Initial thoughts on "Confirmed Dead"

I'll be back with a full analysis tomorrow, but while it's still fresh in my mind, I figured I'd jot down some initial observations on tonight's episode - which, in my opinion at least, strongly improved on last weekend's premiere, which worked more as a wrap-up to Season 3 than a beginning of Season 4. So tonight's a time for questions, and tomorrow I'll try to answer them. Be warned - at the time of writing this, Pacific and Mountain timers haven't seen the episode yet, so spoilers obviously abound.

They're definitely selling the "everybody's beginning to hate Locke" theme - Kate and Jack talked about him to Daniel and Miles like he was the smoke monster, for goodness sake. Gee, wouldn't it be a whopper of a twist if he was one of the Oceanic Six? If so, I could see a coffin in his future...

Oh yeah, the freighter folks: "a head case, an exorcist, an archeologist, and a drunk," as Naomi called them. (I'm pretty sure I got at least one of those wrong.) Turns out none of them really know what they're doing - they were all just taking orders from Naomi and, by extension, the mysterious Matthew Abaddon. But surprisingly, their true intentions were revealed tonight...

They're here for Ben. Ben? Why? "Because I have a man on their boat." What?? Let's recall that Ben did have contact with the outside world...and the freighter folks someone had a picture of grown-up Ben, who's spent his entire adult life on the island. Did Ben's man used to be on the island? If so, was he Dharma or a Hostile? Or is he separate? Do the freighter folks know that the man they have is "Ben's man"? Gahh...

Did freighter girl Charlotte recognize the Dharma symbol when she excavated the polar bear? It sure looked like she did, by the smile on her face.

"What is the monster?" An absolutely perfect question with perfect, matter-of-fact timing. You're promising you have answers, Ben? Well, time to answer a big one. He didn't, of course, but I enjoyed the reminder that these people are still searching for answers, too.

Did you see the look on Ben and Locke's faces when Hurley mentioned he'd seen the cabin? I guess that means that Locke definitely wasn't in there last episode...meaning that was possibly Jacob's eye that popped up in the window, and Jack's dad was just sort of chilling in there with him. Maybe?

How much you want to bet there ends up being problems with the helicopter fuel?

A lot to talk about tomorrow. But I'll leave you with a very probable, and very big, spoiler, courtesy of none other than the ABC promotional team. On the teaser for next week's episode, they said "another member of the Oceanic Six will be revealed!," right? Well the central character of next week's episode, entitled "The Economist," has already been revealed via a press release. Put two and two together, and you've got your (highly) probably fourth member of the Oceanic Six. So who is it? Those of you with no willpower can highlight the answer, which I've made invisible, at the end of this sentence: Sayid.

Hm. Interesting.

TAGS: Abaddon, Ben, Freighter, Locke, Season4
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