• Sayid’s brother has been beaten by the men who loaned him money, and while in the hospital, Sayid and Jack cross paths. There’s no indication of recognition.

• Sayid runs into Kate as he leaves the Temple, and I half-expected him to stab her. No stabbings for Kate, though. She makes it back to the Temple just in time for Smokey’s Sundown Throwdown.

• The moment before Anti-Locke appears to Sayid recalls the Season 1 moment in which Sayid was seen surrounded by the sound of the Whispers.

• Note that Sayid’s stabbing of Anti-Locke echoes Ben’s stabbing of Jacob in the Season 5 finale drawing yet-more parallels between these two characters. Sayid and Ben are both told things that aren’t necessarily true in order to goad them into knifing their respective targets. Jacob dies messily, like a human being. Anti-Locke slips that knife out like he’s Gumby all of a sudden, offering it back to Sayid as if giving a child back his pirate toys.

Can we assume that this is because his body is made up of the same material that Smokey is made of, but compacted? The earth of the Island itself? Volcanic ash? Play dough?

We’ve seen that on occasion when the Smoke Monster appears there’s a violent explosion – is that the result of erupting earth rising up to form a column of “smoke” made from the dirt of the Island?

• It sort of goes without saying that Anti-Locke’s offer to Sayid closely resembles the temptation of Christ, in which Jesus was offered all the kingdoms of the earth for his service to satan. But I went ahead and said it anyway, because I like stating the obvious. I’d like to stress that this doesn’t mean that Anti-Locke is the “devil,” and Jacob is “god”/”Christ,” any more than the presence of Buddhist symbols and ideals on the Island mean that Jacob and Anti-Locke are supposed to represent Buddhist concepts. But I do think that these echoes are intentional, and that they hint at a kind of underlying mono-myth that’s subsequently influenced cultures and beliefs all over the world – something I’ve been suggesting for some time now (you can take a glimpse of this in one of my Too Much Information columns, in which I managed to correctly guess that what the Man in Black truly wanted was freedom, but also managed to incorrectly guess that he was a projection of the consciousness of the Island itself). The Island, in other words, is the birthplace of legends and stories, from Eden to Atlantis to Sheol to Mu to Shambala to Purgatory and beyond. Anti-Locke’s anger and righteousness in the face of Jacob’s “meddling” definitely recalls Lucifer Morningstar’s defiance of God – but whether this is an “evil” thing or a “good” thing depends on your view of Lucifer. Mr. Morningstar may be considered the embodiment of “evil incarnate” just as Dogen considers Anti-Locke to be, but other cultures and religions have cast him as a kind of “hero” – a proponent of free will and a rebel against tyranny. Think also of the legend of Prometheus, who defied the gods to bring fire to mankind.

• At some point between the time that Anti-Locke and Sayid speak, and Sayid’s act of shocking violence in the Temple, something shifts inside of our favorite Iraqi. What is it? He goes from being rightfully suspicious of Anti-Locke to killing for him. Is it the promise of Nadia returned to him? And if so, why does Sayid choose to believe Anti-Locke? Simply because Dogen lied? Or does the “infection” have something to do with this? It seems that way, given that we see Sayid slowly starting to smile after Anti-Locke asks “but what if you could?”

Sayid: “For the last twelve years I’ve been trying to wash my hands of all the horrible things I’ve done. I can’t be with you because I don’t deserve you.”

