You know, I think I agree that nothing in the show has outright said that Sayid is a bad person or that he's done things that really tip him into villain territory, but I'm not only totally cool with permanently turning him towards the dark side, I'd be upset if the writers didn't push him in that direction. Or if not Sayid, at least some of the cast. One of the nice things about Lost has been that each of the core cast are admirable and someone you can root for, but if the show tries to tell us that after all the shit they've been through and all the ways they've been manipulated by Jacob and MIB and whoever else that not one of the main characters finds a tragic end (and not in the "it's so sad Charlie died a hero" way) would be a real hunky dory kind of cheat. In a world of fate vs. choice, ultimately some people's fate will be for them to be horrible and miserable or some will make the choice to be that way.

I found it very interesting that in the Flash sideways, Sayid was the first person to not get a happily ever after life. And when he's faced with walking away from at least a part of what his brother asked him to do, he says, "I can't" and blows Kearny the fuck away. A super telling moment on how Sayid sees himself no matter the circumstance.

As far as where this all leads, I think there's obviously a time limit as to how many flash sideways they can do with the main cast. We'll have one with Jin and Sun. We'll have one with Hurley maybe. Maaaaaybe Ben because he's a main cast member at this point but not a castaway so I'm not sure. But in any event, my money is on Sawyer being the last "what person X does" episode, and there we'll see him meet Juliet, hear the coffee line, and then we'll get a big moment somehow in both time streams where Sawyer has to choose to go with MIB or submit to his more heroic tendencies. Sayid is one extreme of that choice who was always lost from Nadia. My bet is that Jim will prove to be the other extreme, which we'll see when he gets reconnected with Sun. Sawyer will fall in the middle having found Juliet in one reality and lost her in another, and how they reconcile the two has me excited for that thread of this season.

Yes! Very sad to see Dogen and Lennon go, but what a way to go! Totally stoked on Sayid fully embracing the dark side, as well as his following through with Dogen's wishes and straight up stabbing the MiB.

-and was it really the MiB in the shack? Didn't it have a ring of protective ashes outside of it, thus keeping him out of there?

- If I remember correctly, Not-Christian actually showed up in the shack? so how does that line up with the shack being a MiB-free zone?

Also, that ending was SPOT ON, gave me chills.

--Oh man, I could watch Dark Locke and Dark Sayid grin evilly and walk in firelit slow motion for hours. Sayid has completely Seen a Darkness, and the infection has entered his heart just like it entered Claire's, and he's now part of MIB's Brotherhood of Evil.

--I kind of get the feeling that Dogen's Temple crew and Ben's New Otherton posse are like the Church and State of the island. Dogen's the Pope of Jacob and Ben's the Prime Minister. They're both working for the same guy, but there are different methods and levels of belief and possibly even different goals.

--I also get the feeling that Ethan and Mikhail were particularly bad apples, and the Others' poor treatment of Charlie and Claire can be laid at their feet. Things like kidnapping Walt and trying and branding Juliet (which I still have a sneaking suspicion was all a ruse by Ben to keep Jack on as his personal doctor) don't seem too far out of line with what we've seen from Dogen and Jacob. Dogen's not quite as good at it as Ben, but he was certainly doing his best to manipulate Jack and Sayid into doing his bidding, even if it was ostensibly to get rid of "evil."

--Dogen himself noted the similarities between the deal Jacob made with him and the deal MIB offered Sayid, so I wouldn't be surprised if they're not quite as "good" and "evil" as they purport to be.

--It's also kind of interesting how similar Jacob's deal with Dogen was to Ben's arrangement with Juliet. Jacob brings Dogen's son back to life, but only if he stays on the island; Ben cures Juliet's sister's cancer, but never lets Juliet leave the island.

--When Locke offered "whatever you want" to Sayid, I wondered if maybe the flash-sidewayses are in fact what he's offering. Sayid didn't get exactly what he wanted, true, but it doesn't seem like his flash-sideways story is over, either.

