Lost is off for a week so we won't get any answers for about two weeks. In the meantime I thought I'd speculate a little more on the second half of this season. So far this season the story arc has moved at a pretty frantic pace. I thought it would have taken all season to round up the Oceanic Six and get them back to the island... when it really only took about four episodes. The story is very well laid out but it does seem somewhat rushed. I doubt this will change as we wrap up the fifth season and I think we'll end this season at a point in the storyline that we might not expect. Here are my thoughts...First off, in the up coming episodes we'll see Kate put an end to Sawyer and Juliet playing house when Kate tells Sawyer about Cassidy and Clementine. I think we'll learn this is where Kate dropped Aaron off before heading back to the island. Whether Kate and Sawyer start playing house is another matter, and the least of my worries. Sorry, but there are much more interesting things going on this season. For example, we're only halfway through the season and we already know more about Widmore from the four episodes he's been in this season than we knew after the four seasons prior to this one. Widmore told Locke that there is a war coming to the island and if Locke isn't there when shit goes down, the wrong side will win. I think this has to be a conflict between Ben and Locke. Ben straight up strangled Locke to death, I doubt this is something Ben and talk his way out of. I don't think Locke will just return the favor and strangle Ben in the Hydra infirmary though... I'm betting that Ben still has allies on the island even after Locke was made their leader. With the help of his loyalists, Ben will try to kill Locke and those who decide to go with him. I'm sure Locke will have the backing of Alpert and perhaps Jacob, for what it's worth, but I don't see many of the other Losties helping him. The Others see Locke as special but everyone else thinks he's a crazy and obsessive old man.
I think Jacob is less of a person and more of a personification of the island itself. Ben and Locke can ask for guidance but I don't think Jacob or the island really has a 'side' and possession of, or access to, Jacob and the island will be the reason behind the coming war. Ultimately, I'd like Locke to win. I've always been a big fan of the Locke character and it seems to be his destiny to protect the island. The Lost story doesn't always go the way you'd want so it is anyone's guess as to how this unfolds. After all, who knew back in season two that Widmore was an Other back in the day? Even more so, who knew he was their leader for thirty years and was tricked into leaving the island by Ben?
With things coming to a head between Locke and Ben, I think we must get more of Ben's story before it's too late. I don't think Ben will die, but I think it is going to be harder and harder for the writers to keep Ben in this ambiguous role between being good and evil. What better way to redeem, if ever so temporarily, Ben's image than to give us more info on his past. We know a little about Ben and his father... how they came to be in Dharma and how Ben first met Alpert. What we don't know is what happened in those ten or fifteen years between Alpert meeting Ben and the end of the purge. What happened to Annie? I've had a theory for a while now that Annie and Ben have a child together. Well, Ben knocks Annie up, then she dies in child birth. Ben is understandably distraught with losing Annie and is convinced that she died (and no other mothers can give birth on the island) as a result of Dharma being on the island. Perhaps Alpert, Jacob or Christian convinces Ben that he can avenge Annie by wiping out Dharma. It's equally possible that Ben just decides to join the others because, after Annie dies, he has no reason left for staying with Dharma. Both are believable but if Ben is going to have a (slightly) redemptive storyline between now and the time it becomes unequivocally evil, I'm betting it'd be the former... if Ben is lead to the conclusion that Dharma caused the death of Annie in some way, then the audience would still be able to hold on to a little glimmer of hope that Ben may just be a little misunderstood and manipulated.
At the end of LaFleur we see Jack, Kate and Hurley meet up with Jin and Sawyer. I think these three Losties will be enlisted into Dharma in the next episode or so. There will be plenty of drama between Kate and Sawyer and Jack and Juliet, but whatever. The next arc will probably pick up where the opening scene of this season left off. I think Faraday will be working in the Orchid and realize what the donkey wheel is and how we'll learn about what the power source under the island really is. We know from the video released at last year's ComiCon that Pierre Chang will make a video and somehow broadcast it forward in time. In this message he says that he knows about the coming purge and President Bush, which would indicate someone let the cat out of the bag and finally told the truth. My guess is that when Faraday said "What hapened, happened," he meant that whatever they do now, is whatever they did in the 1970s... so because they are stuck in the seventies they are now part of that timeline, or rather - they always WERE part of that timeline. This means they are free to interact with whoever they want, in any way that they want and it won't change the past because it has already happened. If that's the case, then Faraday can go tell Chang all about the time travel and flashes without it changing the events of season two, because essentially, he knew about it then... if that makes any sense. If we take the ComiCon video at face value then we know Faraday will tell Chang about the purge but one thing I don't get is why. Why make a video and beam it into the future, why should the Dharma Initiative be reconstituted? It doesn't seem like that would help the Losties at all. Perhaps the video wasn't really meant for anyone affiliated with Dharma at all. What if Chang thought he was appealing to future Dharma folks when in reality the video wasn't being seen by anyone... at least not until Locke finds it.