• Thanks to Anti-Locke’s maneuvering in this episode, it’s suddenly possible that the off-Island universe we’ve been watching all season is a result of Anti-Locke/Smokey’s successful escape from the Island – a dark “mirror image” of my Second Snake theory. That’s a fascinating idea, and I’ll be happy if it’s true. It’s also possible, however, that this is a red herring, and that this off-Island universe is a kind of karmic reward for the castaways – one that results from the successful implementation of whatever Jacob’s plan might be. What I really like about this idea, in either case, is that it offers only second chances, not happy endings. The off-Island Sayid is still a man who’s backed into violent action even when he doesn’t seek it out, and now he’s a man who has consciously denied himself happiness with the woman he loves. If the off-Island universe is an eventual “reward” that occurs because Jacob’s goals are fulfilled then Sayid’s position in this episode illustrates a reincarnation-themed cycle where Sayid is unable to escape his ‘demons’ and is condemned to repeat them since he could not fix himself. If it’s the result of Anti-Locke’s successful escape, then he’s a perfect illustration of the perils of deals with any ‘devil’ (figurative as this one appears). Sayid gets Nadia back – but that doesn’t mean he gets to be with her. It doesn’t mean he gets “happiness.” He’s still locked in that cycle of violence and denial because he’s never figured out how to fix himself.

Sayid: “You’re free.”

• Sayid apparently agrees to deliver Anti-Locke’s message to the Temple, and it results in a kind of mass panic. Sayid’s choice of words here “you’re free” is interesting. How does Jacob’s death free them? Were they bound to the Island by promises to Jacob also? Were they serving him out of fear and/or confused obediance? Was their “faith” in the Island’s God/Father too weak to sustain death? If we want to continue the Christ parallels, the abandoning of the Temple resembles the scattering of the Apostles and the denial of Christ. It’s also just, like, really typical human behavior.

Claire: “I’m not the one that needs to be rescued, Kate. He’s coming, Kate. He’s coming and they can’t stop him.”

• I guess that there are some folks who aren’t enjoying ZombieClaire this season, but I’m really digging her. Like Terry O’Quinn, Emily de Ravin gets to play a whole new spectrum in these episodes, and I think she acquits herself really well. The sight of smirking, creepy Claire, hanging out in “Jacob’s” cabin with Christian back in Season 4 suddenly makes a lot more sense now, and their back-and-forth in that scene heavily suggests that the Christian who told Locke to move the Island was the Man in Black, aka the Smoke Monster.

• “Catch a Falling Star” achieves new levels of eeriness thanks to this episode, and it makes me think about how Anti-Locke is slowly gathering his own “falling stars” and slipping them in his pocket, building his growing army of pissed off I-wanna-go-homers. Anti-Locke’s messianic drive to leave the Island serves to echo Jack’s same near-maniacal quest to depart.

• If Claire starts to believe Kate, will she begin to “wake up” from her dazed, spooky devotion to Anti-Locke, her “friend”? Is that even possible once you’ve been infected?

Lennon: “Hey! You’ve created a panic here – are people are leaving!”
Sayid: “I was asked to deliver a message, and that’s what I did. What your people do now is up to them.”

• It all comes down to choices, yet again. Anti-Locke offers them a choice, which isn’t any more of a fair choice than the one that Jacob has offered to Dogen. But regardless of the fairness involved, people are free to choose either way. Stay or go. And it looks as though these folks are opting to high-tail it out of there. I enjoyed watching as the majority of the Others dropped any pretense of faith and scrambled to save themselves. It felt nicely chaotic, and a little sad despite the ongoing general shiftiness of the Others, like the fall of a really trippy Buddhist Camelot.

• Is Cindy’s decision selfish? Or selfless? She opts to save herself, but also to save the two tail section children.

Miles: “So, are we getting out of here or what?”
Great Sayid Line II (draws dagger): “Not yet. I have to return this.”

• Martin Keamy makes his off-Island appearance, accompanied by his right-hand man Omar, who we last saw as a Widmore-approved mercenary, in a scene that recalls Sayid’s time as a captive held in the kitchen of a woman he might have tortured. Seeing Keamy’s character pop up again was a genuine treat and I enjoyed the slow-dawning realization that Keamy had no idea who Sayid was, or what he was capable of. And I agree with Chud’s commenters that Sayid should have eaten the dude’s eggs.

• As mentioned earlier, unlike the other flashbacks thus far, Sayid’s ends with a clear cliffhanger – Jin is found gagged and bound in the restaurant’s refrigerator, claiming not to be able to speak English. Obviously, Sayid’s off-Island story isn’t over yet, and so I find myself hoping that he might still achieve some kind of redemption in the end. Given how this episode ends, however, the very idea of personal redemption seems to lose it’s meaning to Sayid.

