The Economist

What a wonderfully perplexing piece of the puzzle was tonight's episode of Lost! Once again, we were shown how much more compelling the mysteries of the future will be than the mysteries of the island itself. (Although Daniel's strange experiment -- a la Doc Brown in Back to the Future -- seemed to suggest a new aspect to the island's weirdness, some kind of weird time distortion?)

But once again, dramatic changes in character were put front and center. So much of Sayid's story over three seasons of the show has been about his attempt to distance himself from who he was before the crash. He tries to put his dark past as a ruthless soldier and torturer behind him, but inevitably keeps coming to crossroads that pull him back into the shadows. He always had the "carrot" of a woman waiting for him, should he ever get off the island and find her.

Now it would seem that's not to be his destiny, and that he'll backslide even farther than ever and become an assassin. What could have happened to him to make him regress so far on his path to redemption? And to throw in with Ben in the course of it? (As the writers skillfully foreshadowed, the day Sayid starts trusting Ben does indeed seem to be the day he sells his soul.)

Along the way, there were other great moments involving other characters. Hurley has rarely been so duplicitous, and his participation in Locke's ruse put a real dark streak in him. (And I feel foolish for even falling for it for a moment. Nothing had really happened yet to Hurley that could have made him "sorry he went with Locke" in the future.)

Kate and Sawyer had to confront each other and the way they're already drifting apart. In ways, it echoed Kate's backstory involving her husband, and was a big moment for her and Sawyer.

I'm feeling completely into the show right now to a degree I've not felt since the first season. And I'm looking forward to the future (pun intended).