He's Our You is the tipping point for the season five story arch. What I mean by that is that we'll see events in the Dharma timeline get out of hand and bring an end to Sawyer and Juliet's 70s house party. The other half of the cast, stuck in present times, has a bit more of a journey ahead of them as Christian Shepherd said in Namaste. The more interesting storyline at the moment is back in 1977 and the pace started picking up at the end of this week's episode with young Ben Linus getting shot in the chest by Sayid.That's right, Sayid from Oceanic 815 returned to the island after spending 100+ days trying to leave only to get flashed back to 1977. After getting captured by Jin and Radzinsky, Sayid's future is unclear as Sawyer tries to convince him to say he's defecting from the Hostiles and wants to join Dharma. Sayid doesn't about any of that and says that he's returned to the island for a purpose. By refusing to play along Sayid has forced Dharma's hand and a vote is taken where they decide to kill Sayid.
Young Ben, who is convinced that Sayid is an Other, tells Sayid that he'll help him escape from the lock up if Sayid will take him back to Richard and the Hostiles. Sayid agrees by saying that's what he was there for all along. Ben's diversion, a flaming Dharma van, works well enough that he and Sayid are able to make it out of town undiscovered. Jin drives along an outer road and sees the duo crossing the road in the darkness. Sayid tries to talk his way out of capture but Jin's radio announces that "the hostile has escaped" and Jin says he needs to call Sawyer. Sayid knocks Jin out and takes his pistol. Sayid then shoots young Ben in the chest and takes off into the night
The flashbacks in this episode do a good job of setting up the final scene. We first see Sayid in Russia killing 'Andropov' at Ben's request. After Sayid makes the hit he returns to Ben to get his next assignment. Ben says that there are no more hits, Sayid has killed everyone that posed a threat to the Oceanic Six. Ben isn't very convincing and you can practically her Sayid asking himself if any of these missions actually did anything to protect the Oceanic Six. Did Ben just lead Sayid around the world on a killing spree as some sort of elaborate ruse? Probably. Were any of these people actually even working for Widmore? Maybe, it's possible that their deaths were also annoyances for Widmore. But in the end it was all a set up for returning to the island.
The next flash back we see is when Ben visits Sayid while he's doing charity construction work. Ben says that Sayid needs to go to L.A. to save Hurley from Widmore's people. Ben says that Sayid should do this because it comes naturally for him and he enjoys killing, he IS a killer. Sayid and Ben leaves after saying he must have been wrong about Sayid (in that sarcastic tone of his). But, of couse, Ben was right about Sayid and we know he goes to Hurley's aide and eventually winds up at the pier where Ben tells the Oceanic Six they are returning to the island. Sayid realizes Ben's ploy was just to get him back together with the others in L.A. but he won't go back to the island willingly. He leaves the dock and eventually meets up with Alana (who we've seen on flight 316). It turns out that she's a bounty hunter of sorts and is taking Sayid to Guam. They end up on Ajira 316 and the rest is history.
So, does Alana work for Ben? Probably, though she says she doesn't it seems like quite a coincidence that she'd find him only a short time after Sayid left the dock in L.A... Couldn't she have found him in the Dominican Republic just as easily? I think Ben used her as a failsafe in case Sayid changed his mind and refused to go back to the island. Ben's ultimate plan was to get Sayid back to the island... knowing that Sayid and the others would show up in 1977 resulting in Ben getting shot in the chest. The effects of this shot to the chest would eventually lead to young Ben becoming the scheming and conniving leader of the Others. Sayid didn't actually change anything by shooting Ben, though it was a pretty cool twist. You see, when Faraday said "What happened, happened." he meant that even though Sayid just arrived in 1977, he's already done everything that he hasn't done yet... So when we met Ben in the middle of season two, he'd already been shot by Sayid twenty seven years earlier. This jives with Ms. Hawkings claim that the universe will always course correct if you try to change the events of the past. So while Sayid may have had a change of mind and ran down a different road in 1977 and was stopped by Miles, the events would have played out essentially the same and he would have shot Ben with Miles' gun instead. Either way, Ben would have grown up to be the guy we saw pass himself off as Henry Gale in season two.
This sense that "whatever happened, happened" seems a bit limiting in that everything has already "happened" ...so what's the point of having everyone back in 1977 if they can't change anything of have any real meaningful impact? I'll be interested to know how this plays out for the rest of the season.