You know what I don’t understand? Who are these Temple Others? The show has made some attempts at showing continuity between the well-groomed, hut-dwelling Ben and Juliet era and the Temple one — Cindy, Aldo — but it doesn’t feel like they’re the same folks. Why wasn’t Richard in the Temple with them? When did Dogen and his precious baseball arrive? Did he immediately ascend to power after Ben and Locke left? When did Jacob start directly recruiting for the island, instead of sending Richard and others out in business suits to pretend like the island was doing important research and drugging people on submarines? I don’t understand, and so it makes it hard to care.
In Sundown, we see the forces of evil corralling a posse through lies and deception, classic devil temptation that promises all you ever wanted and more. Sawyer and Claire have already fallen for it, and now Sayid has, too. After a showdown with Dogen, Sayid tried to kill Smokey-Locke, fails, and believes Locke’s Nadia temptations. Sayid comes back to the temple, warning everyone that they’ll be dead unless they leave the Temple. The hippies run around telling everyone that the temple is the only place they’re safe, but Sayid tells them they can leave the island forever if they go. They all go.
Kate, who now has Claire out to get her, might have joined the bad side, accidentally. Who’s left on the good side? Few temple dwellers, since their all dead. It’s mainly the Losties, and the woman who played Mouse in The Namesake. We haven’t seen Jack or Hurley, because they’re still feeling sorry for themselves over at the Lighthouse. Whatever’s happening on the island, it bears no real connection to the Hatch, the Others, the Looking Glass, or any of the other challenges we’ve seen the Losties overcome in the past.
In the meanwhile, alterna-Sayid has some family problems. Not only did he push Nadia to marry his brother — and she just did it? She just went ahead and married him even though she loved Sayid? That’s not the Nadia we knew! — his brother has some money problems with the guy who parachuted in with Naomi a couple of seasons ago. Sayid kills them.
So this sets up another possibility for the show going forward: For some characters, the difference between the plane crashing and landing will be the difference between their goodness or their badness taking over. Sayid kills in LA out of love for his brother. He kills on the island out of revenge and for his ever-present desire to see Nadia. Except remember in Season 1, when he fell in love with Shannon, and we didn’t hear that much about Nadia? Yeah. Continuity is not the show’s strongest suit.