--I loved that Jack was in the hospital in the flash-sideways, because hey, if you're in a hospital in a Lost flashback/forward/sideways, Jack's going to be there too.

--Awesome to see Keamy too. I flipped out when I saw Kevin Durand's name in the opening credits. It's really kind of amazing that even after five seasons of flashbacks/etc., they've found a whole new way to give you those little jolts like you'd get back in season 1 when, say, Christian would show up in Sawyer's flashback. Those little moments of "hey I recognize that guy/holy crap what's he doing here." Not coincidentally the same kind of feeling the characters themselves probably get when Smokey is impersonating their dead loved ones out in the jungle.

--Oh, yeah, one of the big reasons I think Keamy is so creepy: he looks like a former child actor now in his 30s/40s, his cuteness turned to ruin. In this case, specifically Haley Joel Osment. (Garret Dillahunt, aka Deadwood's Francis Wolcott, gives off a similar vibe, which worked well there too.)

--So right about the Temple. It's one of the very few Lost sets that's felt like a set. I guess there aren't many actual pseudo-Egyptian temples on Hawaii for them to repurpose, though.

One quick note, everyone: I didn't watch the teaser for next week, as part of my new policy of not doing so because they're often too spoilery. So please DON'T DISCUSS THE "NEXT WEEK ON LOST" TEASERS in these threads anymore. Okay, carry on!

-Sayid ain't so bad at fighting. You must always remember the dishwasher incident!

-While I know that the producers are committed to answering the big questions, I'm a little worried sometimes how everything will come together when you start examining the details. B/c your thoughts on the disconnect between what Ben and Dogen apparently know about the island is spot on. But the two Others factions still can't be totally seperate, as Cindy has appeared to be in both Others groups at different times.

-The only thing I can posit is that they knew that MIB was the enemy, and how he roughly worked (unable to cross the ash, appearing as dead people), but didn't know he and the smoke monster were the same thing. I guess there's plenty enough other weird shit on the island so that connection wouldn't be obvious.

-There must be two different things going on in regards to dead people showing up, b/c the dead people that Hurley sees seem to clearly be the actual spirits. So maybe Christian, at least in some of his appearances, was the actual spirit Christian. The nature of Christian, in particular, is maybe a big question we're not asking enough. They don't keep pointing out his missing body in both timelines for nothing.

-And the other day I was still wondering why Sun didn't travel to 1977 with the other Oceanic Six, and then it occurred to me. What if it's because she's not a candidate? If that's true, the Kwon on Jacob's wall is most definitely Jin.

-The show has been reminding me of The Stand since the season premiere, but never more so than during the final sequence tonight. It also made me sad that some of the "hero" characters we've been following all this time will be making tragic choices before the end. I anticipated that some of the characters would die, but I guess I never realized that some of them would go evil, too.

-I wonder what happened to the rest of Richard's Others and Ajiwara survivors. And if all the Temple Others who survived joined up with MIB or if some (like Cindy and the kids) took off on their own.

-I really can't posit a theory at all what the whole kidnapping children, unable to have babies on the island thing has to do with all this MIB vs. Jacob stuff. One of the big big mysteries that hasn't even been remotely hinted at yet.

This was a strange episode.

It's interesting to me that Sayid's flash-sideways was so downbeat compared to the other losties, but it also didn't strike me as being as radical a departure from the original timeline compared with the others. They were largely able to transcend their defining and long-established character defects: Kate's isolation, Jack's daddy issues, Locke's frustration. Sayid gives into his violence. Where he does depart from his typical mode is in rebelling against the violent men who wish to use him. Where he had made his violence serve the Iraqi and American military, and Ben, sideSayid will not allow himself to be used by Keamy.

Keamy too was trapped by his own flaws. Whereas Ethan went from sadistic to gentle and Dogen from cryptic to forthright, Keamy remained a complete asshole and a bully. He even makes the same mistakes: he badly overplays his hand by misunderstanding how his opponent will respond to threatening the family.

