This week’s episode is entitled “He’s Our You”. This line is stated in the episode and it’s a reference to a Dharma employee named Oldham who lives on the island. He, like Sayid, is experienced in torturing people.  As we saw in last week’s episode, Sayid is imprisoned by the Dharma people as they believe he is one of the Others.  Sayid refuses to go along with Sawyer’s plan to pretend to be a defector from the Others so that Sayid can live the Dharma people undercover the way Sawyer has been doing so for the past three years. Horace and the Dharma people believe Sayid is one of the Others and feel that if he’s not going to talk, then they must resort to desperate measures to get information out of him - torture.

All of this is almost small potatoes and I don’t mind going into all of this here before I tell you to look away for spoilers. The cliffhanger for this week’s episode is big and it will probably confuse and freak out some people who aren’t into the time travel aspect of the show.  I did not see this one coming and it left me wondering where do we go from here?

Spoilers…...............

If you remember the trailer for “He’s Our You” from last week, you know that it showed Sayid pointing a gun at someone and saying that he now knows why he was brought back here to the island in the past. This led me to believe that Sayid was going to try and kill the young version of Ben Linus who he met at the end of last week’s episode. I figured that Sayid would try to do it and either stop himself and say he can’t kill a young boy or someone would stop him from doing it; boy was I wrong because SAYID SHOOTS AND KILLS THE YOUNG BENJAMIN LINUS!!!!!!!!!!!

This episode is a more traditional “LOST” episode like the ones from the early seasons as it shows flashbacks to when Sayid was a young boy in Iraq and him killing for Ben after the left the island. The flashbacks are used here to show that from very early on, Sayid was a killer. That’s what he did and that’s what he was good at, but now he is now tired of killing. Sayid doesn’t say it, but I got the feeling from when he was talking about after the plane crash of Flight 316, when he realized he was back back on the island, he decided that he didn’t want to live anymore. This is why he refused to go with Sawyer’s plan to fake being a defector from the Others. He knew that Dharma would probably kill him if they thought he was a member of the Others.

An interesting side note about this episode that kind of shocked me was how Sawyer who was trying to free Sayid and keep the secret that they are all from the future, decided to go to Jack for help. It was a complete turn around from the angry defiant Sawyer who we saw at the end of last week’s episode. What does this mean? Will Jack once again become the leader or is Sawyer simply realizing it’s not easy being a leader and is struggling with the current situation. I’m sure the show will explore that sometime later.

Another side note is that we discover in the flashbacks that Ilana who was escorting Sayid onto Flight 316 does not work for Ben as we assumed she did, but instead she’s a bounty hunter who was bringing Sayid in for one of the assassinations he committed while working for Ben. This flashback leads into the final scene where Sayid escapes thanks to the help of young Benjamin Linus.

Ben believes Sayid is one of the Others and he wants to escape and join the Others so he doesn’t have to deal with his abusive father. They make their way through the jungle and meet up with Jin. Sayid knocks Jin out and takes his gun. He then says the line of knowing now why he is here and he shoots young Ben.

So if Ben is dead in the past how does this effect the future?  Also, if a young Ben met up with Sayid and all of the other “LOST” people like Sawyer and Juliet in the past, why doesn’t he know them in the future? A co-worker of mine who is much more knowledgeable about the real theories of time travel described to me how we can’t think of time as something that is linear.  Okay, but still what does that mean for the future?  Has the future changed?  I mean everything from the Dharma purge to the events that happened before and after Oceanic Flight 815 are all centered around Ben.  How can a young twelve year old Ben be dead in the past and be alive, but unconscious on the island in 2007?!  Maybe the island revives Ben.  It revived John?  Why not Ben as well?

This may be all for naught because if you read the entry for next week’s episode, “Whatever Happened, Happened” it gives a summary of the plot where Kate is trying to save the life of Ben.  However, the episode after that is entitled “Dead is Dead”.  These titles make it seem that whatever happened, meaning the shooting, dead is dead and that young Ben will be dead. 

Again, I am no expert on the theories of time travel so I can’t give you any theories about what I think will happen.  I’ll simply say that I’m entrigued by what’s going on and as always can’t wait for next week.  See you then.