Confirmed Dead

Last night's Lost episode, Confirmed Dead, was the type of blow your mind story that the show is famous for. It provided a couple of answers, but also threw out whole lot of new questions. Where do I begin?

"Are they still alive?"
Mysterious "attorney" Matthew Abaddon asked Hurley this question in season 4's premiere. It was believed that he was talking about the Oceanic 815 survivors, but now signs point to the freighter crew. Since Abaddon looks to be the mastermind of the freighter's journey to the island, he wants to know if his crew is still alive.

Oceanic Flight 815
The plane that was found underwater is obviously a decoy. But on this show, when something is obvious, it usually turns out not to be what you thought it would be. If it is a decoy, who would go through the trouble to make everyone think that 815 crashed in the water and there were no survivors? Is it the Maxwell Group, Penny's dad, Sun's dad, Dharma, the Hanso Foundation, the others, Mr. Cluck's Chicken, some unknown entity we have yet to see?

Also, what was the public reaction when the Oceanic 6 were publicized? Oceanic says in the video that the bodies of all on board are inside the plane. But the "pilot" underwater doesn't have a wedding ring on. The pilot in season 1 did indeed have on his wedding ring. So who are the bodies in the plane?

Polar Bears in Africa?
When the excavation crew discovered skeletal remains in Africa, you knew that a twist was coming. Not only were they bones of a polar bear, but new character Charlotte Staples Lewis (C.S. Lewis) discovered a Dharma Hydra Station collar in the sand next to the remains. This was the biggest whoa moment of the episode for me. Is the island actually in Africa? Was time travel involved in this? Was Dharma just doing an experiment to see if the bear could survive in intense heat of the African desert?

But after reading other theories, I think this video may explain what happened:

This is a video that was shown at last year's Comic Con. Notice how the rabbit teleports around the room. Could Dharma have been conducting teleportation experiments and sent a polar bear to the African deserts?

We're here for Benjamin Linus!
What do they want with Ben? How do they know about him? Ben has been one step ahead of everyone else on this show since his first appearance in season 2. Has he encountered these people before? Daniel Farady was especially moved by seeing the wreckage of 815 and Charlotte is so giddy when she lands on the island, you might think she'd been there before.

Ben always has something up his sleeve. Sure I believe that he doesn't know what the smoke monster is...yeah right. But when he started spitting out all the info on Charlotte and the people on the freighter, I thought it was awesome. How does he remember all the info that he has on everyone. He remembers dates, locations, family history...everything. He officially gets the crown as King of Google to get all that info.

Oh yeah, he said he knows it b/c he has a man on their boat. Speculation online is that his mole is either Michael or Mikhail (aka Patchy). As awesome as it would be to see Mikhail again (he was Ben's information man on the island), I'm putting my money on Michael.

There were lots of other stuff in this episode. It was so packed with new info that I could spend all day analyzing it. From Daniel's comment about the light not scattering normally on the island to Miles the ghost hunter to the reveal from Frank that he was supposed to pilot 815, this episode will give Lost fans lots to talk about until next Thursday.

One more thing on Miles being able to contact the dead. I immediately wanted them to bring him to the caves so we could find out who "Adam and Eve" really are. Come on, give us an answer on this.