LOST 6x15: Take the cup and drink

Jacob’s momma was so pregnant… (How pregnant was she?!) She was so pregnant that she gave birth to Jacob AND Baby In Black. Claudia opted for the hot stone massage at the tropical spa, but got stoned to death instead. Zac Effron joined the cast as Boy in Black and taunted his slightly dimwitted brother, Jacob. CJ Cregg from The West Wing tells Boy Jacob and his brother they have to protect the island’s tanning salon from the riff raff. And we visit Adam and Eve again - and they’re not even close to the people anyone even remotely guessed.

Hoping for Man in Black’s name as a consolation for not seeing the rest of the cast? You’re sh!t outta luck, my friend.

Lost 6x15: Across the Sea

I’ll admit I was worried when I heard this would be an episode with none of the main cast. I didn’t know what to expect, and was frustrated they were talking a pause from the main storyline with so few episodes to go. But this was a story that needed to be told, and this was one of the more beautiful episodes of the entire series. It was filled with mythology and religion and history – and answers. And the cinematography in this one - bananas! Few episodes have divided the fandom as much as this one. But I loved it!

So what about you – did you hit the “Like button” on this one, or did you feel like Damon and Carlton smashed in your brain with a rock? Comment below.

Before I head into the recap, I just want to call out a couple of people… My wife Katie and my brother Phil are either the sounding boards for the theories I write about or they formulate them and then bounce them off me. I couldn’t have blogged this series without them, and to them I say: Namaste.


On the island, date unclear:
A mysterious woman wakes up on the beach and stumbles into the jungle. She’s very pregnant and appears dressed in ancient clothing. She stops at a creek to drink and wigs out at a woman in strange garb who walks up to her. Speaking Latin, she asks if she’s hurt and offers to help. The island woman prepares medicine with a mortar and pestle (like Dogen?). The first woman says her name is Claudia, and then for the sake of the audience, they switch over to English.



Nerd alert: Claudia was a Roman Vestal Virgin. While not Claudia, one of the Vestal Virgins was the mother of Romulus and Remus, the twin founders of Rome.

Claudia asks how she got there, and the woman answers that she too got there by accident. In true LOST form, the woman thwarts any other questions, saying they’ll only lead to further questions, and she tells Claudia to rest. Claudia wants to find her other shipmates, but the woman says she’ll find them if there’s anyone else. Suddenly Claudia goes into labor and announces, “it’s coming.”

Nerd alert: Small call back to Jacob telling UnLocke, “they’re coming!” after Ben stabbed him.


Claudia delivers the baby, and it’s a boy she names Jacob. GASP! (The kid looked 3 months old, by the way, but I’m guessing there are child labor laws preventing newborns from working in a tropical jungle.) Surprise! She’s still in labor and delivers another boy. Claudia says, “I only picked one name.” (Baby in Black is crying and more fussy.) She asks to see the baby, and the woman says “I’m sorry” as she bashes her head in with a rock.

Nerd alert: Danielle Rousseau’s storyline, anyone?

Flash ahead about 13 years and there’s a dark-haired teenager on the beach who finds a game (Senet) in a box. A blonde-haired boy (the kid we’ve been seeing run around the jungle! I knew he was Jacob), sits down with the other boy. Boy in Black (BIB) swears Jacob to secrecy about the game, and they play.

Nerd alert: Jacob and BIB were “raised by another.”


Question: What was up with the huge turtle on the beach? Was it dead?


Nerd alert: The game was the ancient Egyptian game of Senet, but clearly is a call back to the backgammon game. From Wikipedia: “By the time of the New Kingdom in Egypt (1567–1085 BC), it had become a kind of talisman for the journey of the dead. Because of the element of luck in the game and the Egyptian belief in determinism, it was believed that a successful player was under the protection of the major gods of the national pantheon: Ra, Thoth, and sometimes Osiris. Consequently, Senet boards were often placed in the grave alongside other useful objects for the dangerous journey through the afterlife and the game is referred to in Chapter XVII of the Book of the Dead.”

Returning to the cave where they live, their “Mother” asks Jacob where his brother is and what they were doing. He tells her they were just walking on the beach. She asks Jacob if he loves her and to tell her what they were doing.