The more I look at it, the more I feel like Sayid's flash-sideways operates in a different register than those we have seen so far.

I don't watch the show closely enough -- is there a chance Sayid could have been self-aware during his flash-sideways?

The thing that really jumped out at me: in previous seasons, Ben freaked the fuck out when Locke could kind of sort of hear Jacob. Now we've got Dogen saying Jacob came to him on the mainland and made him a job offer. Does Jacob operate differently in the main world than he does on the island? Or Ben get freaked out because the shack wasn't where Jacob was and Ben knew it?

Not sure what to make of this episode, not one of my favorites this season. Although, I was never bored. It's a testament to their big picture plotting that they can stall on the mystery threads of the past two episodes and still keep things jumping.

This episode made me consider whether the "evil" in Sayid the Temple Others detected was his own personal predilection to darkness, and not anything mystical contracted from the Lazarus Pit. I like Sayid as a character that tries to do good, but you have to admit in every timeline they just keep...pulling...him...back...in, despite his good intentions. I'm still not convinced that Sayid's "evil" isn't entirely his own. That's probably one of those juicy questions they're going to leave us to decide for ourselves.

-- The deaths of Dogen and Lennon made me realize I didn't care much for either of them. Both were characters who gave vague answers to the important questions. I can see why that is useful as a writing device, but as a reoccurring character trait, it's frustrating.

-- Wait! Does the island somehow mystically select people who express their need for redemption by giving vague answers to important questions?? (Must follow up this thought.)

-- Sayid and Claire were both diagnosed by the Temple Others and found wanting. Does this mean at some point Claire died and went through the Lazarus Pit? Would love to see the circumstances of that.

-- Actually, would love to see Claire's One Woman Army Corps act on the Temple Others sometime.

-- It strikes me that if I'm picking teams for the fate of the island, I'd go for Sawyer, darkside Sayid, and psycho Claire too. You don't want mopey Jack and bumbling Kate on your dodge ball team.

-- Kate had a close call with the Smoke Monster. If harming Kate doesn't make the MIB flinch is that more confirmation that she is not a candidate?

-- I spent all this time thinking Dogen was from the Black Rock until he said the words, "baseball practice." So Dogen made a deal similar to Juliet, but how did he get to the island? Did Alpert bring him there too?

-- Lots of good thoughts here about the Temple Others vs. the Village Others. There's clearly a division, and perhaps, a rivalry? Did Jacob play one kid against the other to keep them under his sway? Gardner has a good read on the church vs. state aspect of them. The Temple Others seemed to keep their domain running according to one set of instructions, perhaps only given once. The Village Others seemed more proactive, perhaps requiring regular steering from Jacob. Ben indicated that Jacob stopped talking to them, maybe that's when they went off the rails?

-- Andy Khouri pointed out that it would be a real deal with the devil if Sayid wanted to be reunited with the woman who died and the MIB gave him Shannon. He also pointed out that the Lazarus Pit is a poor place to try to kill people, Sayid.

-- MIB: What if I told you, you could have anything you wanted?
Sayid: No...more...mutants?

It's also probably worth noting that the Temple Others we're seeing now have had no contact with Ben (or the more prominent members of his goon squad, who are all dead) for three years. It's entirely possible that they were more in line with his goals and methods back before he turned the donkey wheel and disappeared off the island. With a group that small, a lot could change in that time.

But I do think that Dogen and Co. are the true believers, and Ben was kind of like a semi-atheist presidential candidate who says he goes to church every Sunday because you have to say that to get the job. I almost want to say that Ben never believed Jacob really existed until he killed him, but I'm not sure the evidence supports that.

At any rate, I think Ben's ends (if not his means) are very much in line with Jacob's. The one thing we know for sure about Jacob is that he's very concerned with getting people to the island, and keeping them there once they've arrived. As we've seen with both Jack and Juliet, that's one of Ben's preoccupations too.

Oh boy, lots to talk about!

