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DOC JENSEN'S COUNTDOWN TO SEASON 4 THEORY OF THE MONTH!
The big (and crazy) ideas I'll be bringing with me into the new year of Lost obsessing.

BEN IS TRIPPING ON THE SAME FUTURE-FLASHING BRAINWAVES AS DESMOND.

MY ARGUMENT: Like Desmond, Ben receives flashes of the future, too. Of course, while Old Bug Eyes has been on The Island longer, and has actively cultivated a deeper rapport with The Island (or is that just Jacob?), Big Bad Ben has banked many, many, many more flashes than the formerly Hatched-trapped Scot. My belief is that Ben has seen the Ultimate End of the drama currently transpiring on The Island — the one involving The Castaways, his fellow Others, and even the newly arrived freighter people — and he's either determined to do whatever it takes to make sure that Ultimate End comes to pass...or to thwart it. My theory explains Ben's apparent menace, which I think is greatly misunderstood. Remember the Desmond episode where the lovelorn loser — heeding the implicit rules of his precognitive powers — seemed set to sacrifice Charlie's life in order to facilitate the possible future that would have brought Penelope to The Island? In the end, Desmond didn't have the guts to allow Charlie to fall prey to Rousseau's bow-and-arrow booby trap. But Ben has such stones. He simply does what he has to do to make sure that the flashes that he's foreseen happen exactly as they should (or shouldn't) happen. From his point of view, Ben isn't a diabolical villain but rather a helpless servant to predestined fate — a Happy Ending that only he knows. This would explain his forlorn melancholy in the Nikki/Paulo episode, in which Ben was spotted in The Pearl Station somberly, almost bitterly acknowledging the awful tactics he must use to bend Michael and Jack to his will. Remember: per the rules, as relayed via the Desmond storyline, each flash must transpire exactly as revealed, in the order in which they were revealed, for the final event in the sequence to come to pass. This business is so delicate, so precise, you can't risk letting others in on it, lest they exert their own will and screw everything up; consequently, the future-facilitator is bound to come off aloof, shifty, even evil in the eyes of others.

So? What do you think? Am I onto something? Send me your thoughts and your own hatched-over-the-hiatus ideas at JeffJensenEW@aol.com, or simply fill out the form below. We'll discuss them — as well as your reaction to last month's column analyzing the mysterious new Orchid Station orientation film — in next month's column. Until then:

Namaste!

Doc Jensen

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