At some point Locke must find out what happens to Jack, Kate and the others. I think a good way for this to happen is for Locke to see Chang, someone he knows to be Dharma, talk about events that happen in the future, the kind of stuff Jack and Locke would know to be factual. Another possibility is for Locke to find an old photo of everyone in Dharma suits. In the promotional shots for the next episode of Lost, we see Jack and the others in Dharma garb with someone taking a sort of 'class photo.' If Locke finds this he would assume that the Oceanic Six flashed back to the seventies. Locke was supposed to bring the Oceanic Six back so they would be safe, the island would stop flashing and Locke would be there so the right side would win the coming war... not so Jack and Kate can die in the purge. I don't think Locke would try and move the island again so he can jump around and try to get back together with Jack and Kate, but perhaps there is a way he can rescue them. We know Richard is able to leave the island as early as 1956 to see Locke's birth. Is it possible that whatever mode of transportation Alpert used can send Locke back to the seventies? Remember, the submarine is a Dharma vehicle, the Others wouldn't have had it back in 1956, so there must be another way off the island that doesn't involve turning the wheel.
But let's take a step back for a moment. What if Chang's video was seen by Locke AND broadcast to Dharma? If the Dharma video made it out to the real world and it DID spark a reconstitution of Dharma, what would be their goal? We can assume a new Dharma team on its way to the island would be intent on finding out what exactly happened to the old Dharma folks as well as continuing the work of the initiative. We still don't know the actual purpose of Dharma... but we were told in one of the orientation films that Dharma was looking for a solution to the equation that resulted in the numbers having to be entered into the computer in the Swan. I have a feeling that was largely bullshit based on what we now know about Dr. Marvin Candle and the Pearl, Orchid and other stations. Whatever Dharma's goal is, it must have to do with the ability of the original inhabitants of the island (Richard's people) to live forever, travel through space-time and everything else that happens on the island. If the first Dharma Initiative was purged by the natives and Dharma's backers see value in returning to the island, then it's a safe bet that they will return with more than a single submarine and a Namaste banner... Could this be the coming war Widmore was talking about? Does he know that Chang's broadcast made it back to Dharma's people in the real world and they're mobilizing a return to the island? Possibly...
Ultimately, I think this season has to end with all of the Losties leaving the 1970s. I think they will end up back in 2007 but there may be a few stops along the way. There is still more to learn about the four toed statue, details that it'd be really cool to learn first hand however far back that is... The Black Rock storyline hasn't been explained much at all, we just know it is of interest to Widmore in the mid 1990s and it set sail from England only to end up in the middle of the jungle on the island. If the Losties flash back to the 1880s it'd be one heck of an episode... I'd love to see who was on the Black Rock and what they did once they got to the island. Anyways, this season's finale is titled The Incident, which is a reference to the event that lead to the button having to be pushed every 108 minutes in the Swan station. It'd be so awesome to see what exactly happened there and what part the Losties played in the incident. The obvious explanation is that the Jughead bomb is buried under the hatch, something Faraday told Richard to do earlier this season. Well, Faraday just said that it needed to be buried... perhaps the Swan hasn't been built yet and there is just a slab of concrete in the jungle. Could the incident be the result of the strained truce between Dharma and Alpert's group? Perhaps the situation deteriorates and someone tries to detonate the bomb... Someone like Locke or Ben. What if Ben sees that he's back in the seventies and realizes that nothing has changes since he left, he knows history will repeat itself and Locke will still have the island's favor... feeling powerless to change things he decides to detonate Jughead. Knowing that there is one season left, he's stopped by the Losties or Dharma after tampering with the casing and causing radiation to leak from the bomb. Dharma decides to build the Swan up around the remains of the bomb to monitor it and press the button to "release the pressure" (as Kelvin said) within Jughead without causing it to explode. I stand by my original claim that it's too early to foretell the every end of this season. I think there must be another temporal event to shift the Losties out of the Dharma era but I don't know what it could be at this point.
There are two new non-Dharma characters that have been introduced recently and they'll probably end up being marginally important. Caesar and Alana showed up with the crash of flight 316 after Locke was ressurected. It's possible that either, or both of them work for Ben or Widmore. Honestly, we've seen so little of them that anything is possible. Alana was a federal agent who had custody of Sayid on the flight so it's unlikely that she's an Other or working for Ben. Caesar is a wildcard though, he seems a little defensive when talking to Locke and he hid the gun from Alana when we met them at the Hydra station. I don't see either of these characters becoming the next Faraday, but Charlotte may be a better comparison. I'd be surprised if they made it to next season.
Well that's about all I have as far as theories for the second half of season five of Lost. The one week hiatus came at a perfect point between the two major arches of the season. We just wrapped up the Oceanic Six storyline by getting those folks back to the island, Locke is resurrected in the process and we learn that Sawyer and his group have been living amongst the Dharma folks for three years... and now everyone is about to get reunited as we build up to the story arch that will take us to the end of the season. As the next couple of episode air I'm sure this arch will be revealed and there will be plenty more to speculate on.