Lost has gotten REALLY off track. I apologize for getting irritated that you guys stopped talking about it. They must have hired some of the writers that Heroes fired because they are just phoning it in at this point. First, you can't "destroy" energy like Faraday said a number of times before he died. The first law of Thermodynamics is that energy can't be created or destroyed, just transformed. So they can't "destroy" the electromagnetic energy underground. Second, even if time travel were possible (which it isn't) it is a straight line and you could probably jump around by making loops in the line, but you can never drastically change what happens by erasing and redrawing the line. If Jack changes the future so that their plane never crashes then he is never on the island to change the future. It just doesn't work. If this series ends with Flight 815 landing in LA because something they did in the past changed the future it will be the same as saying that "it was all a dream" and a complete cop out of a real ending. The whole story line of the group in 1973 needs to go away because it is ruining the series. The current time frame with Richard and John Locke is exponentially more interesting. I just hope that the season finale isn't as much of a let down as the last two episodes.

Ok.... After watching this episode, and the preview for next week, I have a hypothesis.... Jack = Jacob. Jack is often a shortening of Jacob, so it would fit... People are only doing as he(Jacob) said because he still has the bomb and uses it as a you better do this or else type thing. Locke somehow figured it out (Island told him), and that is why he wrote that letter to Jack. This would mean that they do not set off the bomb, the plane still crashes, and it happens all over again, and again, and again (What happens, happened). I also realized that no one talked of Jacob until the present. In the 40s, 70s, etc, it has always been Richard (Ben telling Sun he has been an advisor for a very, very, very, very long time). As for The Island itself, I have my own theory there too. Maybe it is a mecca for religous/spiritual perfection (Utopia, Shangra-la, Garden of Eden, etc). The Others are those worthy to enter, as proven by Whitmore's disgust that Richard took little Ben into the holy area and he wasn't one of them. Unfortunately science got in the way (Dharma) and found unnatural means to travel to/from. It(Island) is doing what It can to right the wrongs created by Dharma, ie: the Incident next week; the bomb that should have killed everyone in the 40s; All the Dharma people besides Desmond dieing, and probably many other events yet to be revealed. Unfortunately something or someone keeps stopping It from fixing the problem and the cycle continues. One could argue that Richard is a previous Locke... Someone brought in to be the voice of the Island, now the Island sees Richard has failed and instead recruited John to try and fix it, by killing Jacob. If Jacob = Jack, John is probably the only person that could get through to him now.

To Jeff: Faraday was able to die in 1977 because for him that was the present. His present self was killed in 1977, but his baby self will grow up to be a physicist/time-travelologist who goes back in time to 1977 and gets killed by his mother. Don't try to think about it too much, you'll just end up getting a nose bleed. I agree that if this show ends with goddamn 815 landing in Los Angeles it's time to get out the torches and pitchforks and string up Lindelof and Cuse on the nearest tree. If the whole 6 year journey ends with, "Well, none of it ever actually happened," then what the hell was the point of watching it? J.J. Abrams goes on and on and on about the journey being the best part of the mystery, and yet they're willing to simply erase the journey. I just don't get it.

Just when you thought they were giving you answers........you have a new crapload of questions after last nights episode. NTM you get a monster headache trying to figure everything out. It was a great setup episode for the Season Finale next week.

Ryan if the show bothers you sooo much why do you watch it?

I'm confused about the episode where Ben Kills his father and the rest of the Dharma peolple. Where does that fit into the bomb incident that Daniel was trying to stage now?

If you go onto lostpedia.com you would find out that the "Jacob" in his cabin was played by Rob Kyker, the prop master that works on the set. So it is neither Jack or Locke sitting in that chair. If Rob will be replaying the role or if Jacob is a "man of many faces" the writers are being tight-lipped about.

I still have a few questions that yey have been answered, can anyone tellme what happened to the Children on the island? Is Jacob from the Balock Rock ship, the Captain who is podssibly given a second chance to right his wrongs of slavery? Can the island be like the movie "Stargate" wherein Richard is from the future or another planet, hence why he doesn't age or the properties of the island stop aging alltogether. In the movie Stargate "Ra" aka Jaye Davison needed "bodies" to assist with his metabolic changes. "RA" supposed;y visited Earth and the "egyptian" peoples flourished because of the knowledge he imparted and controlled. Just a thought.

The Purge occurred in 1992. In Season 4's episode "Cabin Fever," Locke sees Horace in a dream, and in that dream Horace informs Locke that he has been dead for 12 years. Locke had this "dream" in 2004 and do the math.....1992.

Listen.... Jake is Jacob Ben is evil Richard is the captain of the ship Locke is the voice of the island

Richard Alpert is RA, I've heard rumors. Makes sence, he doesn't age and wears eyeliner, typical egyptian god right. In the temple, the smoke monster is represented by Apep... Apep was a snake, or cobra... Apep was the god of all darkness and chaos. He was believed to have taken a discarded form of Ra. Apep is the eternal enemy of Ra, the sun god. Serpents were a major nescience in upper and lower Egypt, so they gave the form of a snake to things that were evil. There are many stories about the battles between Ra and Apep. Egyptians needed reasons for things that happened that they didn't understand, like earthquakes, droughts, eclipses, ect… Apep was said to live underneath the world, because of his dislike of the sun.http://www.anubis.org/apep.html Not sure if this was discussed, too much blog to read through. The statue should hopefully give some new answers. I believe Richard and the Smoke Monster have been on the island as gods for a long long time. Any opinion on this?

guesswork....i have been saying richard alpert is RA for MONTHS now and NOONE has taken any notice to it. i think its beyond obvious. cntrlfrk1...where are you getting the tree of life has healing properties?? clearly you are just pulling this out of your ass. the show has already explained that the healing properties of the island come from the high levels of electromagnetism. for everyone who is whining that this weeks episode was boring....watch american idol then. this weeks episode was awesome!