* Kiel: Bizarrely, and even though this is the kind of thing I normally flip for, it never even occurred to me that the show might take one of its leads and give them something irredeemable to do, have them make a choice or mistake they can't ever make up for--or perhaps that they wouldn't even want to. Sayid's soulful, Romantic nobility, or at least that of Naveen Andrews, always had me pulling for him, so sending him in that direction has caught me flat-footed. Not too shabby.

It's certainly interesting that he doesn't have the (reasonably) happy ending that Jack and Locke seemed to get, and that Kate and Claire were perhaps on their way to. Or as Simon puts it, "Kate's isolation, Jack's daddy issues, Locke's frustration"--these things are all resolved for them to some extent in their flashsidewayses. You could probably throw Claire's ambivalence about her baby in there, too. Sayid's propensity for violence is definitely not resolved in that fashion.

Regarding how long the flashsidewayses will go on for, I agree with you that they're not going to wait till the end of the season to resolve it. For one thing, unless they start doing them for dead castmembers or the likes of Miles and Lapidus, they're running out of episodes from Season One to parallel. You'll get a Jin/Sun and a Hurley and I think they'll call it a day, For another thing, there are some straight-up flashbacks that are surely forthcoming: Richard, another Ben flashback, perhaps a Widmore one, perhaps an Ilana one, and I would assume a Jacob/MIB one, though obviously two or more of all of those could be done in tandem. (Are there enough episodes to go around?) And finally, Lost structurally zigs when you expect it to zag, so surely it'll zig us someplace unexpected one more major time before it's all through.

Zack: Was the ash around the shack to keep the MIB out...or to keep him in? Dun-dun-DUNNNN!

Gardner:

* I'm glad someone brought up the walking in firelit slow motion thing. Dropped ball on my part.

* That Temple/Dogen/Church, Village/Ben/State dichotomy makes a ton of sense. Love it. Moreover, I think Ben has confirmed at some point that Ethan's methods were extreme.

* Dogen's deal with Jacob made me think of Juliet's deal with Ben as well. Which makes me wonder if we'll get a solid account for how various figures of import on the Island, and/or the Island itself, seem to be able to produce that "magic box" effect where exactly what they want to happen will happen, from the miracle cures to Locke's dad being kidnapped (obviously that was the Others' doing, but still) to even Juliet's husband getting hit by a bus right after she said something like "I hope you get hit by a bus." Didn't something similar happen with Claire and her mother, too?

* Anyway, it was the magic/metaphorical box that Fake Locke's offer to Sayid made me think of right away.

* I flipped out when I saw Kevin Durand's name in the opening credits.--Haha, I literally cover up the lower third of the screen during the opening credits precisely to avoid getting spoiled like that! It's fun, I recommend it.

* Nice take on the appeal, if that's the right word, of Durand as Keamy. And thanks for the validation about the Temple. Again, I know they're aware of how pro forma it is; that's not good enough. Even similar places--the Statue, the Lighthouse, the Cave, the Temple Wall--have felt more thought-out and compelling, so there's no excuse.

CharlesR:

* Oh, I remember Sayid's dishwasher incident--I just remember the dozen or so other incidents in which he got his ass handed to him, too. :)

* I think you're right about Ben and the Others having some idea of the MIB and his capabilities, but never the full picture. Meanwhile, I think I've talked before about the different kinds of apparitions we've seen--the Monster's impersonations, Hurley's ghost whispering, Miles's clair-audience, Shannon's visions of Walt, Libby appearing to Michael (could the MIB get off the Island to appear to Michael on the freighter?), etc etc. There's a lot to puzzle out, still.

* Good call about Jin's time-traveling and Sun's lack thereof as pointing to Jin as a Candidate rather than Sun. Then again, Kate time-travelled, and she wasn't listed as a Candidate by the MIB, nor does she correspond to one of the Numbers; on the flipside, Locke's body didn't time travel either, and he was a Candidate. Oh boy.

* I'm glad that of all the big Stephen King epics they could be referencing right now, they're going with The Stand instead of The Dark Tower.

