What I like most is how it defied my expectations and how well it balanced exposition and speedy resolution. With shows like this, I like being partly, even largely wrong in my speculation.

To me things were definitely building up to Widmore/Ben parallel face-off to the MIB/Guardian one in the finale, and I never expected the new guardian to be chosen and made this week. That too I thought was for the finale only. Now, they've fooled me completely and have pretty much gone tabula rasa for the finale. We're ready for it, but we no longer have much to second guess them about the details, especially the nature/location of confrontations etc. We thought we had an idea, but that was all red herrings.

Then, all my hopes for Ben have turned true, he's back as a central player for the finale and Emerson is at the top of his game. I couldn't really ask for more.

With that show, I now find s6 both clever and convoluted but in a good way and I'm terribly excited by the finale (just a little anxious it won't be as great as I hope and leave a sour final taste, but I'm fairly confident they'll pull it off, perhaps even magnificiently). Last week's episode was a bit underwhelming, though I think it won't feel that way in the grander scheme of things when it's all over. It will rather have done its job without being exceptional (a bit slow, not the familiar players and tone and the writers struggled a bit with the whole mythological mood, not the greatest acting from the kids, a few ackward choices (like the very cheesy Adam and Eve flash-forward that was strictly for the general audience but totally useless to dedicated fans) and finally their mystical explanations took some getting used to, to adjust to the sort of answers we'd have to expect and what we won't get.




Together they'll puzzle out what they need to do. This also lets the writers give us our big cast reunion (expect a lot of emotions when they remember their sideway lives and see friends alive in this reality.. and they might have to let them go to "fix things", which will be sad), which on the island is no longer possible. I expect most of the Losties past and present to show up at that concert (all the actors they could get, anyway). For example Sawyer might agree to go after all, and he asks Ana Lucia to come. Mr. Eko maybe. Boone. Etc.

That will be their way to make the ensemble cast of the past seasons relevant to the finale, beyond the main players still alive on the island. I suspect the sideways was in part a clever idea to do just that, to have a excuse to give the full cast again to the audience for the ending.



MIB. What's uncertain is for how long Ben really was moving at Jacob's wish, and when he became MIB's unwitting pawn. I'm unsure when Jacob decided he was no longer a candidate (was mom trying to make him come outside the safety of the fence MIB or Jacob?), but it appears it's then MIB started to give him answers, passing himself as Jacob, pretending it's Jacob who was at the cabin. It's MIB who told him about leaving the Island, and how to summon him (which Ben now understood was doing MIB's wish all along....)

Then Ben stopped having his dreams at all, MIB switched his attention on Locke.



And so Jacob had told the truth to Hurley.



That would be, but then a lot of writers are of the opinion that they need to be really careful keeping a balance between meaningful deaths and clinical, pointless deaths. Life offers very few "meaningful deaths" nor stages big exit scenes where a person has time to leave something grand to posterity, and to keep a modicum of realism on shows with such a big cast, quite a few deaths need to be realistic, and so pointless and fast.

In fiction it's tricky, because people get attached a lot to some characters and while in real life it could take a long time and pain to get over the pointless death of a loved one, in fiction the audience just tends to get angry and give up if you do that too much, or too early. So you kill off pointelessly comic relief folks people love and don't want gone but didn't get opportunity to get too emotionally attached to. This is exactly what happened to Lapidus and Ana Lucia - and to Libby as Hurley's love interest, but it couldn't be that for Charlie, or Sun etc. - the audience would have been massively pissed off.


That said, I think Richard can't die until Jacob (now Jack) lifts his "gift", and so I'm pretty sure Richard is not dead, and Ben knows it. But Richard's death, fake or not, isn't really pointless. It drove the point home to Ben he had to bring out his A game to get through this, and it tipped the audience to expect Ben on his A game... devious, willing to sacrifice pawns and commit evil if necessary, and rarely aiming for what he appears to be aiming for on the surface.



I took it all at face value while watching, but afterward I began to think on it and I made up my mind:

I don't think Ben has switched sides at all. Ben has been conned and manipulated for so many years by MIB, and now he's on the path for self-sacrifice and revenge for MIB making him kill Jacob, and threatening the Island. Ben is a really amoral and flawed individual, but his loyalty to Jacob and the island is very real. He's done all he had to do to convince MIB he was on his side.

I think it may all hinge on an old detail: in London, Ben told Widmore, totally unafraid and who asked if Ben had come to try to kill him that he knew very well Ben couldn't do that.

Why? This seems to me to be another case like what Mom did so Jacob abd MIB couldn't kill one another. Ben and Charles were replicating Jacob's game with his brother somehow.

I don't think it's possible for Ben to kill Charles. I think Jacob made it impossible, and I think MIB doesn't know/believe this.

I think Ben knew Richard isn't dead. I think he knew he couldn't hide from Locke that Widmore was nearby after he found his boat, and I think he knew he couldn't afford to lie to MIB and get caught at it at this point. He had only this one chance to convince MIB he was useful and on his side. Ben has embarked on the sort of machiavellian scheme against MIB Sawyer pathetically failed at.

So Ben did what he had to do to con MIB: he "killed" Widmore before MIB could do it for real after questionning him. Nicely enough for Ben, by handling things this way he took back the initiative from Widmore, who also would have tried to con MIB (he had no choice).

How was Desmond saved? Ben's walkie-talkie must be open and on transmit only all the time and this is why he went fishing to get MIB to say aloud how he intended to use Desmond, so "his people" learned about it.


So yes Miles appears to be the one with the greatest chances to have saved Desmond (except, how would he know where the well is?) . I think it may be Charles, who caught up to Miles in the meantime, who saved Desmond. They may also have Richard with them. Richard would be the one who knows about the well nearest to Locke's beach camp.

As for Ben's aim, I guess the most revealing hint is how he didn't react to MIB's revelation that he intends to destroy the Island. That was obviously a test for Ben, but I'm not quite sure he passed it... In MIB's place, I would definitely be suspicious of the fact Ben agreed to collaborate to get the Island, but doesn't even flinch when told he won't have his reward because MIB intends to destroy it.

I would have expected Ben to ask what's in for him then. And I fear MIB expected that question too.

But perhaps it's part of Ben's plan to make MIB suspicious of him and concerned with what he could do to turn Ben for good, to get him to finish the job he wants him to finish.



I'm also very happy with the way they handled things. They didn't do the island-flashbacks thing I was hoping for, but they did much the same (and perhaps in a more intelligent way). A lot of little details they've revealed last night explain satisfactorily (for me) why Eko died, why Charlie died etc. I already clarified the picture about many events in the past seasons. MIB can't kill the candidates, but when Jacob rules them out MIB can kill them and Jacob can only bring them among the "Others", who aren't candidates, but live under Jacob's protection in exchange for their service to him. Jacob offers sanctuary to people like Ben, the Japanese temple-leader, Mr. Friendly, Richard who could live an happy life on the island but can't be candidates. Perhaps one of the rules they have been imposed by Jacob (but don't know about) is that they can't have children and create a full Island civilization, a rule Ben perhaps under MIB influence has tried to get rid off. The island life under Jacob's protection is for the "failed" candidates and "collateral damages", like the plane's happy people and children.

On a finale note, I just loved how they killed Zoe. This was so funny it was a bit distracting. Zoe was the last incarnation of the "scientist" so many lost fans imagined would bring those "rational" answers they want. Over and over the writers killed those off or made them exit the series without those answers (Charlotte, Daniel, Eloise, Mile's dad), and now they fooled us again with Zoe.