It seems like everyone but Richard perhaps who is connected with the island has a jealousy issue with everyone else who is connected. I'm most interested in what this says about Ben. It points to him being a good guy, but he's a good guy with a manipulative homicidal streak.

That may have been the most tense episode ever. First worrying about Desmond/Penny, then the final scene. When Alex came back I thought Ben might actually be a goner.

Things we learned:

• Penny isn't island-Ellie's daughter (not to mention, she wasn't killed by Ben).
• Smokie is ancient Egypt-related rather than some technological/nanoparticle creation.
• What we assumed was the Temple was actually just the wall around it. We haven't seen anything of the actual Temple yet.
• The illustration on the wall at the end probably cleared up which Egyptian god the statue is supposed to be, I'm sure someone online will dissect this one.

Question: If Ben really doesn't remember the Losties from his childhood/Dharma years, why all of his emphasis on "you're not supposed to leave," "you have to go back," etc.? I assumed it was because he remembered them being in the past and thus knew they had to be there to go back in time. I guess the island just told him?

What the hell was the Ajira girl asking Frank? Was the statue she was speaking of THE statue? And who is she working for?

My wife had to point out that young Alex on the swing was wearing a dress from one of the 2008 Gymboree lines.

Something about "What lies in the shadow of the statue".

I LOVED this episode.

My only gripe, however, is that it doesn't make too much sense that Rousseau wouldn't remember that Ben was the one who kidnapped her daughter when she captured him in the net in season 2.

Wow. I don't know where to start. I'm so glad Penny is alive. It's great what they are doing with Ben's character this late in the game. I never would've expected the reason Widmore was banished was because he and Ben disagreed on the Danielle hit. Ben seemed genuinely attached to Alex from the beginning which is ultimately why he couldn't kill Penny (even though she's Charles' daughter). I think he finally did take responsibility for Alex's death.

So, Widmore was making trips off-island and had a daughter with an 'outsider.' I guess that means Penny's mom is not Eloise but someone else in England.

That was truly hilarious the way Ben 'called the monster.'

That thing at the end with the guns has got to be Widmore. Ben opened his stupid mouth and called Charles to gloat that he was going to kill Penny but he also said that he was going back to the island. It's possible Widmore got a crew together quickly that were already in the L.A. area and followed Ben from the Long Beach pier to L.A.X and got on the same flight.

'What lies in the shadow of the statue?'

'What did one snowman say to the other?' Smells like carrots.

Which would lead one to believe a couple things if it was THE statue we saw in the Season opening episode. One, that maybe at least some of the folks that were on the plane are "Others", and two, that they know what lies there. That's at least one possible explanation.

Back in Season 2 when that happened, Rousseau said Ben was one of the Others and even shot him with a crossbow before turning him over to the Losties. And she was even more crazy then too, so no one believed her entirely.
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I guess I'm in the minority, but I thought it was just an okay episode.

Was it established that that was the reason for Widmore being banished? The banishment happened years after the original argument over the baby and Danielle. Just because they discussed it when he was leaving doesn't mean it was the reason. In fact, I just went back and checked the episode.

Ben: Don't act as if I wanted this. You brought this on yourself.
Charles: Are you quite certain you want to do this, Benjamin?
Ben: You left the island regularly. You had a daughter with an outsider. You broke the rules, Charles.

Yeah, talk about anticlimactic and underwhelming. That bordered on the ridiculous.

So I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that the Alex-body was a physical form Smokie took in order to speak to Ben??

Best part of the episode for me were all the Ben/Locke moments leading up to the judgment with Ben always dragging his feet and Locke would always say something like L: "Time to get judged Ben" , B: "yeah but don't you think we need to help Sun with her problem first?" , L: "Sure we'll do that .. but after you're judged "

Yeah, I mean it's not a big deal. Everyone sees dead people... Jack sees Christian... Hurley sees Charlie and Ana Lucia...

I never once thought Eloise was going to be Penny's mother. Glad Ben didn't kill Desmond or Penny.

It's kinda interesting that the show seems to be changing the past even though "whatever happened, happened" I don't think Ben ever gassed those Dharma people in this new timeline. Maybe he did? But it seems like the changes they are making are effecting the past and making Ben appear to have grown up differently and become a not-so-bad guy. Charles Widmore seems like a decent guy too. I'm thinking there really is no bad guy in this show. Unless Eloise is pure evil. We'll just have to wait and see.

I'm really liking the path they've gone down.

WOW. Best episode this season!

Who kills babies.

I had thought that Widmore might be an ok guy, (his boat full of armed mercenaries nonwithstanding) but tonight's episode definitely put him in the "evil" category in my eyes.

Yeah, they showed Alex on a swing and she looked about 5. Alex as a baby was still 1988/89. That puts Widmore's exile around 1993/94 which makes sense because the purge was in 1992 and the swing is in Dharmaville so they already moved in from the tents by then.

Richard and the others certainly looked at Ben with some amount of authority after he stood up to Charles though. It led to his eventual banishment. That moment was critical. It was similar to how the Others all started looking at Locke when he stood up to Ben.

That's because they honestly hadn't planned the show out that far at that point. Emerson was only to appear for three episodes and be gone. I doubt they were thinking of a deep back story for those two at that point.

I think I am done trying to figure out the pieces of the puzzle. I am going to patiently wait for next week's episode to see where it takes us.

Because I never expected that Ben wouldn't have known that the Losties were part of the Darmah Initiative. This show is the master of making you think you know one thing then showing you something else.

I think the Ben/Rousseau dynamic as it was initially established is still potentially viable, but my thought is that we're going to need more fill-in to really round it into form. I think the truth is that Henry Gale probably wasn't supposed to be Ben (as discussed above) at the time of the filming, but I think they're not so far afield that they are stuck with a glaring plot hole.

I guess the monster turned Rousseau's team into evil when they went inside the wall. Then the paranoia about them being sick sent her to crazynessville.

The things is... it's still possible that Ben did know that they were part of Dharma. We were witness to quite a few different stories/lies that Ben told people throughout the episode. He is the classic manipulator. Nothing he says can be believed.

So what would he have to gain from concealing the truth at this point? For all he knew, smoky was going to kill him soon.

I liked the flip flop of the Ben/Locke dynamic. There scenes together with Ben being the one in the dark about everything were great.

We can't even be sure that he actually thought smokey was going to kill him!

I think he really thought he was gonna be killed. He told Sun to say sorry to Desmond if she sees him. Ben was relief when he told Locke it let him lived.