Sayid: “Jacob drives a hard bargain.”

• We learn Dogen’s backstory in a brief, poignant monologue, and we learn that he came to the Island in order to save his son. Jacob offers Dogen a deal that’s very similar to the one that offered to Sayid, but with a crucial twist. Where Anti-Locke promises to reunite Sayid and Nadia without apparent strings attached, Jacob promises to save Dogen’s son (who we saw in Lighthouse) but at the cost of never seeing him again. Dogen’s apparent “deal” with Jacob makes it clear that, as Sayid notes, the Island’s deceased-yet-perambulatory pseudo-deity drives a hard bargain. A much harder bargain, arguably, than Anti-Locke is offering.

But if there’s another distinction to be made between the “deals” being made by both Jacob and the MiB, I’d like to suggest that it may be a distinction between selfless and selfish action. Sayid and Claire join the MiB’s Murder Brigade to regain something that they’ve lost, and to regain it, they’re willing to raze the earth, and spill the blood of their fellow man. They sacrifice others (Others) to achieve what they want for themselves.

In sharp contrast, the sacrifices that people such as Dogen and Juliet have made involve self-sacrifice. Their choice allows the people that they live to have a second chance at life, and in return, they sacrifice their OWN lives in service to the Island and Jacob’s veiled plans.

On Chud’s message board, there’s a spirited and interesting debate going on about Jacob – Chud’s own Devin Faraci has declared that he hates Jacob, and a number of people have stated that the Island’s mysterious Director of Mysterious Operations has been manipulating and “pushing” the castaways in much the same way as the Man in Black described it in “The Substitute.” I don’t personally believe that to be the case, though I certainly respect the intelligence of those who are arguing the case. While I would not choose to argue that Jacob is totally benevolent, I would argue that his deals focus on personal self-sacrifice, and that his presence in the lives of the castaways as seen suggests that he isn’t really “pushing” them at all – but that he is presenting them with choices, be they fair or unfair. No one forced Sawyer to become a con man. He did that all by himself.

That’s just my opinion – please share your own thoughts on Jacob in the comments section. I will say this: I love that a network television show is spurring a debate about the meaning of “free will,” is raising interesting questions about “God’s” involvement (or lack thereof) in life, and in the process illustrating just how difficult these concepts really are – how slippery and ultimately NOT black and white things become when you examine them at close range.

Sayid: “I’d like to stay.”

• In a truly shocking moment, and after a truly heartwrenching story, Sayid straight-up murders Dogen by drowning him with the same casual malice that Robert, Rousseau’s baby-daddy, showed in attempting to shoot his pregnant lover. And that makes me wonder whether Charlie’s waking dreams (where he almost drowns Aaron in Season 2) and Robert’s botched assassination were both engineered by Anti-Locke in order to remove Aaron from the picture. Why would Anti-Locke do this? Could it be because Aaron is actually Jacob?

• And since we’re asking about motivations, why does Sayid drown Dogen and slit Lennon’s throat (other than the fact that it’s awesome)? Was that part of the “message” he was meant to deliver? Since Sayid knows that Dogen’s death will allow Smokey to enter the Temple, I’m guessing that it was. So again: why is Sayid trusting Anti-Locke? Because he’s promising him something concrete, while the Others seem to offer nothing but torture, lies and death, maybe?

• Like Sayid, Dogen dies in the waters of the polluted spring, and Sayid rises up from those waters in a kind of bloody baptism. He’s openly changed, even if we’re not entirely clear on whether or not there’s something literally “infecting” and transforming him. That change is awful, and watching Sayid succumb to the very things he’s fought against his whole life is tragic. It’s also fascinating. In a sense, Sayid has achieved a kind of “good being,” but it’s a dark, upsetting version of Aldous Huxley’s ideas on enlightenment. By realizing who he is not, Sayid is free to discover who he really is – and he’s frightening.

