'Lost': Five questions you should be asking before going 'Across the Sea'

We're 24 hours away from a much-anticipated episode of "Lost." Of course, at this point, just about every episode of the show is anticipated, what with this being the antepenultimate edition and all before the show goes dark. As I mentioned in my last post featuring Tuesday night's chat, the identity of the character(s) around which this episode is considered off-limits until an hour before game time, at which point we will discuss things in the chat itself. So please, refrain from talking about specific identities when engaging in the comments below. If you mention him/her/them, I'll delete the comment. We good? Good.

With that in mind, here are five questions that I think we should be asking in anticipation of this week's episode. I have no clue about the specific content of "Across the Sea," nor do I have any spoilerish information about it to which these five questions will be alluding. If you're worried that these five questions might give away the topic of this week's episode, by all means, stop right now. I won't be offended. I only know because someone on my Facebook thread decided it would be AWESOME to announce it a few months ago after news of it came out. Along with the titles of the final two episodes. That was a truly EPIC FAIL day for social media. Anyways, I understand if you want to stop now.

In fact, I'll give you a few more inches of space, lest your eyes wander to the bottom of the page accidentally.

See? I'm thoughtful like that.

I think we're good at this point.

Yup, we're good. Asking away now...

1) Who was the very smart man that figured out to look for where the Island will be, not where it is?
A few weeks back, I hosted a double-feature of "White Rabbit"/"316" during the off-week, and I didn't even address this little bit of info from Eloise Hawking. We'd long assumed it was either Daniel Faraday, Pierre Chang, or even one of the Degroots. But what if a non-scientific, albeit rather brilliant, mind planted the seed into someone else's head in order to either help find a loophole or accelerate the progress of the Island's social experiment?

2) Did Christian Shephard ever get a visit from The Man in Black, Jacob, or both?
Looking back at Christian's pre-Island actions in the Island-verse, you can make a case that he alternately prepared certain players for the Island or tried to steer certain players away from their seemingly inevitable fate. In the sideways world, he made sure Claire got a music box with a song that harkened back to the Island timeline. What did he know about the events to come, and at what point did he start to know it? His appearances pre- and post-death (in addition to the mysterious location of his corpse in two timelines) bespeaks levels of involvement not yet revealed on the show.

3) Why did Charles Widmore start having nightmares?
In "The Shape of Things to Come," Widmore tells Ben that he only started sleeping with a bottle of MacCutcheon whiskey "when the nightmares started." The show never delved further into the specific nature of these nightmares, but personally, I'm rather curious about why they started in the first place. Simple guilt? Seems a bit too easy. In a universe in which influences from the Island extend far beyond mere time and space, I can see a particular source for those vivid, horrid images popping into Charles' head.

4) Why does The Man in Black know so much about the Island's wells?
It's easy to point to any knowledge that Jacob and The Man in Black have about the Island as accumulated information gleaned over the course of a few millennia puttering about over the large, yet limited, landscape. But we still don't know the specific circumstances around the arrival of these two men to the Island (assuming they arrived at all, and weren't merely part of the Island from Day One). With the Island ideally appreciated, not exploited, did the circumstances around the status of these two Island titans start around the time a certain donkey wheel was installed, perhaps by The Man in Black himself?

5) Which came first: the chicken or the Des?
I've used the phrase "it's turtles all the way down" a lot during my Season 6 analysis. But that, I mean that you can argue any point you like almost ad infinitum and come out with something plausible, if potentially incorrect. So, it's a chicken/egg dichotomy. The question at hand: Was Desmond's involvement in the Island saga planned or accidental? If he was the key to Eloise and Charles' long-term plans (born from Daniel's diary, implemented via around-the-world race), then why pick the man whose love for Charles' daughter could be their potential undoing? Is their relationship in and of itself a course correction, something that will always undo the evil that the two former leaders of The Others have in mind? Given all the "Wizard of Oz" references on this show, I'm amazed at how much of this show still revolves around a once cowardly (and Scottish) lion.

Photo credit: ABC