Question: Was it guilt about lying, or was there a slight distrust when Jacob paused before answering if he loved her?

“Mother” goes to the beach and confronts BIB about the Senet game, and he knows Jacob told her. She says that Jacob can’t lie because he’s not like BIB. She tells him he’s special, and she actually left him the game. (She's a liar. She wants him to believe there's no one else in the world.) He admits he’d hoped it’d come from somewhere else across the sea, but she tells BIB that there is nowhere else. Telling him how they got there and that her mother died, she says he’ll never have to worry about being dead.

Nerd alert: Nice call back to John Locke believing he was special and wanting to be told so.


In the jungle, Jacob and BIB are chasing a boar, when three men pounce on it. They run back to “Mother” and tell her about the three men that looked like them. She tells them they’re “not like us”…they don’t belong there. She and the boys, however, are there for a reason. They force her to explain, and she takes them – blindfolded – to see the answer. As they walk, she tells them that the hunters are like all men... “The come, they flight, they destroy, they corrupt - and it always ends the same.” She tells them they came from another part of the island and they’d hurt them if they went looking for them. Jacob and BIB can never hurt one another, she says. She takes off their blindfolds to reveal a beautiful, golden, glowing cave. In the cave is the warmest, brightest light, and they need to protect it from the hunters and anyone else, because the light – the goodness – will go out everywhere if it goes out on the island. One of them will need to become the protector.


Nerd alert: “They come, they flight, they destroy, they corrupt - and it always ends the same” was the same speech MIB gave to Jacob on the beach before the Black Rock arrived.

Nerd alert: So this cave is much like the Garden of Eden and the apple. The only thing they weren't allowed to touch is what Even and Adam were drawn to - as is the nature of man.


Question: Random aside... Just me, or did the light in the cave remind you of the briefcase in Pulp Fiction that was believed to contain Marsellus Wallace's soul?


Back on the beach, they’re playing BIB’s game. Jacob’s frustrated that BIB made up the rules, but he tells Jacob that one day he’ll make up his own game and people will have to play by his rules. BIB looks into the jungle and sees Claudia, who takes him to see the village that her shipmates have built in what looks like the spot of the New Otherton village. Claudia tells them she’s his mother, that they’ve been there since the day she was born and that like the others, they also came from across the sea.



In the cave, BIB wakes up Jacob to go with him to go live with the people in the village, but Jacob refuses and gives BIB a walloping. “Mother” breaks up the fight, and BIB unsuccessfully tries to recruit him to go along with them. She tells BIB that he’ll never be able to leave the island, but he storms off.

Jacob joins “Mother” down on the beach, who admits that she did kill Claudia. She tells them that she did it to keep him from becoming one of ‘them’. Jacob asks if he is good, and she says he is. He follows up asking why she loves BIB more than him. Her reply is a confused and cold, “I love you in different ways.” He agrees to stay with her.

Flash ahead 30 years, and Jacob is weaving the tapestry. He goes to spy on MIB, and the two of them meet to play the Senet game they played together as boys. MIB asks if she knows he’s there and why he watches them. Jacob asks if they are evil and corrupt. MIB answers that they are greedy, manipulative and selfish, but they’re a means to an end. MIB tells Jacob he’s found a way off the island, and throws a dagger at a well wall, and it magnetically sticks to it. MIB tells him they’ve found places all over the island where there are magnetic properties and they’ve dug at all the sites – and at this one, they’ve found something. He asks Jacob to come with him, but he refuses again.


Question: Was this Dogen’s dagger?


Back in the cave, Jacob tells “Mother” that MIB has found a way to leave the island. She goes to see for herself. In the well, MIB is stoking a fire in a pit like the one in Jacob’s statue. He tells her that he’s found a way to the light, despite not being able to find the golden cave all these years. He pulls out a brick and shows her the light behind the wall. It illuminates a large wheel – the frozen donkey wheel Ben turned – which they’re going to use to channel the water and the light to leave the island. She asks how he knows it’ll work, and he answers, “I’m special, ‘Mother’”. She begs him not to do it, but he says he doesn’t belong there. She hugs him goodbye, but knowing she has to keep him there and the island safe, she smashes his head against the wall.

