Raiders of the 'Lost' Story Arc

Then came the episode's other soon-to-launch-a-thousand-theories scene, not to mention what might be one of the most important ''Easter eggs'' Lost has ever planted. After yanking himself out of his stupor, Ben retreated to his secret room, the Island's wizard scurrying behind his curtain to consult his gizmos and magic for answers. Shutting out Locke and company, Ben opened a wooden door carved with all sorts of hieroglyphics — similar to the ones on the countdown timer in the Hatch — and disappeared down a secret passage. As it happens, when I visited the set of Lost a few weeks ago during the filming of this episode, I stumbled on the glyph door. Take a look:

Have fun decoding that. I'll take my stab at a theory in my Doc Jensen column next week. But where did Ben go? For now, I'm going to side with what is certain to be the popular conjecture: that he crawled into the Island underworld and asked Smokey the hellhound to eat that bad man who killed his daughter. His ash-covered clothes would seem to confirm that. So would the fearlessness and glee on his face as Smokey indeed thrashed the freighter mercs to death in the most spectacular display of Smokeyness the show has ever given us; it reminded me of the God storm unleashed upon the Nazis at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. While all of this seems almost too obvious to be true, for the moment I can't come up with any alternative theories, but if we were to find out that Ben's hidden corridor leads to the Dharma Quantum Leapster (created, no doubt, using instructions decoded from that glyph door), and that in the five minutes he was absent from Locke and company he did weeks if not months of off-Island traveling (and grieving, regrouping, and re-strategizing) before coming back focused, strong, and empowered with the necessary knowledge to defeat his enemies, well, it wouldn't surprise me at all.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Island...

Jack wobbled around the beach, sick; the freighter doctor washed up in the surf, throat slit; Faraday telegraphed the freighter and told the castaways that all was cool, that the choppers were coming to rescue them in the morning; Bernard, who can decipher Morse code, busted Faraday for lying, revealing that what the freaky physicist was actually told was that the freighter doctor was still on the boat, alive and well; and Jack, finally resigning himself to the fact that Locke was right and he was wrong about the freighter folk, asked the question that promises to finally galvanize his season 4 story line: ''Were you ever going to take us off of this island?'' Faraday broke his heart: ''No.''

I'm sticking to basics here, as I happen to know more than I can tell; reporting our recent feature story made me privy to upcoming developments in the Jack Camp arc, and I find it hard to analyze and theorize without betraying what I know. More on this next week.

(Fun Fact! The first U.S. transcontinental telegraph line was finished on — yep — October 24, 1861.)

London Calling

In the episode's final moments, Ben paid a visit to Charles Widmore at his London home in the middle of the night. Ben blasted his enemy for killing his daughter. Widmore — who has taken to self-medicating with MacScotch as a result of nightmares — blasted right back, saying it was Ben's own damn fault that Alex was dead. ''We both know very well that I didn't murder her at all, Benjamin....You have the audacity to pretend you're the victim....I know who you are, boy! What you are. I know everything you have you took from me....That island's mine, Benjamin. It always was. It will be again.'' Ben then dared him to find it — right after pledging to get even with his game-changing opponent by killing his daughter, too: none other than Desmond's sweetie, Penelope.

Widmore's cryptic comments will no doubt be as debated as the glyph door. My interpretation returns us to the beginning. Ben and Widmore seem to be engaged in a war — a war for the Island, a war over time itself. For a long time, Ben was winning that war by either facilitating or managing a new timeline of events, one that denies Widmore his predestined life — a life that may have been ruinous for the entire world. But victory for Ben hinges on knowing or at least anticipating the future — and with Alex's unforeseeable death, it appears Ben has become omnisciently challenged. Once, he was able to see the shape of things to come. Now, the future is as hazy as Smokey himself.

And with that — PLOOOP! I turn it over to you. What did you see? What are your theories? Why do you think it's so important to Ben that Locke stay alive? What do you think is ailing Jack? Go!

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