Namaste answered a number of minor questions that have popped up this season and has cleared up a few timeline issues. I don't want to call Namaste a 'filler' episode, but that's pretty much what it is. The only major plot development that happened during this episode was Sayid showing up in 1977 and getting captured by Jin near the Flame station. The purpose of this episode was to set up the coming story arch that will take us to the end of the season, eight weeks or so from now. So what'd we learn? Well, we now know that Radzinsky was actually part of Dharma but he wasn't always holed up in the Swan pushing the button and telling bad snowman jokes...
The Swan
Not only was Radzinsky not in the Swan, but we see that it hasn't even been built yet. Radzinsky is concerned that Sayid is a spy, sent by the others to learn about top secret Dharma stuff, like the Swan. So... the Swan hasn't been built yet. That probably means that the Incident hasn't happened yet either. If there is no Swan hatch then there is no button to push. If there was no Incident then there would be no need for a button... so why, then, are they building the Swan if not to house the button? Perhaps it's original intent was to be a monitoring station, sort of like the Flame but to keep an eye on the Hostiles, not the Muppet Show. It's also possible that the Swan was always intended to be an experiment that the people in the Pearl watched over. I don't think is the case though. Why would Radzinsky be so concerned about a Hostile seeing the plans for the Swan if it were just a place that Dharma carried out psychological experiments? Couldn't they just plan on moving the building site to another undisclosed location? The location must be important... and as far as we can tell, the Swan will be built on or near the Jughead site. There could be any number of reasons Dharma would be interested in Jughead, I mean, if it blows up then everyone on the island would be pretty much boned. Possible interests in Jughead could include wanting to use it as a power source, it is a nuclear weapon after all so maybe they want to try and localize the yield to a certain part of the island and wipe out the Hostiles.Actually, we do already know the truth about the Swan, at least partially... In the original orientation film (embedded on the right) Pierre Chang (Marvin Candle) tells us that the original purpose of the Swan was to serve as a lab for research into the unique magnetic properties of this specific sector of the island... but shortly after the "experiments began" there was an incident which resulted in Kelvin, Desmond and Locke having to push that button every 108 minutes. So there you have it. Was Dharma tinkering with Jughead? Probably. It sounds like the experiments resulted in a weakening of the casing of the bomb, perhaps they even triggered a sort of detonation, or rather a delayed detonation. We'd heard that the button was releasing the pressure in the power source of the Swan. If this pressure wasn't released it's possible that it would have caused a full on detonation. As we know from the beginning of the third season is that the Swan didn't detonate, but rather it imploded. This was refereed to as a fail-safe, which makes sense if you think of it this way: the reason the button was pushed was so the bomb didn't detonated and experiments could resume in perpetuity as long as someone minded the button. Dharma found a way to "safely" implode the station around Jughead so the threat would be neutralized, but the trade off was that no further experiments were possible.
Ben Linus
We learn this week that not only is Radzinsky running around the Dharma side of the island, but so is Ben. Young Ben actually... So it seems that the events of Ben's previous flash back took place around 1973, about four years before Sayid shows up. This means that Sawyer, Juliet and the others should all be well aware that young Ben Linus is already on the island. I doubt they can really do much though, in fact Faraday problem told them NOT to interfere with him. After all, it'd be too easy to just have Sawyer set up Ben as a juvenile delinquent and have him deported on the next sub back to Fiji. It's going to be interesting to see the interaction between Ben and Sayid in the coming episodes. Ben has been patiently awaiting acceptance into the Others and perhaps he sees Sayid as a sign that his time has come. We know better though, we know that Ben is still a member of Dharma right up until the end - some time in the early 1990s. I have a feeling that we'll see young Ben get his hopes up that Sayid was sent by Alpert to bring him back to join the Hostiles. Sayid has really only seen Richard briefly before leaving the island with the Oceanic Six, he probably doesn't know Alpert by name and certainly wouldn't be able to play along for long. This would be a big let down for Ben and probably more than just another straw on the camel's back... What if Ben ends up running away again to meet Alpert or Jacob, what if he stages a kidnapping and lives among the Hostiles for a period of time? All of this seems probable. Think about it... Ben is still on the bottom of the Dharma totem pole when we see him just before the Purge. Don't you think Ben would have at least schemed his way up the command chain a little? It would have probably made it easier to aide the Hostiles if he were in some position of power and not just a lowly workman. If Ben were at some point kidnapped by the Hostiles, let's say in 1978 or 1980, and then he lives amongst them for a decade under the leadership of Charles Widmore. After four or five years