“Mother” wakes Jacob and takes him to the golden cave again, saying she can’t stop him MIB. He asks what’s down in the cave. “Life. Death. Rebirth. It’s the source. The heart of the island. Just promise me, no matter what you do, you won’t ever go down there.” Going into the cave would be much worse than dying. She opens a bottle of wine, says some words in Latin, pours him a cup and tells him to drink it. By doing so, he will protect the place for as long as he can and then find his replacement. Jacob whines that she always wanted it to be MIB, but he’s all she has now. She somewhat convincingly tells him that it’s not true – it was always supposed to be him, and he’ll see so one day. She begs him to take the cup and drink. He does so, and she proclaims, “Now you and I are the same.”


Nerd alert: Didn’t the beam of light from the cave look like the beam of light shining up from the Swan hatch?


Nerd alert: The process of pouring the wine, speaking in Latin over it, the declarations, “Take the cup and drink” and “Now you and I are the same” is virtually identical to the Transubstantiation ritual in the Catholic church where wine is turned into the blood of Christ and shared with the congregation.


MIB wakes up with a headache and sees the well has somehow been filled in. He rushes to the camp to find all of his people dead and someone has laid waste to the village. (“Mother” is the smoke monster!) He finds the Senet game she left for him in the ashes, and looks like he’s about to explode.


Thunder claps, and “Mother” tells Jacob to get some firewood before it storms – she knows what’s about to come. MIB has wrecked the cave, and destroyed the tapestry. She finds the Senet game and pulls out the black rock. Suddenly, she is stabbed from behind. He asks why she wouldn’t let him leave, and she answers that she loves him. She says “thank you” and she dies.

Nerd alert: He stabbed her before she could speak, just like the orders Dogen and Widmore gave.


Jacob walks in and pummels him, just like that day in the jungle when they were thirteen. Jacob drags him to the golden cave, and throws him into the stream, and he floats away into the cave. No sooner does he do so then a column of smoke barrels out of it and over him. He goes down the hill to the back side of the cave and finds MIB’s body there, dead. He carries MIB’s body back to the cave and lays him next to “Mother”, putting the two game pieces – a black and a white – into a satchel and into her hand.


We see flashes of Jack and Kate in the same cave, and Locke coming in to declare they are the island’s Adam and Eve.


Gripe: Anyone who’s watched the show knew they were Adam and Eve. We didn’t need the over exposition, did we?

Among the many stories of fueding brothers - Romulus & Remus, Cane & Abel, etc., the ones that still stand out to me on this are the Egyptian Horus and Set. Horus and Set feuded over control of Egypt, and Lower and Upper Egypt were separated and given to them to oversee.


So as we wrap up the series, was this a story you needed to know, or could have lived without. Drop a comment below.

-Sean Salo

LOST: Pros and Cons

Sawyer and Miles play cops and robbers in LA. UnLocke plays Sawyer and Kate. Clousseau tucks in her furry, animal carcass. Kate makes s’mores on the beach. Charlotte cleans up nicely. A Tina Fey wannabe cons Sawyer. Widmore has Sawyer over to the sub for tea. And we catch up on our L.H. on the P. reruns. It’s another nail in the coffin of the final season of LOST.

Lost 6x08: Recon

Dr. Linus, last week’s episode, had some of the more incredible acting we’ve seen this season, if not the series, so I was surprised that the writers didn’t give us more of a deep storyline. The fandom is mixed on this episode. I put it in the good-to-really good category, while others thought it was among the best of the season. Some cool "nerd alerts" in the flash sideways section, including what might be my first "nerd alert inside a nerd alert". (See below) All I know is that I ended the episode more excited about the promo for next week’s “Ab Aeterno” episode focusing on Richard Effing Alpert!

So what did you think? Take a read and leave your comments in the bowl below, and don’t forget to flush!


2007, On island:

Sawyer wakes Jin in Clousseau’s camp, telling him he’s with Locke, just as Team UnLocke arrives. Jin says he can’t leave if Sun might be on the island, and Sawyer promises he won’t leave if she’s there. When Kate asks, Clousseau says that the furry skeleton doll in the cradle, she answers “It’s all I had.” (Creeeepy.)