@ Jeff, Time travel does NOT clone anyone. Miles was able to see himself as a baby because he time traveled, as an adult, to the spot where he lived as a baby. Faraday does not exist in a separate dimension, his timeline ended in the same year it began. Imagine a straight line beginning and ending, let's say the line begins in 1978 and ends in 2007. Whoever this line belongs to was 29 when he or she died. Faraday lived his life in a straight line through 2004 (from 1978 for the sake of arguement). In 2004, his line curved backwards to 1974 and he lived his final three years in the 70's. He was still the same Dan, just living in different location in time, his line began in 1978 and ran through 2004 before it bent back to the 70's. As Faraday explained earlier this season, time is like a stream, you can jump out and move up and down the side of the stream and jump back in at any point, but you cannot change the stream, you can just experience it. Now, the hard part to grasp is that, even though he was born in 1978 and lived in the future, he ALREADY died in the past. In his flashback, we saw that Eloise was not the most loving mother, and it is safe to assume that she nourished his genius in order for him to figure out how to travel back in time so she would kill him, because she knew that she had already done so. Now I'm assuming that Jack's plan fails and she realizes she cannot change what happened in the past and that's why she pushed her son to travel back, because she knew that one way or another, he would go back. Here's some food for thought. Imagine yourself in the year 3000. You are the head of a security agency that locates time travelers and arrests them and quarantines them on the moon. The company arrests these people because in 2500, time travel was invented, but in 2750, all disease was eradicated; there's no way to tell which side of 2750 they come from, so you have to assume that they are all diseased. One day, a time traveler is brought into your office for questioning. You look at the man and he is a mess, his clothes are ripped, his face is black with mud and dirt, and he stares at you with a crazed look, but doesn't say anything. You begin asking the man questions like "Who are you?" "Where are you from?" "WHEN are you from?", but he does not answer. Finally, you order him escorted away into quarantine. The machine the man traveled with is left on your desk and contains a settable clock (like in back to the future) and two buttons, one says past, one says future. You look at the machine with confusion because you know that only time travel to the future is possible, traveling to the past is impossible. curiously, you begin to fiddle with the machine and set it to 1944 to witness World War II because you are interested in history. You press the button and are automatically transported to a battlefield in the past. There is gun fire around, and are being chased by soldiers. You fall in the mud many times, get caught in bushes, tearing your clothes. You quickly set the machine to your current time period and are quickly transported home. Before you know it, however, you are surrounded by police and are escorted to your office. You are standing in front of your past self being asked the same questions you just asked less than 20 minutes ago. You don't answer because you know a.) you wouldn't believe yourself, especially since travel to the past is "impossible" and b.) you know that you don't answer the questions. You are then taken away to be quarantined and the cycle simply begins again. The question to think of (especially in terms of Locke's compass) is, "How did the time machine come to exist?"

Its been a great season and I can't wait for the finale. Will the incident bring everyone together, or will we lose a couple of characters during the event? Does it matter? Most of the people that die show back up at some point. Claire is the person I am wondering about most. She has been absent all season. Will Kate's desire to find her manifest itself in the season finale? I think Richard Alpert (RA) may show his true colors when he has to deal with the "new improved" John Locke. He may not be so easy going when Locke tries to kill Jacob. Hope to hear about a LOST party this week on Preston and Steve.

to ryan: you are correct in that the first law of thermodynamics states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. but i think what faraday wanted to do was cause an explosion to disperse the energy, rather than have it remain in it's consolidated, powerful form. just a thought. starting to look more and more like those skeletons in the cave are those of jack and kate...

First, Richard Alpert does not wear eyeliner. The producers discussed this - his eyes truly just look like that. Next, I don\'t think Richard Alpert is from the future. All of his \"knowledge\" has been supplied to him by the members of the plane while they are travelling through time. He only \"knows\" Locke has been shot because Locke told him, he only knows who Kate and Jack are when they land because he already met them when little Ben was shot. I could go on and on, BUT I don\'t think he has any true power of his own. And, isn\'t it odd that he always seems to follow someone who is NOT from the Island? Whitmore? Ben? Locke? I\'d still like to know what they were actually doing with the children, and why it is such a bad idea for Claire to be separated from her son! Yeesh.

Well, if lost is going to follow some laws when they all go back in time it is their present, so anything can happen to them to affect them or the time line. Linier time would make anything that happens to someone that travels back in time from our present would have to have happened in the past as well. So Dan dyeing before he was even a thought to his mom would mean that even know she knew that she had killed her son she was total aware that she would have a child. so either she had him with a purpose of knowing she would kill him in the past, or that no matter what she would have him just to kill him later...well earlier. If it can be made shorter I think they might even say it, you can’t change the past. While they are all on the island in season one they where already there in the past, so I don’t think they will have any success in setting the bomb off, or maybe they will…

Loophole - Ben killed John - John comes back to life. Jacob can reset the past by his actions and misdeads. So if John kills Jacob its just as if it did not happen. But if Ben kills Jacob as he did well now we have a loophole. Jacob goes back in time and decides that Ben should not kill John - well Jacob still dies. He decides to kill Ben in the past to save his own life - well than John lives and he kill can kill Jacob in the present. If he goes back to kill John what does he do - Kill John, nope than Ben kills Jacob, Kill Ben - nope than John kills Jacob. Kill them both in the past before Ben kills John - well that will cause some issues as John will come back again and again. As he did......aka loophole....