Interesting and quite exciting.

To reinforce this idea that the next episode is the one that will explain the mythology of the show and show us the Island's history, what they showed at the end of the episode wasn't a sneak peek as usual but a montage of various snippets with titles about good and evil and Jacob and his nameless foe (hopefully not nameless anymore by next week!), starting with the scene from the pilot I mentionned a while ago as early foreshadowing, with Locke speaking of the game being the oldest known and being fought between a light side and a dark side, and ending with "do you want to know a secret?" (that was actually Locke speaking of backgammon and telling Walt about his "miracle". It went on with scenes between Jacob and his foe (all from previous episodes), including one where MiB tells him "do you know how much I'd like to kill you?". The montage formally identified MiB as the evil one and Jacob as the good one - I guess the time had come after this episode. For some reason, I also got the impression it identified Jack as the chosen one too, but I can't remember why and maybe I confused this with the heavy foreshadowing in this episode.

I was happy to see it came down to the fact I mentionned last week: Jack having to accept he can't fix everything/accepting other sacrifices, both in the flash sideways (giving up on trying to fix Locke who didn't want to be fixed) and on the island (accepting to let Jin and Sun die while he survived). Jack should be about ready to take on Jacob's job now... though Sawyer has gained a massive deal of selflessness and leadership lately. Still, it seems a done deal and more a question whether Sawyer, Hurley and Kate will survive or not.

Amazing episode, though I was a bit disappointed the minor players I liked, like Rose and Bernard, made their exit off-screen.

My feeling is that by the end of the next episode, we'll know (pretty much) what we wanted to know about the origins/purpose of the island and Jacob and MiB. Not only that, but with that information we'll probably be able to guess where Widmore really stands. We might also understand a lot more what went on during the early seasons. I noticed in my re watch that the Others kidnapped people according to (at least they thought so) a list made by Jacob, and nobody among the main cast were on that list. I wonder if we'll learn what that list was - people Jacob had ruled out but that he wanted to protect from MiB? I suspect that's how it works: MiB isn't allowed to kill anyone who is on Jacob's list, but he can kill anyone Jacob rules out from his list of candidates. He killed her team but not Danielle herself. He killed a lot of people, but not Ben. Or Richard, or most of the Others who roamed the Island out of the compound quite safely.

But he did kill Kimmey, and Eko and others... and he could kill any of Widmore's team who obviously can't be on Jacob's list as Jacob is dead.

Is there one more episode or two more episodes before the double-episode finale?