UnLocke addresses the clan, telling them that those who stayed at the Temple were all killed by the Black Smoke Monster. But in a strangely caring manner, UnLocke tells Zack and Emma that he is going to do everything in his power to take care of them all. Kate says that Jack and Hurley made it out, but she didn’t know what happened to Miles. “So you’re with Locke now?”, she asks. “I ain’t with anybody, Kate.”

Later, walking through the jungle, UnLocke tells the flock to set up camp, and Sawyer questions him. UnLocke pulls him aside and chides him for interrupting. “Sorry, I forgot my manners.” “I forgive you.” (UnLocke forgives Sawyer, and we’ve seen UnLocke as Smokey as the judge, doling out a death sentence or forgiveness.) UnLocke admits that he’s “the smoke thing” and killed the Others because they would have otherwise killed him.

Sawyer’s told to take the boat over to Hydra Island and do reconnaissance on the people remaining there from Ajira 316. He tells Sawyer that he’s sending him because he’s the best liar he’s ever met. And once he completes this, they’ll get off the island. (See the On Hydra Island section.)


Kate asks a catatonic Sayid if he believes UnLocke will get them off the island. Sayid answers all zombie-like that he does, when Clousseau jumps Kate and tries to cut her throat. Sayid doesn’t move a muscle to help – no one does – but UnLocke steps in to save her - and slaps Clousseau something awful, and tells her he’ll deal with her later, and asks Kate if she’s alright. “No, I’m not alright.”

Question: Did Locke tell Clousseau to cool it because he needed Kate? Or did he put her up to attacking Kate in the first place? It seemed odd to me that no one there came to Kate’s defense.


UnLocke apologies to Kate for Clousseau’s behavior and takes the blame for the misunderstanding. He says that he needed her to focus on something, and he gave her something to hate. “That’s very insightful coming from a dead man.” “Well, nobody’s perfect,” he answers. He promises to protect Kate and offers to show her where Sawyer is.

Clousseau finds Kate in the jungle and apologizes to her and thanks her for taking care of Aaron.

Question: Was the attack by Claire a rouse to get Kate to trust the UnLocke flock? No one came to her aid except UnLocke himself.

Sitting on the beach, UnLocke tells Kate that he sent Sawyer to Hydra Island. He tells her that his mother was crazy and that he “had some growing pains” that he’s “still trying to work [his] way through”, that “could have been avoided if things had been different.” He says he’s telling her because Aaron now has a crazy mother too. This was some great acting by Terry O'Quinn.

Nerd alert: So if we go back to the Egyptian mythology, we can assume that UnLocke is Set, I believe. Set was the god of storms and chaos. Set's mother's name was Nut. (A fun play on words by the writers, as UnLocke was talking about his mother being crazy?) Set was an enemy to Horus, and the gods tired of them fighting one another over control of Egypt.

2007 On Hydra Island:


Once there, Sawyer visits the bear cages and sees the dress Ben made Kate wear. He gets a lump in his throat at the sight.


Sawyer comes across the Ajira plane, and follows a trail in the sand to a pile of corpses from Flight 316, when he sees a bespectacled woman running away. He chases after her and, and she tells him, “I’m the only one left.” She, Zoe, says that the others died when she was collecting wood, but then asks if he was alone or if he and his friends have more guns.


Turns out that Zoe is doing reconnaissance on Sawyer, and he pulls his gun on her. Then the now-grown up kid from “Kate and Ally” pops out of the woods with rifles trained on him.


Saywer is marched past some men setting up pylons like the ones in the perimeter fence. He’s led into the sub, where he passes a padlocked room. He asks what’s in the room and, no surprise on LOST, is told to keep walking.

Question: What – or who – is in the room? Desmond and Penny or Faraday or Mrs. Hawking, one or all of whom he would have needed to get back to the island. Another in the long string of who/what is inside: the hatch, the casket, Ben’s magical box, etc.

Widmore introduces himself and Sawyer accuses him of sending the freighter to kill them all, and Widmore says that it’s sad how little he knows. He tells him that John Locke sent him, though he knows it’s not really Locke, but offers to tell UnLocke that the coast is clear for Widmore to kill him in exchange for his friends not being killed and for safe passage off the island.