Will Dogen resurrect?

• Can we all agree that Smokey’s assault on the Temple was one of the best sequences this show has ever done?

• Ilana, Frank, Sun and Ben appear as if out of nowhere – where did these people come from?

• As Smokey races by over Kate and Claire’s heads inside of the Temple, you can clearly hear the sounds of screaming. That screaming fades once Smokey passes over (Passover?) their heads, and it calls to mind again my theory that the “souls” or “energy” of those who die on the Island are somehow made available to the Smoke Monster. It may even be that they’re trapped with him/within him (and that might explain the Whispers – are they the voices of the dead, past present and future, hoping for a release? Am I off my rocker?). This idea lends a sinister possible meaning to “Catch a falling star,” suggesting that Anti-Locke may have collected and stored the energy/”souls”/memories of those who’ve died on the Island.

Ben: “There’s still time.”
Sayid: “Not for me.”

• The brief scene between Ben Linus and Sayid may be my favorite in the episode. The look that Sayid wears on his face, and the way in which it seems to physically repel Ben backward, is a great, great moment for both actors.

Sun: “Jin was here and he’s alive?”

• I love it. Sun gets one line, and it functions solely to remind us of why she’s still hanging around with these people.

• Ilana and Co. slip into a secret room that’s accessed by pressing on the same symbol that Hurley was looking for last week. Can we assume, then, that they’re headed out through the secret passage and will run into Jack and Hurley shortly? My thanks to those of you who pointed out that the symbol on the wall is not an Omega symbol as I’d suggested last week, but is instead a shen ring, which is an Egyptian symbol for protection.

The fact that these symbols were carved so long ago, that the builders of the Temple saw fit to build a place to hide, or for protection, indicates to me that they’ve been worried about the Smoke Monster for a very long time.

• Sundown ends on what’s probably the spookiest, most unsettling note of any Lost episode to date. Having successfully annihilated the remaining Temple community, Claire and Sayid stroll through a courtyard strewn with the bodies of the dead with matching, glazed expressions that seem to teeter between empty and darkly satisfied. Kate’s right behind them, but they don’t acknowledge her in any way. They simply walk out of the door and rejoin Anti-Locke, who is surrounded by the Others who have opted to live. With a confidence that seems supernatural, Anti-Locke turns and leads them off into the night, torches blazing, to vanish into their own shadows.

• If you’re enjoying my ramblings, I encourage you to spread the word, tell a few friends, and inundate your enemies with my purpled prose. The closeted, power-mad megalomaniac in me must be appeased.

*****

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Sundown (S6, ep. 6)

“Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.” – Matthew 4:8-9

Anti-Locke: “What if I said you could have anything…in the entire world?”

How do you define a “selfless” act? How do you define a “selfish” one?

More than any other, those are questions that, in my addled, twitterpated mind, hang heaviest over “Sundown,” this week’s spectacularly exciting, season-energizing episode. Good and Evil, black and white, moral certainty – these are concepts we embrace, that we champion, that some of us define ourselves by. But such clear-cut concepts are arguably much more nebulous than most of us would like, or would like to admit. God’s Commandment is “Thou Shalt Not Kill,”not “Thou Shalt Not Kill, Except…” and yet there are absolutely situations in which the purposeful death of another human being is necessary. Would I kill to protect my wife? My family? I suspect I would, despite the fact that I believe murder is wrong. Black and White morality is comforting, but it arguably isn’t realistic. Not if we’re being realistic about the world.

And that’s as it should be. Real life isn’t a fantasy novel. There are no “evil wizards” out to destroy us (despite what Orly Taitz and her idiotic ilk might have you believe). There are choices – choices that hurt and choices that heal, choices that forge community and choices that isolate; selfish choices and selfless choices that are usually blended together, containing each other and mixing until it can be difficult to tell what “selfless” and “selfish” really mean – which is one reason why the idea of simple, clear-cut morality is so seductive. 

