s4e02: Confirmed Dead

We get our first-ever four-way flashback - five-way, even - as we see what Daniel, Miles, Charlotte and Frank, the four people on the helicopter that Daniel dropped from at the end of the previous episode, were doing before they got to the island. The episode starts by revealing the plane in a trench off Bali, as Naomi mentioned at the end of last season. Daniel, watching footage on television, is upset, though he's not sure why. Miles, we find out, is a kind of exorcist or ghostbuster - oddly, he manages to be both legitimate and a bit of a con artist at the same time. Charlotte is an anthropologist who finds a polar bear with a Dharma collar in the Tunisian desert. Frank is a pilot who was, apparently, supposed to be piloting Flight 815 when it crashed, and recognizes that something is off about the wreckage. The four are gathered together to bring in Ben; the team is headed by Naomi, who describes it as "covert ops," and headed by Matthew Abaddon, the sinister guy claiming to be from Oceanic who talked to Hurley last episode. Why exactly they want Ben is not revealed (shock!), although it appears that most or all of them don't even know. Their professions are somewhat telling - anthropologist, physicist, psychic/exorcist; presumably, as Abaddon says, each is intended for a specific purpose in terms of what they might come into contact with on the island.

Speaking of on the island: so Jack and Kate meet Daniel, who is kind of fidgety. He admits that rescue is not concern #1, but they go after Miles' transponder signal before he can say what concern #1 actually is. Miles is the exact opposite - on edge and aggressive, pointing a gun in Jack's face right away. That's because he thinks they killed Naomi, though, due to her final message which was apparently a code. He makes Kate take him to Naomi's body so that he can confirm her story, which he does, doing his ghosty thing, I guess. Then Juliet and Sayid pop out of the jungle and disarm Daniel and Miles, putting the survivors back in control of the situation. They go to look for Charlotte, but Locke has put her transponder onto Vincent and turned him loose to throw the pursuers off (I successfully called this as soon as I saw how fast the transponder signal was moving); instead, they find Frank after he shoots off a signal flare. Frank reveals that he was able to put the helicopter down safely. Miles attempts to call the boat, but George is suspiciously unavailable. Juliet tends to Frank's head wound, but when she tells him her name, he knows - from having read the manifest many times - that she wasn't on the plane. Miles freaks out and demands to know where Ben is, admitting that the freighter is there to look for him.

In the other group, Sawyer has taken to pummeling Ben as a way of withstanding Ben's mind games. Locke says it's important to keep Ben alive, but after they find Charlotte, Ben attempts to kill her; luckily (?), she's wearing a bulletproof vest. Ben explains that he knows the people are here for him, rattling off Charlotte's bio to prove it. As we go to Lost logo, Ben states that he has an insider on the boat.

Clearly, other people are aware of the Dharma projects. But how is that possible? Is this Dharma, or a related offshoot of the Hanso Foundation, coming to exact its revenge on Ben and the natives? And how did a fully-preserved and buried polar bear skeleton wind up in the Tunisian desert? The hint we got last summer about time travel definitely seems to be creeping more into the plot.

What's up with the plane off Bali? Part of a cover-up? (Assumedly, yes.) Who's masterminding this cover-up? Based on the little we've gotten from him, I don't think it's Abaddon, so that probably leaves someone we haven't met yet - another possibility being Dharma/Hanso, trying to distract so no one finds the actual island. But Abaddon can't be both Hanso and not Hanso.

And who, pray tell, is the insider on the boat? I'll give you my guess: Michael. We know he's coming back this season, and given that his name has already reappeared in the opening credits, it's probably going to be soon. There's clearly been more contact between the island and the outside world than previously revealed - where else would that photograph of Ben have come from, since it's clearly pretty recent? So perhaps Ben made contact with Michael somehow (sometime during Season Three in island time), knowing that people out there were looking for him?

Rumor has it the writer's strike will be ending in the next few days. I wonder if there's any chance of more episodes getting produced for this season - could they possibly write and film the remaining eight in a three-month period? Wishful thinking, I suppose. But would they really go 8-24? Any chance of 12-20, even? We'll see.