Sawyer arrives back on the island and he accuses UnLocke of not really sending him there to find the passengers from the plane. Sawyer says that Widmore won’t let them get off the island without a fight. He tells UnLocke of the deal that he made with Widmore and that they’re setting up the pylons. He admits that he told them that he’d bring UnLocke to them, but they should surprise attack.

Joining Kate by the fire, where she tells Sawyer she thinks they’re having rabbit for dinner (rabbit references are multiplying like rabbits on LOST - also a nice callback to the book in Sawyer's flash sideways, Watership Down. He tells her that Widmore is there for UnLocke, but he’s going to just let them fight it out, and while they are, they’ll escape in the sub.

2004, Los Angeles:


Sawyer is trying to pull his patented con on a woman he’s just sleps with, when she turns the table on him and says she’s onto him. Sawyer tells her that he’s a cop and then uses his safe word, LaFleur, and the LAPD burst in, led by his partner, Miles Straume. “You’re a cop?”, she asks. “Surprise.”

Nerd alert: The time was 8:42. Both numbers.

Sawyer – aka Det. James Ford – is making cold calls to various Anthony Coopers, trying to find the one who conned his family. Miles asks him what’s up and if he’s lying about anything.

Question: As Sawyer's role is opposite here, and he's a cop instead of a con man, is Miles' ability opposite, having a sense about the living?


Miles sets up Ford on a blind date and it turns out it’s with Charlotte Lewis. She works with Miles’ dad in a museum. She asks why he became a cop, and she says it was either criminal or cop, and he chose cop.

Question: Wouldn't it have made more sense for it to have been Ana Lucia, who was an LAPD cop? And weren't you hoping it would have been Juliet?

Nerd alert: Ford asks her if she’s like Indiana Jones, and she says yes. One of many Indiana Jones references on Lost, over the seasons.

They leave the restaurant before dessert and go back to his place. As she’s looking for a t-shirt, she finds a file of photos and news clippings marked “Sawyer”. He walks in on this, and throws her out.

Nerd alert: The news clipping stated that James Ford was 9 years-old at the time of his parents' murder-suicide. In the normal timeline, he was 8 when this happened. Yet another in the dates being off in this reality. (Remember that Claire's sonogram was off by a month from the actual date of the crash.)


Nerd alert: There were three books on Ford’s dresser:
• Watership Down, a story about a group of rabbits who seek to escape the destruction of their warren and a new home, while encountering perils along the way. Originally Boone’s book, Sawyer was seen reading this book on the island in season one.
• Lancelot, a book about King Arthur’s most trusted of knights. However, Lancelot betrayed Arthur, with his love affair with Queen Guinevere, the act of which led to the downfall of the kingdom of Camelot. So is Sawyer’s love of Kate going to lead to the downfall of UnLocke’s kingdom, or prevent Widmore from starting his…or both?
• A Wrinkle in Time, another book Sawyer read on the island, this book features a character named Charles Wallace Murry. Charles and his family travel to another planet where “they find that all the inhabitants behave in a mechanistic way and seem to be all under the control of a single mind...they discover a man with red eyes with telepathic abilities who can cast a hypnotic spell over their minds... Confronting IT, Meg realizes that the evil IT is unable to stand the emotion love, and by focusing all her love at Charles Wallace she is able to free him from IT's control.” Regarding Charles Wallace, he “is the youngest Murry child, the most extraordinary and the most vulnerable of the novel's human characters… Charles Wallace seldom speaks to anyone but his family, but can empathically or telepathically "read" certain people's thoughts and feelings, and has an extraordinary vocabulary. A biological "sport," he is intellectually curious, loving, and unfazed by extraordinary people and events.”

Nerd alert inside a Nerd alert!!: Wallace was the name on the dial in the lighthouse at #108. As one of the important numbers, we have yet to meet anyone on the island or off with the name Wallace. So is Wallace perhaps...Widmore?


At the police station, a man asks Sawyer about his brother who was arrested when Miles pulls Ford aside and tells him that he knows he was in Sydney and not Palm Springs, and Ford refuses to tell him anything. Miles says that he’s not Ford’s partner any more. Sawyer punches a mirror (similar to how Jack broke the mirror?)