Lost’s most impressive accomplishment this season reflects that ambiguity, that lack of certainty and sure moral ground. With six episodes under our collective belts, it’s entirely unclear whether Jacob and his plans can be trusted, whether the Others are the dangerous jungle-hillbilly-ninjas we’ve always seen them as or something more/less, whether the Man in Black’s fury is righteous or un, and what any of this truly means to the castaways and their respective futures.

If this weren’t Lost I’d be worried. But Sundown went a long way toward reassuring the audience that, like Ben Linus, the writers “always have a plan.” We may not be able to tell whether Jacob is “good” or “bad” or (much more likely) something in between, but in the brutal, bloody results of Anti-Locke’s crusade, we can see that this “angry man” will stop at nothing to free himself. Be afraid. Be very afraid. Because he’s coming – and they can’t stop him.

Thoughts:

• While this week’s episode title serves as a mirror for the Season 1 episode “House of the Rising Sun,” its content actually reflects the Sayid-centric “Solitary.” That’s a nice head-fake on the part of Lost’s writers, since so far each Season 6 episode has directly mirrored the order and the character focus for the first Season 1 episodes.

• Like every other Season 6 episode so far, Sundown features a shot of Sayid gazing at his own reflection. Unlike the other moments of literal and figurative castaway reflection however, Sayid averts his eyes after only a moment. Is this because he sees Nadia coming? Or is it because he doesn’t like looking at himself? Cannot truly face himself? If that’s so, this episode’s ending brings us a Sayid who willingly stares into his own darkness, embracing it like an alcoholic who’s not only tumbled from the wagon, but has willingly embraced the demon in the bottle. Kudos to Chud commenter Richard Dickson, who raised the alcoholism analogy in the Season 6 discussion thread. It’s a good comparison as far as I’m concerned.

• The revelation that Nadia is married to Sayid’s brother in the “off-Island universe” is a tragic one. In fact, this entire episode plays like an extended tragedy. On the evidence of this episode, it seems as though Sayid is fated to fall into the same patterns of solitude and violence no matter when or where he might be. But unlike the past few episodes, Sayid’s off-Island story doesn’t have a tidy conclusion – it’s cliffhanger ending guarantees that we’ll see off-Island Sayid again, and assures us that his story isn’t over. And therein lies just one of the many interesting mysteries that Sundown features. I’ll talk more about this, and about what it might mean, further down in the column.

• Off-Island Sayid appears to make his living by translating oil contracts, reflecting a relative stability that the Sayid we’ve come to know never managed to achieve. But I’m wondering, given his past and his rust-free hurtin’ and murderin’ skills, whether that’s the truth. The job that Sayid claims to have would be the perfect cover for a CIA agent, for instance. It would also be a good line of work for an assassin to pretend at.

• Nadia’s precocious tots find her picture in “Uncle Sayid’s” bag (how weird is it to hear someone call the Iraqi-Attacki machine “Uncle Sayid?”). Note that it’s a cropped version of the same photo that Sayid was shown when he was recruited by the CIA to work for them, as seen in “The Greater Good.” Which is neat, if you ask me. Is it also another hint that Sayid is working for the Central Intelligence Agency?

Dogen: “For every man there is a scale. On one side of the scale there is good. On the other side, evil. This machine tells us how the scale is balanced. And yours – tipped the wrong way.”

• Dogen and the Others apparently have a “evil detector.” That’s handy. And if we’re honest, it’s a little…lame. That is, unless what we’re hearing is the “myth,” as opposed to the science. Assuming that the machine really does detect something troubling in people, I don’t think that Dogen’s magical evil machine actually registers “evil.” I’m inclined to think that it instead measures energy – electromagnetic energy to be precise. Did you know that the electric charges can be either positive or negative? Neither did I, but I know it now. Thanks, Lost!

I’d like to propose that Sayid’s been “negatively charged.” That this is what the machine is measuring. And that charge has been building since Sayid’s return from the grave. I suspect that it’s responsible for reanimating him, in the same general sense that a defibrillator revives someone with a stopped heart.

Sayid: “You think you know me but you don’t. I am a good man.”