* I wonder what happened to the rest of Richard's Others and Ajiwara survivors. I wondered that too, but I assume they did what we were told they did--they went to the Temple, and then made their choice like everyone else. This isn't a show that dwells on the fate of its extras so I don't guess we'll be getting any more of an explanation of what became of them.

* Regarding the kidnapping of children, the inability to reproduce, and so on: My friend TJ Dietsch believes that this is Jacob's doing in order to prevent the MIB from...I don't know, accessing homegrown Candidates or corrupting them young. But causing multiple miscarriages, stillbirths, and maternal deaths in labor seems to push Jacob way out of the "shades of gray" category. Which, frankly, I've long thought true of the mass-murdering Others in general, though now that there's an even worse bad guy out there we're being conditioned to buy some of their "we're the good guys, relatively speaking" posturing once again.

More to come!

Simon: Like I said earlier, well done on breaking down the problems resolved for the castaways in their flashsidewayses. I'm not sure I'd go as far as you and extrapolate similar redemption arcs for the Others we've seen there, but you make an impressive effort. :) And now that you point it out, I wonder if Sayid's lack of an official Other and his lack of a happy ending are connected.

Tom: is there a chance Sayid could have been self-aware during his flash-sideways? I think that's the big question about all of them. Sayid doesn't seem to have been struck by the deja vu that appeared to afflict Jack, Kate, and Claire at varying times (though not Locke, to the best of my recollection)--if you remember everything, deja vu doesn't apply. This would also put an interesting spin on his line "I can't"--perhaps he meant that literally, for some reason? Then again, if he knew who Jin was, he didn't let on.

Justin: Does Jacob operate differently in the main world than he does on the island? Or Ben get freaked out because the shack wasn't where Jacob was and Ben knew it? We still don't know enough to make even a semi-educated guess, but I'd lean toward the latter. Ben was really having a lot of fun inventing his fake conversation with invisible Jacob--I don't feel like he'd do that if he thought there was any chance at all that any important entity was there. When Locke heard and saw him (in the SCARIEST LOST SCENE EVER, btw), I think that really shook Ben because until then he thought it was a charade.

Hmmm--if I recall correctly, Ben was constantly lording his contact with Jacob over all the other Others we met, Richard possibly excepted. So it seems like people with a direct line to him, or to the MIB posing as him, are few in number--Dogen, probably Richard, possibly Ben at some point, the Candidates, and that's it.

Sam:

* I think there's definitely a fantasy component to the evil that has overtaken Sayid, but I imagine in the end it'll be a little of this, a little of that--mystical possession of some kind, PLUS his own internal demons.

* I didn't mind Dogen and Lennon's vagueness. As we saw last week, Hurley's already getting his vague on after a little over a day as Jacob's go-to guy. It seems like he really does breed these guys for that characteristic!

* I'm guessing we'll get a Claire flashback in addition to the ones I listed above, which will clear up what happened to her in the Temple and so on.

* It strikes me that if I'm picking teams for the fate of the island, I'd go for Sawyer, darkside Sayid, and psycho Claire too. You don't want mopey Jack and bumbling Kate on your dodge ball team. Ha! Honestly, though, I think Sayid and Jack/Kate are a wash in terms of who gets picked last.

* Kate had a close call with the Monster, yeah, but that's all it was. Back when she and Juliet had their close encounter with Smokey in Season Three, were they spared by choice, or was that sonic fence involved, do you remember? Probably the latter, I suppose. Oh well.

* How Jacob, Richard, Ben and so on got and off the Island at will is a big mystery to me. I also want to know who was making sure the Dharma supply drops kept going. If the whole initiative had been wiped out, who was manufacturing the Dharma-brand goods, you know?

* Lots of good thoughts here about the Temple Others vs. the Village Others. There's clearly a division, and perhaps, a rivalry? Did Jacob play one kid against the other to keep them under his sway? Just like the Emperor did with Darth Vader and Prince Xi'zor! GOD that was nerdy.