Nerd alert: The man asking about his brother arrested on a drug charge was Charlie’s brother, Liam.

Ford gets home and pops in a TV dinner and turns on a Little House on the Prairie. In the episode, Pa is telling Half Pint that even when our loved ones die, they’re still with us in memories and in our hearts. Ford decides to go to apologize to Charlotte. He brings a single sunflower and a six-pack of beer, and she sends him packing.

Nerd alert: Sawyer told Kate that he used to watch LH on the P when he was sick (in the “Tricia Tanaka Is Dead” episode), and she made fun of him for it.

Question: With her piercing blue eyes, is it possible in the flash sideways that Charlotte and Jack were together at one point, and that she is David’s mother?


Ford explains about Anthony Cooper to Miles and says he’s going to hill him if he ever finds him, when a blue car sideswipes Ford and Miles’ car. Sawyer chases after the driver who, “son of a biiitch”, turns out to be Kate.


Nerd alert/Question: OK, this one isn’t fully fleshed out, but I’m giving this some thought. (Thanks to Phil for this one.) The story of Lilith: The mystical writing of two brothers, Jacob and Isaac, which predates Kabbalah by a few decades, states that Samael and Lilith are in the shape of an androgynous being, double-faced, born out of the emanation of the Throne of Glory and corresponding in the spiritual realm to Adam and Eve, who were likewise born as a hermaphrodite. The two twin androgynous couples resembled each other and both "were like the image of Above"; that is, that they are reproduced in a visible form of an androgynous deity.

So is it possible that Jacob and the Man In Black are the same person, explaining why they cant kill each other directly? This could explain the mirror imagery – mirrored personalities and why we are seeing all the 815ers as mirrors of themselves in the flash sideways.


Help me out with some of the questions posed, and/or tell me why you loved or hated this episode in a comment below.


- Sean Salo

They changed the rules on us

LOST returned from hiatus last night with an all-killer/no-filler, story-based episode titled “The Shape of Things to Come”. If this type of intensity is the shape of things to, I might need some adult diapers. Ben showed us some of his ninja moves, Charles Widmore upped the ante, the Black Smoke Monster took the bullet train to Othersville, we say goodbye to an innocent pawn, we learned Claire is made of Teflon, Bernard gets to practice the Morse Code skills he learned in dental school, and Ben took in the sights in some beautiful parts of the world.

LOST 4x09: The Shape of Things to Come

“The Shape of Things to Come” will likely be seen as one of those “game changer” episodes. They’ve changed the rules of how they will tell the story of these characters and this island moving forward. Sure, the episode relied heavily on a flash forward – Ben’s. But the storytelling was so intense that the mythology of the island almost played second fiddle to the plot.


On the island:

Alex hits the panic button when her captors – the motley crew from the freighter led by Keamy – try to get to Ben. Locke answers the phone and hears the emergency message, “Code 14 J.” Ben tries to barricade himself in the house, but Keamy bargains with Alex’s life to get Ben to surrender. Ben, in both a selfless and callous move, says that he doesn’t care about her, figuring they’ll let her go. Keamy proves himself the ruthless mercenary that he is and actually carries out the execution.

Ben was stunned, as were we all. As if Alex’s short life wasn’t sad enough, she died thinking Ben didn’t love her. This is the most sympathetic moment we have for Ben since being introduced to him, trapped in that net a couple of seasons ago. Ben announces “he changed the rules” and goes into action mode.

He exposes his hidden office and shuts a security door behind him. But not before we get a glimpse of what’s behind a wall of suits in there – some sort of cave or tunnel door. It’s covered with hieroglyphs and other symbols. Want to take a shot at deciphering them? Feel free. Seems to me this is something left behind by the original island inhabitants – the ones who built that four-toed statue we have yet to get the scoop on.

(Photo from losteastereggs.blogspot.com)



Right before they were attacked, Hurley put Aaron on a pillow in a laundry basket. Is this an allusion to Moses in the basket being sent down the river? Will Aaron be the key to the Oceanic 6’s freedom or safety? Or perhaps Future Aaron will play a key role in leading the Losties back home.

