Wow.
Lost comes back with a vengeance.
The body count takes off immediately, though it’s mostly red shirts. Three red shirts buy it in the crossfire when mercenaries from the freighter invade Eggtown and try to gun down Sawyer, who escapes in his his signature brave-but-really-friggin-stupid, bumbling, I’m-too-big-of-a-redneck-hick-to-die style. How is he not dead yet? [I have the same question about Locke. And Kate. How can these guys still be so naive and just plain dumb and still be alive?] We get a breathless cliffhanger right into the first commercial break, but Claire is alive after all, despite having her house blown up while she was asleep in it. The only two major deaths are not Losties.
We discover just who was shooting at Alex, Rousseau [the French Woman] and Karl, killing the latter two, at the end of episode 8. We can pretty much assume [though there’s no way to confirm it at present] that they butched Ben’s folks at the Temple, too. The freighter mercenaries, shockingly enough, assassinate Alex right in front of Ben. Ben’s reaction results in one of the most breath-taking scenes of this season: Ben Linus sics the Smoke Monster on the mercs. Smokie shows no mercy.
The other major death is Nadia, Sayid’s long lost love. Apparently, Sayid returns as one of the Oceanic Six, finds her and marries her. Later, she’s assassinated. Ben claims that Widmore arranged it and singles out someone at the funeral in Iraq as having fled the scene of her death in Los Angeles. I don’t buy it. Right before Sayid clips him, the alleged assassin just seems too chummy and baffled by what Ben’s saying. I think Ben arranged Nadia’s death to manipulate Sayid into volunteering to be his personal assassin. He was certainly smiling about Sayid’s insistence on joining his little crusade. Everyone [except his late daughter] is a pawn in Ben’s game with Charles Widmore.
I’m intrigued by Widmore’s relationship to Ben. Ben states that he can’t just kill Widmore, which may have something to do with avoiding a time travel paradox [best guess]. It’s all about the Island for Widmore, but Ben’s gone Old Testament on us. He wants an eye for an eye, a daughter for a daughter. Ben genuinely cared for Alex [in his own sick and twisted way]. Widmore arranged Alex’s death and Ben is promising to kill Penny [won’t Dez be thrilled].
Concerning time travel: Ben Linus CAN apparently leave the Island whenever he wants, though it doesn’t look like he has too much control over it. Why else would he land in the middle of the Sahara? It looks like he can hit the ballpark [general geographical area and year, at least]. Of course, it may be that he does have a greater deal of control over his time teleportation, but that he had toleave in a hurry [note: wound on arm].
I love that Locke, Hurley and Sawyer were playing Risk. I think the writers dropped us a HUGE HINT, and I don’t think it was a red herring, when Hurley said, “Australia is the key to the game.” The whole Lost saga began in Sydney, Australia. I think Australia will be key to the Oceanic Six somehow.
A lot of what happens on the Island is going to have much to do with Jacob. We won’t find out more about Jacob for two more episodes [#11: Cabin Fever on May 8th] when Hurley, Locke and Ben reach his cabin.
I still don’t think we’ve seen the end of Charlie yet either. His name just keeps coming up like a bad penny. We’ll see…
–Sirius Knott
Defending Genesis 