Happy Birthday Ben

Alright, after weeks of silence on this board, NO ONE has an excuse not to post about last night's episode. I can't be alone in thinking it was another all-time great. Just this week the Lost producers announced the show's end date, after three more seasons at 16 episodes each, where LOST will, they claim, become an answer-based show... and that this transition would begin this week.

THE ANSWERS

Finally, I felt some satisfaction at getting some answers I've been looking for for a while. And it seems like just as the hatch-implosion "ended" the Hatch Chapter, last night in a way "ended" the Dharma Initiative Chapter. We now know they were just a group of progressive hippies doing experimental research, nothing more, nothing less (granted, we still don't know where the hell the island is). The most important thing about the Dharma Initiative isn't what they're doing and how, it's that for their entire stay they've been fending off the hostiles, the island's true homeowners. We know that Ben wasn't born on the island, he was just dragged along by his widowed father (is it now safe to say that EVERY character on LOST has daddy issues?), and while there he both experienced the island's true realm of mystery and also encountered these hostiles, mainly Richard (a character I'd hoped would be further developed), a hostile who DOESN'T AGE. The rest is simple: Ben made a pact, and twenty years or so later he and the hostiles gassed the Dharma staff and have been living in their facilities ever since. As far as I'm concerned, the Dharma Initiative need not be ever mentioned again; like the hatch chapter, this one is closed. It's time to look at an even bigger picture.

In other answer-based news, we've bit hit over the head once again with the truth that Juliet is good, and we now know that Kate probably isn't pregnant and that the original Losties now have the time and leverage to make sure Sun, Aaron, and everyone else is safe from any harm.

THE QUESTIONS

Nothing has made me so giddy all season as seeing that Richard, and probably all of the hostiles, does not age, or has some kind of eternal life. With this mystery comes another: Jacob, not a figment of Ben's imagination but a bonafide ghost, shackled in confinement, reaching out to Locke and terrorizing his intruders. And then, at last, LOST's return to form, in which the awesome spiritual majesty of the island itself is re-awakened. The bodiless whispers are back, haunting a young Ben as he explores the island on his own. The dead have haunted the island for a long while, as young Ben encounters the image of his dead mother across a symbolic threshold (much like another spectacled, messy-haired young "wizard" I'm thinking of) -- this was one of the best LOST scenes I've seen in a long time. And nothing reconfirms the mysterious power of the island itself more than Jacob him/itself.

I loved the dark, cinematic tone of this episode. Scenes from this episode will haunt me. In the meantime, I'm shaking in my seat at the thought of Locke being lost to the island once and for all. If he was going to die, he would have died in the last moments of the episode, right? Right??? It wouldn't be one of the all-time great Lost episodes if it didn't leave us hanging. And after 40 minutes of sympathizing with little Ben, realizing that he was just another victim of circumstance and is really not that bad at all, he goes and does something as twisted as shooting Locke and leaving him for dead.

Reply with your thoughts on Ben, Jacob, Richard, Naomi, Juliet, the island, and the thought of waiting until February for the next chapter of answers.