Russ McBee

This week's episode of "Lost" is named after Sun and Jin's baby, Ji Yeon, whose birth is shown in a flash-forward. Several tidbits are revealed in this episode.

We now know the identities of all of the Oceanic Six: Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sayid, Sun, and Aaron. The last one assumes, of course, that the baby named Aaron we saw in the flash-forward during "Eggtown" is in fact Claire's son Aaron. It's certainly possible that Kate has a baby after leaving the island and names him after Claire's boy, but the implication in "Eggtown" is that the two-year-old boy in the crib is Claire's son.

When Hurley, Sun, and Sun's baby girl visit Jin's grave marker, his date of death is listed as September 22, 2004. This is the date that Flight 815 crashed, which goes along with the totally false story of the plane's crash that the Oceanic Six tell the public after they return to civilization. Looking at the grave marker, and knowing full well that the date of death is a lie, Sun says (presumably to Jin), "I miss you." This doesn't mean Jin is dead, of course.

By the way, when Juliet revealed Sun's extramarital affair to Jin (and broke doctor-patient confidentiality in the process), I think Sun should have snatched her bald-headed, then put some Korean wire-fu jujitsu vengeance on her, a la "Kill Bill." I know this is a terrible thing to say, but I'm really beginning to hope something awful happens to Juliet. I don't like her in the least, and I certainly don't understand why any of the Losties trust her. I sure wouldn't.

To absolutely no one's surprise, Michael turned out to be Ben's man on the freighter. Tons of questions remain about how this came to be, but I have a theory. When Michael and Walt left the island on that rickety boat back in the season 2 finale, Ben told Michael to follow a precise heading, and eventually he would "find rescue." Instead of rescue, I think Michael found something else entirely. I believe the Others intercepted his boat, kidnapped Walt again, and used Walt as a bargaining chip to force Michael to do whatever Ben wanted. I think Michael is acting as Ben's spy on the freighter for exactly the same reason Michael has done anything else on that show: he wants to protect Walt, at any cost.

On the freighter, someone (presumably Michael) passed a note to Sayid and Desmond warning them not to trust the captain. When we finally meet him, the captain tells Desmond and Sayid that the freighter is owned by Charles Widmore, which isn't really much of a surprise and seems just as likely as any other explanation. However, he also tells them that the plane wreckage purported to be of Flight 815 that was found at the bottom of the Indian Ocean was in fact staged by Ben, and this is one of many reasons they want to capture him.

Hooey.

The island is located in the South Pacific, and Flight 815 was following a path from Sydney to Los Angeles; the entire flight path would have been over the Pacific, headed northeast from Sydney. The Indian Ocean, on the other hand, lies west and northwest of Australia, on the other side of the continent. If someone were going to stage the crash of Flight 815, why would they be stupid enough to put it in the wrong ocean, four or five thousand miles from where Flight 815 actually crashed? Wouldn't it make more sense (and be more believable to the public) if the staged crash were located somewhere along the actual flight path instead of some random spot in a completely different direction?

Think about it -- when the news reports of Flight 815's discovery were broadcast, and those reports said that it was found in the Indian Ocean, way too many people would have uttered a collective "WTF!" There's no way a plane could travel thousands of miles off course without some air traffic control center noticing it (or the crew of the plane noticing it, for that matter), so the idea that a staged crash site in the Indian Ocean would make sense to anyone just defies belief.

For that reason, if Ben really had staged that crashed plane (and somehow managed to fill it with over 300 bodies), he would have run a much greater risk of being discovered if any of the Losties ever made it off the island. Instead, if Flight 815's wreckage remained undiscovered and some of the Losties made it off the island, the absence of wreckage wouldn't have raised anyone's suspicions. With the wreckage sitting incongruously at the bottom of the Sunda Trench, off the coast of Bali, lots of people would smell a rat as soon as the Oceanic Six were rescued.

Also, no matter how powerful Ben may be on the island, it just seems ridiculous to suggest that he can muster the kinds of resources necessary to pull off such a gargantuan ruse, yet he couldn't manage to get off the island long enough to see a doctor about his spinal tumor.

So I don't believe for a minute that Ben staged the wreckage.

However, that leaves only two other possibilities I can think of: 1) Someone else staged the wreckage, which is prone to the same believability problem I noted above, and 2) The plane at the bottom of the Sunda Trench really is Flight 815, but one that's somehow from a parallel universe or an alternate timeline.

I hope that's not the case. If they start delving into parallel universes and alternate timelines, they could end up with a story that is more solidly grounded in physics but is ironically harder to believe as a drama. I sincerely hope they don't go there.