Ben becomes fed up with the way the Hostiles are still allowing Dharma to live on the island and, with the backing of Jacob, decides to wipe Dharma out. Widmore, presumably one of the architects of the truce, doesn't like the way Ben is heading and won't stand for a straight up purge of Dharma. Ben tricks Widmore into exiling himself from the island and then Ben takes full control of the Hostiles and wins Jacob's favor by purging Dharma. Let's say Ben is "kidnapped" by Alpert's people as an excuse to give amongst them. How does this impact Annie and Alex's role in the main storyline? I still think Annie was the love of young Ben's life and I think it'd be very important to the story if she were to die in labor with Ben's child. If Ben loses Annie this way, it'd explain why he put so much importance on finding a solution to why mothers keep dying on the island and ultimately brought Juliet to the island. If Ben loses Annie around age 16 (in 1979/1980) it'd coincide pretty well with the Incident (which may very well be the cause of the birth problem on the island). With Annie and his unborn child gone, what reason does Ben have to stay with Dharma? Anger and desperation could push him to forsake Dharma for the Hostiles, but I don't think it'll be as clear as Ben announcing that he's leaving the Barracks to go hang out with Alpert. Jacob probably tells Ben that it must appear that he's been kidnapped, to allow Ben an opportunity to return to the ranks of Dharma at a later date (around 1992).So what about Alex? Well, we know she was taken from Rousseau in 1988 or early in 1989. It seems unlikely that Ben would have been able to run into the jungle and steal Alex and bring her back to the Barracks with Dharma still around, which is partly why I think he must have spent some significant amount of time with the Hostiles prior to the purge. But, why Alex? We know Rousseau killed all of the members of her team shortly after arriving on the island and Ben always refereed to her as crazy. So let's assume she's crazy. Certainly she wouldn't be fit to provide a good upbringing for Alex as a lone castaway and crazy to boot. Skipping back to the second season we know that the Others regard children as innocents and they aren't treated the same way as adults. Perhaps we'll see Ben and the others show a little compassion and take Alex away from Rousseau in that regard, never mind that it's still kidnapping... So Ben now takes on the responsibility of raising Alex amongst the Others before the events of the purge. I think this is a believable scenario, at least until we start getting into the 1990s. As we get closer to the events of the purge I think Ben reappears in the jungle and returns to the Dharma Initiative.
Knowing what we now know about Dharma it seems hard to believe that they'd just welcome Ben back with open arms. He really has no family in Dharma any more at this point with Annie gone. Ben's father isn't a very well respected guy either so he's really on his own. If Sawyer can con Horace into letting his group stay with Dharma then Ben should be able to do the same, he's got the added benefit of having some rapport with the Dharma folks still. Perhaps Ben fakes amnesia, or fesses up to living amongst the Hostiles. I think it'll be somewhere in between, he'll say he was kidnapped and held against his will for a period of time until Stockholm syndrome took over, maybe they even tell him Dharma has already been purged... Either way he stays with the Hostiles for a while until finally returning to the Barracks. With some reluctance Horace will allow Ben to live and work with Dharma again. Ben will then use his limited access to set the purge in motion by sabotaging the Tempest and then wrapping up things with his father over a canister of poison gas. That's how I think it'll go down, but enough about Ben and the purge...
Pierre Chang
Before LaFleur we all pretty much assumed that Pierre Chang was the head of the Dharma island operation. He was the guy in all those orientation films and seemed to know what he was talking about. As it turns out, Horace seems to be the leader of Dharma on the island. At least at the Barracks... Chang's role is as an educator and star of the orientation films, he's probably also the head of temporal research for Dharma. I think there is a bit more to Chang that we haven't seen yet. Remember back to the old orientation films... most of the dates on those films were in the early 1980s, which means they haven't been filmed yet. Currently, it's 1977 and neither the incident or the Swan are in the front of anyone's mind. The Swan, as far as we know, hasn't been built yet... and yet Chang is always seen with a Swan station Dharma patch on. It made sense in the orientation film for the Swan, but since then it's become somewhat puzzling. Especially now, why would Chang wear the patch of a station that doesn't exist? The Swan is undoubtedly important (perhaps the most important station) but it just seems out of place.At the end of this season we should be seeing what exactly the Incident was. I'm guessing now that it is some sort of temporal event caused by an experiment at the new Swan station. Could it be Ben or Locke tampering with Jughead and causing the first build up of pressure? Perhaps this causes an explosion and Jacob/the island intervenes and flashes the Losties away to safety. I think the Incident has to wrap up the Dharma story, I don't see the 1977 story line continuing in to season six. I think we'll the Losties move around in time again, probably further back into the history of the island, which is pretty exiting.