• This is the first real hint that something is “wrong” with Sayid (and really, how sad is that?). Just a few episodes ago, sure that he was dying, Sayid had resigned his own soul to hell. Now he’s a good man? There are two ways to interpret this: Sayid, like Eko before him, has come through his guilt and found acceptance of his past and a renewed desire to be a better man. Or, Sayid isn’t totally the Sayid we’ve known – he’s changed in some indefinable way due to this “negative charging.” Given what we see by this episode’s ending, it seems safe to say that it’s the latter.

• The Sayid/Dogen fight is blissfully long and so much fun to watch. Up til now, Sayid’s most worthy opponent was Martin Keamy, but Dogen raises the bar way over that actor’s ridiculously tall head. I’m old, so I’d have preferred a few less quick cuts, but the choreography in this sequence, and the way that both Andrews and Sanada sell their characters’ conflict, make it damned thrilling.

Anti-Locke: “I always do what I say.”

• We rejoin Anti-Locke, aka the Man in Black, aka the Smoke Monster aka Cuddles McSweetski, and his ZombieClaire acolyte as they stand outside the ring of ash which protects the Temple in some undefined way (except that, apparently, it doesn’t, at least not in-and-of itself – more on this below). We learn that Anti-Locke has promised to return Aaron to Claire in exchange for her help, and Anti-Locke assures her that he’ll make good on his promise by telling her that he always does what he says. Only, that’s a lie.

We know it’s a lie because we’ve seen him lie at least twice before. He told Sun that he’d help her find Jin, and then promptly told Ben that he had no intention of doing so. He was lying to one of them. Next, Anti-Locke fibbed again by telling Claire that the Others had her baby (or her “baybehhhhh” in Claire-speak). He isn’t the straight shooter he’d like people to think he is.

• Anti-Locke tells Claire that he’ll only hurt the ones “who won’t listen.” That leaves me wondering why? Why does he offer armistice to the Others who are willing to join him? And why does he then kill the remaining Others? What’s the reasoning behind this? It seems to me that Anti-Locke needs to do something in order to leave the Island or he’d have left already. He’s following a specific course – “rules,” one might say – in how he’s going about accomplishing this something. So what does he need a group of people for?

Let’s wander off into speculation-ville for a minute. It seems reasonable to me to assume that whatever Locke needs to do in order to leave the Island probably involves descending into the Island’s “underworld,” at least in part. After all, we’re going to need to learn something about the spaces beneath the Island in order to learn more about the Island itself – its “purpose,” if any, its history – and one way to do that organically is to follow Anti-Locke down the “rabbit hole,” so to speak. There are a number of caves/passages that we’ve seen leading into the underworld before, but none of them seem to go deep enough for what I assume are Anti-Locke’s purposes. So where might that entrance be?

It might be buried somewhere on the Island, as yet unearthed, just as the Swan Hatch was buried in Season 1. Recall that Locke discovers the Swan and unearths it, recruiting Boone to help him open the Hatch. Will Season 6 echo that event? I suspect it will. And if you’ll allow me to edge out just a little further on the treelimb of sanity: remember the Question Mark, i.e. the Pearl Station? It was the Station supposedly used to observe and record the behavior of the Swan Station team. It was marked by salted earth, which created the shape of a Question Mark, and it was covered by the beechcraft plane.

It occurs to me that the Black Rock – another unusual vessel located on the Island – would be a perfect, enormous barrier to anyone who tried moving it on their own. Anything located beneath it would be unreachable, really. You could try blowing the ship up with the dynamite it carries, but I imagine that would risk collapsing whatever passage might be under it. So, short of gathering a large group of people to shift that ship, you’d be out of luck.

Oh wait – now Anti-Locke has a large group of people.

• Sayid’s brother asks him to hurt the men who are threatening Omer’s family, in what can only be an intentional echo of the moment we witnessed in Season 5, when a young Sayid killed a chicken for his brother when Omer could not bring himself to do it. And might I add that Omer is a jackass in this scene? I understand (in the theoretical sense only thank God) his desperation, but the way he talks to Sayid is still awful.