* Hey, I'd take Shannon if offered. We've established that Nadia aside, Sayid's a fool for a blonde.

Gardner again: Good call about the Temple Others now having spent a significant amount of time free of the influence and oversight of Ben and his motley crew of murderers.

I don't know why I haven't brought this up already, and no one else has either, but Dogen personally held the Monster back from attacking the Temple in some way. Ashes, schmashes, the instant Dogen died, the Monster started rampaging, as Lennon pointed out explicitly. So he's clearly a very important figure, perhaps on a mystical basis. Surely that plays out in the Others' hierarchy as well.

Finally, I'm going to steal this point from my pal Matthew Perpetua: Seems like Widmore and perhaps Hawking made a deal with the MIB to wage war against the Others, no?

Oh, and another reminder: DO NOT DISCUSS THE "NEXT WEEK ON LOST" TEASERS HERE ANYMORE. Gracias all!

One other thought occurred to me w/r/t Sayid and Keamy's inability to escape their baser tendencies. The last time Keamy made the mistake of trying to leverage a man's family against him, old Smokey killed him and his team. Flash sideways.He makes that same mistake, and we see Keamy and Co. killed by Sayid, whose apparent Faustian bargain with Nemesis structures the episode.

Lesson: Those who are unable to learn from their other lives on the Island, or unable to grow past their flaws, are damned to repeat them. Not only does Lost have its own Lazarus Pit, it's got an Omega Sanction!

Any point I wanted to make have been handily covered by others here, so I'll just say this: Sayid must be pretty frigging evil if he could creep out Ben, of all people! Best scene in an episode full of great stuff. Also great - Fake Locke's swirly smoke monster entrance - he's like a superhero now!

I'm still betting that the sideways stuff happens after what we're seeing on the island - we're watching the MIB's reset, not Jughead's. (Maybe that's how MIB gets off the island, he makes it so he never was on the island, or something like that - it's making my head hurt.)

The final confrontation will occur in the real world - maybe in Las Vegas, if the riffing on The Stand continues... Maybe Locke's corpse was just a Locke-clone created by Darkseid's minions - wait, I'm crossing the nerd-streams there... (Isn't Morrison's Batman and Robin BOSS?)

I've also been thinking the sideways universe is from a reset taking place later this season. I had originally thought it was going to be the survivor's reward, but COOP's idea is great.

If the sideways universe is the result of MIB's plan, then I'm gonna bet that halfway or nearer the end of the season, MIB's plan will succeed, create the sideways universe, and it's up to the sideways characters coming together to finally and ulimately defeat MIB. This would add a lot of relevancy to the sideways universe, as I still can't figure out how it all ties togther otherwise.

The whole flashforward and time travel thing was very tricky storytelling at the time. If this is what the flash sideways universe turns out to be, it would be in keeping with those earlier story techniques.

Sean: About the baby-blocking - I'll be unsurprised if that turns out to be related to the unusual disposition of the dead on the island. Whether they get brought back, or impersonated, or go missing body and all, they're clearly not going wherever they normally would. So maybe the entrance is blocked as well as the exit.

There's something similar in Greg Bear's very creepy fantasy novel Songs of Earth and Power, where some people are living in a limbo where they don't dare have babies, because no new human souls are available so the babies would get something awful instead.

STC: Back when [Kate] and Juliet had their close encounter with Smokey in Season Three, were they spared by choice, or was that sonic fence involved, do you remember? Probably the latter, I suppose. Oh well.

Hey, yeah: the fence -did- ward off Smokey... but that was the morning after their initial encounter, when Kate & Juliet took refuge in a circular clutch of trees strikingly similar to the grouping that 'saved' Walt from Smokey in season 1. Smokey circled K&J, scanned them with flashes, then wandered off in search of a fleshier feast.

I always chalked that bit up to something seemingly significant about the location due to the earlier iteration with Walt, but since we never came back for further explanation it was probably just a hiccough with the writers. Unless there was some ash lying around no-one saw fit to focus on...