LOST: Saving The Island

So what have we learned since last time? Ben Linus is more badass/insane than we ever imagined, Jack and Kate "adopt" Aaron and live in seeming bliss after the island, Locke's life is even more tragic than we'd realized, and Charles Widmore is one scary dude. Oh, and the island is mobile?

In the past four episodes, only one has used flashbacks, and that was Locke's, which showed us that the Others have been watching him since he was born. Richard Alpert made his triumphant return that episode and presented a young Locke with a mysterious test to assess how the boy sees himself. As always, Locke tries to be something "greater" than what he is, which remains his undoing. Locke gives the term "tragic hero" a new meaning by having tragedy follow him around in his pursuit to become a hero.

On the other temporal side of the island, we learn how Ben and Sayid's unholy partnership began in Ben's second episode, which showcases how resourceful and dangerous Ben can be in any situation. It also adds some interesting details to the story of the war between Ben and Widmore. After seeing this episode, a friend of mine (I may have used someone's name once, but I try not to use my friends' names due to privacy issues, but if the guy who introduced this theory wants credit, just let me know, and I will add it to the post; the thing to take away from this overly long parenthetical is that the following theory did not originate with me) formed a theory about the nature of the island and why Widmore is so obsessed with finding it again. According to my friend, Widmore is much older than he looks; he believes that he was on the Black Rock as one of the slave traders (which gives new meaning to why Widmore bid on the manifest and/or diary in Desmond's last episode). When he crashed on the island, the healing powers made him, along with the rest of the crew, immortal (Ben says something to the effect of killing Widmore "wouldn't work"). We started kicking this theory around and determined that Richard Alpert was also on the ship (he probably mutinied, since he no longer seems loyal to Widmore), and though we both think that Abbadon was on the boat, we disagree about his purpose (I think he was a slave, but my friend thinks that he served in some other capacity).

On the island in the present day, the survivors from Jack's camp are beginning to see that the Kahana crew may in fact be dangerous in addition to being ineffective. But it is Locke's camp that gets the full force of Keamy and the Kahana commandos (the same friend from above told me that he'd love to see a Keamy vs. Buffy fight). Many redshirt 815 survivors (a Star Trek reference... I feel dirty) are killed, and Keamy does something so despicable, it manages to erode Ben's calm.

Part 1 of the three part season finale finally made reference to the Orchid Station, which fans first learned about at the Comic Con between seasons 3 and 4. Allow me to direct you to the following video:



Interesting stuff.

Up next: Cylon civil wars...