Great Sayid Line: “Apparently, I’m evil.”

• Miles tells Sayid that the Others didn’t save his life. He was dead for two hours. So what brought him back? Was it Anti-Locke? If so, how? Was it the Island itself? If so, how?

• Claire enters the Temple and tells Dogen that Anti-Locke, aka Smokey, wants to talk to him but Dogen refuses to leave. He tells Claire that Anti-Locke will kill him, and while this seems like a selfish act, it will turn out by episode’s end that it’s actually also a protective act. Somehow, Dogen’s life maintains a protective “aura” around the temple, whether figurative or literal, and until Dogen is dead the Smoke Monster is unable/forbidden to enter the Temple. Notice that this is the second time that Anti-Locke has relied on someone else to do his killing for him. He seems to have no problem in dispatching random Others and mercenaries, but cannot kill certain specific people. Instead, he’s needed to talk other people into murdering on his behalf – first with Ben, who slew Jacob, and now with Sayid, who drowns Dogen. It’s as if each death allows Anti-Locke/Smokey to proceed along to the next step in leaving the Island – as if he’s using these deaths to help unlock his cage.

• When Dogen refuses to go, Claire tells him to send someone who Anti-Locke won’t kill – so Dogen looks for Hurley and Jack. Which is interesting. Hurley and Jack were specifically summoned away from the Temple by Jacob, in part to protect them from Anti-Locke (as we learned in Lighthouse). Dogen’s seeming choice to send them first makes me wonder whether he would have asked Jack or Hurley to go all stabby on Anti-Locke the way that he asks Sayid.

Dogen: “She’s a confused girl under the influence of an angry man.”

• Dogen appears to know that Anti-Locke/Smokey was once a man. Again, this leaves me wondering about the power structure on the Island. Richard and Dogen both know Smokey’s basic nature. Ben did not. Is this connected to the fact that Ben was brought to the Temple to be healed? To the fact that Jacob never showed his face to Ben?

Dogen: “He will come to you as someone you know. Someone who has died. As soon as you see him, plunge this deep into his chest. If you allow him to speak…it is already too late.”

• Dogen’s warning confirms for us that Smokey/the Man in Black has been taking the forms of the dead on the Island, something that I’ve been theorizing since I began the Rewatch Column last summer.

Dogen: “You said that there is still good in your soul. Then prove it.”

• Here’s where my real confusion sets in: If Dogen knows that the knife won’t kill Anti-Locke, then he’s got know interest in letting Sayid prove his goodness. He’s sending Sayid out intentionally to be killed or “claimed.” That’s a truly crappy thing to do and I’d like to believe that this isn’t a possibility, but we’ve already seen that Dogen was willing to kill Sayid through a surrogate when he gave Jack a poison pill for Sayid and called it “medicine.” So, to quote the great Vizzini, I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.

And yet, we watch as Dogen unearths an intricately-carved box from a hiding place beneath a flower bed, we see him remove an ancient-looking ceremonial dagger that qualifies as a pretty elaborate sham, and we know that Dogen probably does want Anti-Locke dead. So perhaps he’s being sincere when he offers Sayid a chance at redemption, meaning I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. This second option actually seems somewhat likely, since I can’t imagine Dogen being comfortable letting Jack or Hurley get talked over to the “dark side.”

Let’s assume that he is sincere, and believes that this dagger can kill Anti-Locke. It clearly doesn’t do a very hot job of it. Meaning that either (1) Sayid let Anti-Locke speak, which someone renders him invulnerable to being STABBED IN THE CHEST with a carving knife, or (2) Dogen has been lied to by Jacob, and led to believe the dagger would work when it would not, or (3) the knife has worked, in some mysterious way, and we just haven’t seen it yet. Maybe being stabbed by the knife “infects” Anti-Locke in a reversal of Sayid and Claire’s “infections.”

What do you think?

MORE LOST MUSINGS AFTER THE PAGE BREAK!