Season 4, Episode 9: "The Shape of Things to Come"

Woohoo! So glad LOST is back after so long.

Alright, I'm kind of tired so I'm going to just write all my random thoughts...so this probably won't be composed very well, but, oh well.

So, in Ben's flash-forward, we see him waking up in the middle of the Tunisian desert, with nothing around. This is also the same way we saw Jack in the pilot episode, laying in the middle of the jungle with nothing around, after the crash. Also, Tunisia is where we saw Charlotte's flashback on her archeological dig when she found the remains of the Dharma polar bear. Note that Ben was wearing a very heavy, fur-lined Dharma coat. Why would he be wearing a coat in the middle of the desert? (The coat had a nametag of "Halliwax" - which is the alias that Dr. Marvin Candle used in the last Dharma video we saw). Ben is cold and shivering, and it appears he has a gunshot wound to the arm, which is still bleeding. So how did he get there? I'm wondering if this is where he "landed" directly after coming off the island. Wherever he came from, he was just in some kind of a fight, hence the fresh wound. Maybe whatever means he took to get there was that of an escape, and that is just where he happened to land. He did tell Sayid that he used Desmond's sailboat to get off the island and go to Fiji, and then he "chartered a plane" from there. And what is the connection between Tunisia and Dharma? Obviously Dharma has been there before (the polar bears that Charlotte found), so it's kind of ironic that Ben would land there after coming from the island. Is the Tunisian desert some kind of time portal from the island? There is also some weird connection with the cold weather. For example, the desert is VERY hot. So why does he have a winter coat on? And the polar bear skeleton that was found in the desert, how could a polar bear live in such a humid climate? Also, remember at the end of season 2 when the two men in the plane were searching for Desmond's boat and they called Penny, it appeared they were somewhere in the Arctic. I don't know what these connections mean, I'm just piecing all these things together here...because it all seems a bit strange.

Anyway, Ben goes to see Sayid, who has just lost his wife, Nadia. (how cute is it that he finally found her and married her! I hope we get to see a flash-forward sometime soon to see how that all came about). Anyway, I actually think that Ben set up Sayid in order to get him on "his side." He may have even been the one behind Nadia's murder, knowing that he could use that to his advantage because Sayid would want revenge. Ben warned him about not allowing his anger to turn into revenge, as that was what happened to him after losing Alex, but that was probably just Ben's way of setting the trap, as he always does. Once again he gets people do things that they believe are their own idea, but really he played them the whole time. Sayid offered to work for him, he wanted to do it... but Ben smiled as he walked away, knowing that his little "plan" worked to get Sayid on his side and working for him.

We see alot of mentions of playing a game in this episode. Obviously all the talk about changing "the rules" and then we also see Locke, Sawyer and Hurley playing a game (Risk), in which Hurley makes a reference to "Australia is the key to this whole game." Obviously Australia was where they all were flying from when they crashed. There was another reference to games when Ben referred to his daughter as a pawn. And then again in the end we see that Charles and Ben are playing this "game," back and forth over who wins the island. It's a power struggle...and Charles and Ben are both fighting to win.

More on the Ben/Charles Widmore connection...that final scene there got me thinking. Obviously Ben and Charles know eachother. Ben had a key to his penthouse, and it seemed Charles was expecting him. It appears they have known eachother for some time. Charles said the island was always his, and that Ben took it from him, but he is going to get it back. What is their relationship and when/how did it begin? Were they once on the same side? It did seem that at some point they were working together, because the "war" that occured on the island was obviously a part of their plan. It seems they had some kind of a plan as to how the war was going to be carried out on the island, maybe it was a trap to set up Locke and the others, but that they had established some sort of "rules." Ben made a comment after Alex was killed that "he changed the rules" and then said the same thing again to Charles when he saw him. Clearly the rules stated that none of their loved ones would be killed. But now that Charles broke that rule, Ben has plans to do the same thing, with Penny. (That should be interesting in the future as surely Desmond and Penny will reunite at some point, so I am curious what will happen if/when Ben is able to find her, if Desmond will intervene.)

Another point to mention is that when Ben comes to Widmore's penthouse, Charles asks if he is there to kill him, and Ben replies that they both know he can't kill him. I think that Charles Widmore could be Ben's "constant." We know that in the past Ben was always going to and from the island, even before the plane crashed there. So if this time-travel/future consciousness thing is true, when people leave the island, they need their constant. Obviously Ben and Charles have known eachother on and off the island, so they could be eachother's constant and thus why they can't kill eachother, because then the other one would die. It also makes me wonder HOW Ben and Charles came to know eachother. Maybe as children, or if they are related. (There was that whole good twin/bad twin thing, but clearly they are not twins). They could be brothers though. And they turned against one another. It's all very biblical, which, we know the Lost writers love.

So, just a few things about the timeline. We know that in "present" island time it is just after Christmas 2004. They've been on the island a little over three months. (Remember, Desmond called Penny on Christmas Eve, and they've only been on the boat a few days, so it's probably just a few days after Chrismas at this point). We know that when Ben goes to find Sayid and he is at the hotel, the woman tells him it is October 2005. So that is 10 months forward. Also it was strange that he asked about the year. I'm wondering if him coming from the island, he is disoriented with the whole time thing, as we have seen happens before when people leave the island...not knowing "when" it is. I'm just wondering how long it will be until the Oceanic Six actually get off the island (and how). Right now we have Jack, Kate, and Sun on the beach. (Aaron is currently on his way to the beach with Claire). Hurley is with Ben and Locke on their way to find Jacob. And Sayid is on the freighter. So there's the Oceanic Six, but obviously it will be awhile before they leave as they are not yet all together. I think it's going to be awhile yet.

Just when I think I have things all figured out, they bring in all this new stuff! Here are a few more things that were introduced tonight:
- The doctor from the boat floats up ashore, with his throat slashed.
- Jack is starting to take prescription drugs, which as we know from his flash-forward that he later becomes addicted to.
- Claire apparently can survive her house being blown up, without a scratch on her.
- Ben has a secret room in his house (which we knew), that apparently he can use to call the black smoke monster.
- Bernard knows morse code, and Faraday is lying to the group.
- The code to turn off the security fence is 1623. This is made up of the numbers 16 and 23.
- Sayid is on the tv after his wife dies, and he tells the cameras "I just want to bury my wife." This implies to me that it happened pretty shortly after he came back from the island, because he was somewhat famous so the cameras were all still hounding him.
- Ben is traveling with his fake passport Dean Moriarty (which as I wrote about a few episodes ago after we first saw the passport in his secret room, is the name of the con artist/Sherlock Holmes guy).