This latest episode of Lost was my favorite of the season so far. We learn right off the bat that Locke 'survived' the return to the island... well, not THE island, but the Hydra island from season three. The show open with Caesar (the guy who offered Jack his condolences after checking Locke's casket at the airport - he also sat next to Hurley in first class) and Alana (the Marshall who was escorting Sayid) in an office on near the Hydra station. Alana says that there they found a man standing out in the water after the crash and no one remembered seeing him on the plane. That man, of course, is Locke and he's somehow been brought back from the dead.
"We're building a runway"
Well, I guess Juliet wasn't lying after all. Though, she still may not have been telling the whole truth. After Caesar and Alana leave the Hydra station office we see them walk by flight 316 which seems to be mostly intact and parked on a runway. Go figure. This would put the timeline of the flight well after the events at the end of 316 when we see Jack, Kate and Hurley greeted by Jin in Dharma times. Caesar tells Locke that he knows something is up, he knows Hurley and the other members of the Oceanic Six disappeared just before the crash(landing) and wants to know where they've gone. We know that they ended up in the 1970s, probably thirty years prior to Locke's reincarnation. So why did the Oceanic Six flash back in time leaving Locke, Ben and the others stranded on Hyrdra island? Here's my theory...Flight 316 was caught in a flash similar to those Sawyer and Juliet were going through on the island. Locke supposedly stopped these flashes by putting the frozen donkey wheel back on it's axis, sending Sawyer's group to the seventies where they assimilated into Dharma. When flight 316 hit the window back to the island, the Oceanic Six experienced a flash that sent them back to the seventies which didn't affect Ben, Caesar and the other passengers. Ben and Locke were probably both exempt from the flash because they both turned the wheel at one point and flashes no longer cause them to jump. The rest of the passengers are bystanders like Rousseau and are oblivious to the flashes. After the Oceanic Six disappear back to the seventies, flight 316 continues through the turbulence until Frank Lapidus is forced to land the plane on Hydra island. Frank is something of an enigma though because we are led to believe the Losties are traveling through time with the flashes because Ben turned the wheel and knocked it off it's axis. The Oceanic Six were far enough away from the island at the end of season four to avoid the flash but now we know they are still subject to jumps on some level. So why didn't Frank get teleported too? He was on the helicopter when Ben turned the wheel just like the Oceanic Six, shouldn't he be subjected to the flashes as well? Maybe the prerequisite to flashing has more to do with being on Flight 815, but that doesn't explain why Juliet and Miles jump through time in sync with Sawyer and Locke. I'm hoping there is a good explanation for.
That's the exit
I didn't think Locke would show up in Tunisia because he left the island and a different time (and possibly different location as well) than Ben. But, as we saw, he also ends up in North Africa. Locke is met by Widmore while recuperating at the infirmary. Widmore says he's going to help Locke get the Oceanic Six back by providing a passport and a driver. We learn that Widmore knows Locke from 1954 and at some point he was the leader of the natives on the island, before being exiled by Ben. Widmore's admission to Locke fills in a bit more of the timeline that we didn't know before. Widmore would have been born in 1937 because he tells Locke that he was 17 when they met in 1954 on the island. Widmore says that he was the leader of the Others for about three decades, so roughly 1955 to 1985 (give or take a few years). This jives with Miles' remark in 2005 that Widmore had been looking for the island for about twenty years. We know that the purge ended in 1992 which may have been Ben's final effort to consolidate power by finishing off Dharma and coming the leader of the Others. Could Widmore's leaving the island five or six years prior have been a catalyst for the purge? If he and Ben didn't agree on terms then I think it would have at least played a part.Probably the most interesting part of what Widmore revealed was the implication it has on Penny's character. If Widmore didn't leave the island until about 1985-1988 then Penny must have been born on the island... or her mother had her off island in the early seventies(?). This also means that Widmore would only have been off of the island for about a decade when Desmond visits him in 1996 during the events of The Constant. Widmore seems very well established in 1996, not the kind of life you'd expect someone who recently returned to civilization after thirty years on a island to have... At the same time, Ben seems to have fairly unlimited resources at his disposal after leaving the island. Hopefully these details will also be explained later in this season.
Jeremy Bentham
Locke's journey from Tunisia to the hotel room where he died was pretty much what I expected. Locke pays a visit to Sayid, Hurley and Kate with pretty similar results, none of them want to return to the island... yet. Locke has Abbadon track down Walt, who is at school in New York. Walt seems to be a normal kid, except he's still having island related visions from time to time. I think it's a good move to have Locke leave well enough alone and let Walt go about his business.... Locke puts it best saying that Walt's gone through enough. Walt later goes to visit Hurley in Santa Rosa so his story is certainly not concluded if his visions persists. Locke also has Abbadon take him to see Helen, who has died. It's here at the cemetery that Abbadon is shot while loading the trunk of the car. Locke speeds away, as Abbadon dies, and crashes in to a number of cars which sends him to the hospital. Jack greets Locke in the hospital when Locke tells Jack about seeing Christian, Jack's dad. This is what pushes Jack to start buying tickets and look for a way back to the island, though he never reconciles with Locke. Locke thinks he's failed, as he very clearly has, and decides to hang himself. Before Locke is able to go through with it though, Ben shows up and convinces Locke to call it off. Locke and Ben chat a little before Locke mentions that Christian told him he must speak with Eloise Hawking. This seems to infuriate Ben who then chokes Locke to death.Hawking must be important, so important that Ben chooses to kill Locke at this point rather than keep him alive to work on getting the Oceanic Six back. I think Hawking is the key here, Ben's plan was to return to the island without Locke. This way Ben would be able to resume leadership of the Others and not have to worry about Locke. However, Locke mentions Hawking which tells Ben that Locke WILL be heading back to the island, which creates a number of problems for Ben. Rather than think of a strategy, Ben acts on impulse and kills Locke. Locke was always meant to be on the return journey of the Oceanic Six, but at least as a corpse he shouldn't cause Ben much of a problem. This is where the forces of the island reassert control by bringing Locke back to life while Ben remains injured after 316 reaches the island.
The events of The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham are meant to cast Ben as the bad guy. He's very deliberately shown to be the evil of evils here. He talks Locke down from hanging himself only to strangle Locke himself... Ben admits to killing Abbadon, the man who sent Locke on the walkabout journey which put him on the island. Ben is also said to be the trickster that exiled Widmore in the eighties and took control of the Others. All of this new information, combined with everything else we know about Ben, would certainly indicate that he is very much THE bad guy. That's not to say that Widmore is the good guy, but he definitely looks like the lesser of the two evils after this episode.