I think it's safe to assume that bringing Michael back to run the branch instead of Charles was a part of Wallace's consideration. Wallace was obviously getting leary of Charles's judgement, and the facts showed that the branch was sinking under his management. I think it's fine that they left a little to our…

David Hemmings, the all-time eyebrow champ.

I get the impression that Jin is frantically searching the island trying to find Sun. Jack and company have no idea whether she went back in time or not, so, on the chance that she is stranded somewhere on the island, I think Jin is spending most all of his time trying to find his wife.

Well, on the topic of how Hurley guessed that Miles could talk to the dead…. Jack and Kate saw him 'speak' to Naomi's corpse after he parachuted to the island. It seem reasonable that, while the O6 were getting their act together on Penny's boat, they discussed some of the things they'd seen leading up to the island…

Ben had just had spinal surgery around this point. He wasn't killing anybody.

Wasn't Ben baffled by Miles's $3.2 million request? I think this all proves to Miles (and us) that the van guys are not affiliated with Ben or Widmore.

I was pretty creeped out by the kid saying the dead kept talking to him while he tried to block it out.

But if Widmore did fake the crash, why would he need the purchase orders and photos? He seems like a guy who would keep his receipts.

So does that scene prove that Ben was the one who staged the fake Oceanic crash? Tom showed the purchase orders and grave photos to Michael to convince him that Widmore was behind it. But we now know that the dead man was taking those documents TO Widmore when he was shot and they were stolen. Given the timeline of…

@Doodles — Surely they're going to explain how Miles is able to speak to the dead, right? His story's not done.

It really is amazing that the infamous Numbers have such a mundane origin. I hope they do give some explanation about why they subsequently popped up on the Swan computer and the radio transmission.

Hmm. That's a wild idea. I like it! I've had the thought that maybe the 'Incident' that's going to happen has something to do with adult Miles and baby Miles being in the same place and time. Didn't Halliwax freak out when two versions of the same time-travelling bunnies almost touched each other?

I gotta say…. this Adam Sandler guy is working really hard for his shtick.

I thought Richard was bullshitting Charles in that scene. It's obvious he's unhappy with Widmore's leadership, and I think he just made an appeal to Jacob's authority to let the conflict end. Richard seems to see young Ben as a project to be nurtured, and he didn't want Widmore to screw it up.

Radzinsky's blast door map showed that there were a series of tunnels connecting the various Dharma stations. These haven't really been shown or explained, but maybe some in the DI have made use of the exisitng 'Egyptian' infrastructure on the island for their own purposes.

So why did Ben seem so startled to hear the name Christian? He probably knew the name of Jack's father, given the extensive file they had on him at the Hydra station. But does Christian have some deeper connection to the island that Ben is maybe aware of? I think so.

It's funny how the perceptions of Widmore and Ben see-saw. After the Jeremy Bentham episode, it looked like Widmore was a stand-up guy looking out for the best interests of Locke and the island. Now we see him as a murderer of children and all-around asshole. I was also a little surprised at how unprepared he was…

What we learned definitively with this episode is that Smokey is absolutely an arbiter of justice. This has been implied in the past, especially in re Eko, but it was made explicit with the appearance of Alex.

I'd agree that Caesar is a red herring, but still. The exchange he had with Jack at the Ajira ticket counter was very strange and suspicious. Or maybe he has a very intense way of expressing his condolences.

It's possible that the show end-game involves the time-travelling 815ers (and Juliet) returning to the present and using their knowledge of the Dharma Initiative past to 'fix' something in 2008. In other words, they don't go back in time to fix something in the past, but use their knowledge of the past to correct…