DeadLocke?

 After last week's Kate-centric episode where we learned What Kate Does (which evidently is piss off lots of viewers with her lame flash-sideways storyline),  we return this week to true mind-blowing form with an excellent Locke-centric episode that advanced the mythology storyline and actually gave us more questions than answers, for the first time in 5 years. 

Or....did it?

After all, the Big Reveal in this episode - finding out what Those Numbers mean - may or may not be true, since this Big Reveal came courtesy of the Locke-ness Monster.  And something about this guy makes me not want to trust him so much.  But then again, he did make a pretty good argument on behalf of why Jacob really is the bad guy; dragging people to this island for decades (centuries?!) against their will, deceiving them into thinking it was by free will, but then not really letting them know if it was free will or not (huh?!).  Point being, who's to say who is good and who is bad on this screwy island?

Even though I'm not putting a lot of stock in the flash-sideways scenes this season, I did enjoy Locke's storyline.  Also nice to see Katy Segal back as Locke's gal.  My only problem with the flash-sideways scenes was seeing both Rose and Ben popping up in John Locke's world.  After all, if Rose really did work for Hugo, wouldn't she have known him on the island?!  And obviously, if the bomb nuked the past, and Ben never showed up on the island, but instead became a history teacher, wouldn't that also mean that he would've never been on the island in the future as well?! (what?!)

And while I'm at it, another thing that bugs me is hearing that John is friendly enough with his fake dad to invite him to his wedding.  Does this mean that he forgave his fake dad for pushing him out of that hotel window?  After all, nothing should've changed for these people's lives BEFORE the plane crashed - or didn't crash - right?  But now, suddenly Hugo is the luckiest guy on the planet?!  How did NOT crashing on the island cause THAT to happen?!

As frustrating as all this is, there is a great feeling that all of the time we've invested in this series for the past 5 years is finally paying off.  Getting that Big Reveal of what the numbers mean, and exactly why each person whose name was written in the cave, is great stuff.  Interesting that Fake Locke scratched off Locke's name.  From everything we've learned about this show, you never count anyone out.  I'm still betting on John Locke being the big winner when all is said and done.  I'm guessing it will come down to Jacob resurrecting Locke's dead body, then we'll have one of those Star Trek-type scenes where there is a real Kirk and a fake Kirk fighting each other, and one of the other castaways will have to kill one of the Lockes, and hopefully the Good Locke will prevail and be crowned New King Of The Island....or, the Bad Locke will win, and the entire series will end like one long Twilight Zone episode.

I'll even go further out on this limb.  My guess is that the final scene of Lost will be a recreation of the Jacob and The Man In Black scene on the beach, only in the finale, it will be The Man In Ben telling the resurrected and newly-christened Candidate John Locke if he knows how much he wants to kill him.

But, I'm getting ahead of myself.  I guess that's to be expected, though, with a show like this where time is irrelevant.