(Photo from losteastereggs.blogspot.com)


The crew blows up Claire’s house with her in it. But somehow, she emerges with just a scratch on her face. Good luck explaining that one.

Back on the beach, the freighter’s doctor washes onto the shore with a slit throat and a stitching job across his cheek that looked like shoelaces. I guess the poor guy probably had to stitch himself up, though. Bernard suggests Faraday try to fix the radio to send Morse Code since the microphone is broken. They manage to make it work and Daniel sends a message asking about Sayid, Desmond and the doctor. Faraday says the reply is “friends are fine – helicopters coming in the morning.” But Bernard utilizes that dental school training in Morse Code (huh?) to translate the real message, “What are you talking about? The doctor is fine.” Yet another time glitch perhaps – the island time is actually ahead of the freighter and the real world by some amount of time.

Ben emerges from the room and tells them they need to run for the treeline. The house begins to shake and the Black Smoke Monster comes racing at the freighter crew like a bullet train. Ben clearly called in the island’s backup defense system, and it does a number on them.

Sawyer’s takes Claire and Aaron back to the beach. Hurley, however, has work to do with Locke and Ben, and they set off to find Jacob’s cabin for further instructions.


Off the island:

Ben appears out of breath in the Sahara Desert wearing a parka with the name Halliwax on it. Why he’s wearing a parka, we’re not sure. Perhaps there are no non-stop routes from the island, and he had a stopover in Antartica. He also had a gash in his arm. Maybe he encountered one of the polar bears on his trip. Two men on horses question him and Ben takes them both down with some kickass Rambo style moves.

(Photo from losteastereggs.blogspot.com)


Geek alert: Edgar Halliwax was the name given by the narrator in the Orchid Station orientation film. He called himself Dr. Marvin Candle in the video for the Swan Station and Dr. Mark Wickmund in the Pearl Station film.

Back from commercials, we see Ben in Tunisia checking into a hotel as a preferred guest using his Dean Moriarty passport from “The Economist” episode. The hotel employee seems alarmed. He asks what day it is, and she replies “October 24th.” “2005?” he asks. Ben sees a TV report of news crews hounding Sayid as he begs, “Please, I just want to bury my wife in peace.” Ben high tails it to Tikrit, Iraq, and although in the middle of a war zone, he manages to use press credentials to get to the top of a building where he photographs a bald man. Sayid catches a glimpse of Ben on the roof and then ambushes him. He didn’t realize it was Ben (is there paparazzi in a war zone?), but Ben convinces him the bald man is working for Widmore and was responsible for Nadia’s death.

Later, we see Ben chasing after the bald man again, but Sayid takes him down and empties out his handgun into the guy. Sayid volunteers to work with Ben, who walks away with a smirk. Was this Ben’s plan all along?

Next we see Ben in London. He enters a posh building and tells the doorman he’s visiting the Kendricks in 4E. However, he uses his key to access the penthouse and walks into Widmore’s bedroom. This ain’t no late-night booty call, and he’s not there to kill Widmore either. He’s there to confront him on having changed the game by killing Alex and to let him know that now he’s going to kill Penny. The rules appear to have been that no family would be killed, but Ben’s going tit for tat.

Ben cannot kill Widmore. Will the island not let him or is Ben still following some rules despite them having been changed by Widmore?

Did you take note of how stunningly this scene was filmed, with shadows and both Ben and Widmore only half-lit. It seems to play off the whole idea of light/dark, black/white, good/evil.

There are some fans that are drawing connections to theories of dark matter coming into play. Feel free to check the link for a detailed description, but be prepared for a serious headache.

(Photos from losteastereggs.blogspot.com)


For discussion: Hurley, Locke and Sawyer are playing the game Risk at the beginning of the episode. Hurley gets frustrated at Sawyer and says that “Australia is the key to the whole game.” Is this a clue that the writers view this all as a big power struggle – perhaps with the armies of Widmore (and Paik) advancing on the island? Perhaps Australia actually is the key to understanding what is going on here.


The shape of things to come on LOST is good since the writers keep raising the bar. What did you think? Leave me some comments in Morse Code below.