from getting to Juliet. Sawyer threatens to kill Jack if Juliet dies.

Sawyer climbs in and finds Juliet alive, but badly injured. Juliet seems to “flash” to another place or time. Sawyer kisses Juliet as she tells him she has something very important to say to him, and she dies. Again. Thanks, Darlton for ripping our hearts out twice.

Alpert asks Ben what happened to Jacob, and Ben lies. Bran and his men head in and they find UnLocke sitting in Jacob’s rocking chair. He tells them Jacob is dead and asks them to leave. They begin shooting at him and suddenly Smokey appears and kills the whole lot of the mercenary crew. Bram surrounds himself with ash, but Smokey is angry and figures out a loophole to make Bram fall outside the ash circle and he gets played with like a ragdoll. Ben remains unscathed. Unlocke walks back in and apologizes to Ben for looking like that.

Jack, Hurley, Jin and Kate make their way off to the Temple with Sayid in a stretcher, as Jacob instructed Hurley to. They arrive at the Temple and go down the hole into which Montand (the Frenchman who arrived with Danielle Rousseau) was dragged, where they find his corpse.

Nerd alert: Montand was holding a copy of Soren Kierkegaard’s “Fear and Trembling”. Kierkegaard was a Danish philosopher (naturally), who published the book under a pseudonym, John the Silent. The work’s title is a quote from Philippians 2:12. Fear and Trembling, according to the Wikipedia listing, "presents a highly original and provocative interpretation of the Binding of Isaac story as told in Genesis Chapter 22, and uses the story as an occasion to discuss fundamental issues in moral philosophy and the philosophy of religion, such as the nature of God and faith. The work begins with a meditation on the faith of Abraham when he was commanded by God to sacrifice his son Isaac...Silentio gives four alternative re-tellings in which Abraham fails the test of his faith and contrasts them with his own interpretation of the story of Abraham and the faith therein demonstrated. Silentio professes to admire Abraham's faith, but he is utterly incapable of comprehending it." The idea of four alternate re-tellings is, I believe, the key to this Easter egg and plays into the alternate realities we’re seeing now.

Kate gets separated from the crew, then Jack, and they’re all taken into the Temple area, a large walled fortress with a pyramid inside. There are dozens of Temple-dwellers there – virtually none of whom we’ve never seen before.

Sawyer and Miles bury Juliet and Sayer begs him – and then forces him – to find out what Juliet was going to say before she died. He listens and all he hears is “It worked.” Confused, he walks off.

Theory: Had Juliet jumped realities and known that Jack’s plan to detonate the H-bomb worked? Was she having coffee with Sawyer in this alternate reality where they agreed to go Dutch? Will she return from another reality?

Outside the temple, there are a number of people, including Cindy, the flight attendant from 815. A leader named Dogen, who appears to speak only Japanese (we later learn he only chooses to speak it) and is translated by a hippie named Lennon, orders them shot until Hurley proves that they were sent by Jacob by producing the guitar case Jacob told him to bring. Inside the case was a large wooden Ankh which Dogen broke open to reveal a note from Jacob including a list of the 815 survivors who were to be saved and a note that Sayid had to be saved or they’d all be in a lot of trouble. They take Sayid into the Temple to give him a bath in the spring.

Nerd alert: Dogen shares the name of a Japanese Buddhist philosopher who founded a variety of Zen – “oneness of practice-enlightenment”

The waters in the spring aren’t running clear – their pool guy has been sleeping on the job! - and they don’t seem to heal Dogen’s wound, yet they submerge Sayid anyway for the time frame of an hourglass, and proceed to drown him. As he’s carried out, he’s in a Jesus Christ pose and is laid down on linens. Dogen walks out of the room clearly disgusted that it didn’t work, as Jack tries CPR unsuccessfully.

Cindy, Zack and Emma (the kids who were kidnapped from the Tailies’ camp after the crash) bring in some food and drink for Jack, Kate, Hurley and Jin, and more of the Temple-folk bring in Miles and an unconscious Sawyer. Dogen asks Hurley what Jacob told him, as he trims some bonsai trees. He asks when Jacob is arriving, and Hurley tells him Jacob is dead. The Temple-folk panic and rush to secure the temple with a ring of ash and set off fireworks in the sky.

In the foot of the statue, Mocke is cleaning up the mess of Bram and his men, and he taunts Ben that he killed a confused man when he strangled Locke. Mocke is talking to Ben leaning in and out of the light, and admits that unlike Locke, he actually wants to go home.

Hurley is saying goodbye to Sayid, and Miles appears to not be able to hear anything from him. Or perhaps he’s hearing something that has him more confused than if he was actually hearing Sayid. Kate wakes up Sawyer who says that he wants Jack to suffer, knowing that he was responsible for Sayid and Juliet’s death.

On the beach, Alpert sees the fireworks go off in the sky above the Temple and appears about as panicked and confused as we’ve ever seen him. Mocke walks out of the statue and tells Richard, “It’s good to see you out of those chains.” “You?”, he asks. “Me.” And he clocks Richard, tells the rest of them that he’s very disappointed in them (huh?) and carries Richard off.

Lennon says he needs to speak with Jack, who refuses, and as they’re scuffling, Sayid wakes from the dead and asks, “What happened?”

And… cut to black.

Questions:

Is Sayid Jacob? It seems likely that Jacob inhabits Sayid’s lifeless body now that he had a vessel. During “The Incident”, Jacob and Esau are debating whether humans will ever change – stating that the same pattern is inevitable. Jacob says, “It only ends once. Everything else is just progress.” So does the pattern of humans screwing up the island and not being content there include Jacob inhabiting new bodies whenever Esau manages to find his loophole? Or does another person now inhabit Sayid? John Locke? Christian Shephard? Or has Sayid indeed been resurrected with his innocence lost (à la young Ben Linus) in the waters of the Temple?

Is Richard Alpert upset that Jacob was killed? What would have happened if Jacob were at the Temple when it was discovered that Jacob was dead? Might Jacob have inhabited Richard instead? Or would he have become the leader?

Are we indeed flashing sideways? If we are, what explains the submerged island for years? Would an H-bomb really have caused an island to sink?

Is the Alt815 timeline actually the end of the series? Are we seeing the future there, post the Mocke/Temple timeline? Or will these two realities somehow merge by the series finale?

-Sean Salo