Lost - "Jughead"

Another great episode of Lost tonight!  We're still slowly getting some answers, and tonight I think they gave us one of the biggest reveals of the entire series.  They're also playing things smart, a lot smarter than Heroes did at the time I stopped watching.  The writers don't seem to feel the need to advance every single storyline for every single character in each and every episode.  As I've seen, trying to do that is a sure way to keep any of the storylines from going terribly far in a given week, and without any progress, the show stagnates.  Lost isn't doing that. And now, on to the spoilers.... Tonight we only concentrated on two separate storylines.  First was Desmond's search for Daniel's mother.  At the end of last week's episode, Desmond woke with a sudden memory of Daniel coming to him at the hatch's back door.  Tonight we got a quick flashback to the birth of Desmond and Penny's son while they were moored at some tropical island.  From what we see later, this must have happened fairly soon after the escape from the island, I'd guess around nine months.  And they named the boy Charlie, yet another sign of how deeply Desmond's time on the island affected him. After the flashback, we find Desmond in the present, telling his son about the magical island of Great Britain, and the most important place there called Scotland.  He promises Penny he will only take one day to to find Daniel's mother, then he's done with everything.  Unfortunately, that proved harder to do than he thought.  Oxford had no record of Daniel ever teaching or researching there.  When Desmond broke into Daniel's old lab, he finds nothing but dusty, old equipment and a picture of Daniel with a woman.  Daniel's old assistant, the man who had to clean up after the experiments and hide the real reason for Daniel's work.  He tells Desmond it's not surprising Oxford would deny Daniel's existence after "what he did to that poor girl." Desmond's next lead takes him to find Theresa Spencer, who I assume was the woman in the picture.  He is greeted at the door by Theresa's sister Abigail, who lets him in immediately upon mention of Daniel's name.  Desmond is surprised to find Theresa apparently in some kind of coma, though Abigail says she is "away."  From their description of her episodes where she is conscious but seems to think it's earlier in her life, it sounds like Theresa has become unstuck in time the way Minkowski on the freighter, Daniel, and Desmond himself had.  Daniel's experiments must have done that.  Daniel himself abandoned her to go to America afterwards, leaving her to be cared for by his benefactor, one Mr. Widmore. Naturally, Desmond's next stop has to be with Widmore himself.  He demands to know the location of Daniel's mother, and flat out refuses to answer any questions.  Widmore gives up the address in Los Angeles surprisingly easily, and asks Desmond to deliver his message, then take Penny back to wherever they've been hiding.  He says this is a very dangerous business, one going back many, many years, and he doesn't want her in danger. Desmond returns to Penny and tries to lie to her about finding any information, then tries to convice her he'll drop the issue entirely.  She knows him too well, however, and announces that she and little Charlie will accompany him to Los Angeles. Meanwhile, back on the island... We find out the people who attacted the survivors are, in fact, others.  When being interrogated after Locke rescues Saywer and Juliet, one gives the other orders in Latin.  Juliet also speaks Latin, as do all of the Others.  She proceeds to ask if Richard is at their camp, and one starts to tell them how to get there.  The other kills him immediately and runs off in the jungle.  Locke aims but can't shoot him, because "He's one of my people." Daniel, Charlotte, and Miles were also captured by the Others, and are taken before Richard.  Daniel convinces him they're on the island to recover the hydrogen bomb the US military brought in to test several months before.  Upon Daniel's admission he's in love with Charlotte and wouldn't do anything to harm her, Richard decides to trust him to go render the bomb inert.  Richard also makes a point of saying he was forced to kill the soldiers who came to perform the nuclear test after trying to get them to leave peacefully.  He says he has a superior he has to answer to. The woman who originally captured him takes Daniel off to the bomb test site, and he can't stop staring at her, saying she reminded him of someone he used to know.  From what I could tell, she looked a lot like Abigail Spencer, giving Daniel yet another connection to the island.  He approaches the bomb, but almost immediately backs away when he sees the casing is leaking.  He tells the woman that they just need to seal the leak with lead and bury the whole bomb in concrete, and they'll be safe.  He knows this is true, because the island is still there in fifty years. While this is going on, Locke has gone down to talk to Richard.  When he strides into the Others' camp, the man who escaped from him pulls a rifle and orders him to stop, but Richard tells him to put the gun down when Locke says Jacob sent him.  Richard calls the man by name: Widmore!  Charles Widmore was one of the Others in 1954!  In Locke's subsequent conversation, he gives Richard the compass, but has trouble convincing him that he's been selected as the new leader of the Others.  He gives Richard his birthday and place, and invites him to come see for himself.  As we know, Richard was present for Locke's birth.  Unfortunately, the next flash comes before Locke can find out how to get off the island. After the flash, Charlotte's symptoms got a lot worse, and she collapsed.  The Others' camp is gone, as is the bomb, which we can only assume was removed and buried in concrete. Wow!  We finally start to see just what Widmore's obession with the island is all about.  He was an other, quite probably he was born there.  What happened in the intervening fifty years, and how did he wind up back in the rest of the world?  I suspect that at some point, he held a position similar to Ben's, and was forced to move the island in a similar fashion.  Because of this, he's not allowed back on the island, just as Ben said he wouldn't be when he did it.  I have to wonder who is leading the Others back in 1954, well before Ben's time. In the coming week, I suspect Desmond is going to find himself tangled up with the Oceanic Six once again, perhaps even dragged back to the island.  He's headed to Los Angeles to find Daniel's mother, who I suspect is Mrs. Hawking, and the Six are gathered there as well.  We'll have to see how things progress next week. Until then, I'll see you in another life, brother.