Greetings, fellow Lost-o-philes. Your regular guide to WTFing through the previous night’s episode is off having her own island adventure (hopefully sans smoke monsters and khaki coveralls), so I’m filling in. Don’t worry, kids — we’ll get through this together.

I hate Ben. I don’t hate him for killing Locke or trying to kill Penny or forcing Sawyer to eat fish biscuits in a cage. I hate him for making me care. Despite all of his conniving and duplicity, as that bug-eyed bastard in the high-collared Banana Republic dress shirt dug his own sandy grave last night, just a diamond’s throw from dearly departed Nikki’s and Paolo’s plots, I couldn’t help but get a little misty about his seemingly inevitable execution at the hands of Illana. After all, as we learned in "Dr. Linus," his only crime was that he just cared too much.

Mystery #1: How did flash-sideways Alex get to LA? At this point, you’ve either accepted the coincidental connections in the castaways’ flash-sideways world or you haven’t, so the fact that Rousseau’s daughter is a student in Ben’s modern European history class was either a dope surprise or an eye-roller. But whatever you thought about the development, it gave Mr. Linus — I mean, Dr. Linus — an opportunity for off-island redemption. The irrepressible schemer hatched a Machiavellian masterplan to depose Principal Reynolds and steal his job, only to find that the nurse-shtupping administrator could assure acceptance to Yale for hard-working Alex, so following through with the coup would sink her higher education dreams. Foiled! (Also lost in the failed power play: a choice parking spot for grumbly science teacher – and Ben co-conspirator – Dr. Arzt. But hey, big guy, at least in this life you didn’t explode and end up all over Hurley’s shirt.) Ben, it turns out, does have a heart. And while his island iteration put power before Alex, his sweater vest-wearing alternate version sacrificed a promotion for her future. Island Ben is another story, though: He laid out his “I watched my daughter die” sob story to Illana, who welled up and spared him — just minutes after FLocke promised to hand him the island. He may have rejoined Illana’s crew and offered Sun some help in rehabbing her seaside shack, but do we really think he’s not going to take Sir Smokey up on that offer?

Mystery #2: Is Jack invincible? The man of science has completed his transition to man of faith. When Richard begged Jack for help in shuffling off his immortal coil, Doc Shephard was happy to light the fuse on an unstable stick of dynamite and stick around to watch it burn — because he believed Jacob had chosen him for a higher calling and won’t let him die. And he didn’t! He has a purpose. And every week, it seems more and more that that purpose is a steel-cage death match with FLocke to decide the island’s fate. (Bonus question: When Richard groused that Jacob’s touch is curse disguised as a gift, was that just sour grapes, or might Jack be in for a faith-rattling letdown? Discuss.)

Mystery #3: Where the hell is Sawyer? Flocke continues to amass his army of anti-island misfit toys for…whatever it is he’s planning, but we’ve seen neither hide nor scruffy beard hair of his first recruit since “The Substitute.” Is Sawyer still in the cave, whipping up some boar stew for Flocke’s return? Or is he off hatching a plan of his own? (Once a con man, always a con man, I say.)

Final thought: The answers are — finally — really starting to flow. Which is good, because I can stop throwing things at the TV in disgust. But just as the climactic clash between roll-reversed FLocke and Jack is ramping up, Charles Freaking Widmore has to show up in his sub. (A cool development, for sure, but how cheesy — in a Scooby-Doo-villain sort of way — was the periscope popping up out of the water?) Is the battle royale for island supremacy about to become a three-way?