They could simply know the island well enough to know ways around it.

Or have really good ear plugs.

Or under it...

So, with Ben meeting Sayid in 1977, and therefore likely to at least know who Sawyer is, I'm forming an idea. Ben somehow becomes beholden to the Losties, to where he's basically forced, once he grows up, to play things out the way they do to keep them alive and make things happen again as they've already happened. Probably not because he wants to, more of a self preservation sort of thing. Thus his pissy attitude the whole time, not wanting to save the jerks who are blackmailing him, but having no other choice.

Just a hunch.

In that same scene there is speculation that there is a woman in the background, behind Sun.


I really want to know about the Others. Why are they considered hostile? Where did they come from? Why did Richard want them killed?

What is Smoky guarding? Where was it kept when Ben let it loose last season? Where did it come from?

Probably Claire, as she was with spectre Christian before (see above).

Richard IS an other, he doesn't want them killed. They're considered hostile because they want to kill the people in Dharma because they feel it's "their" island.

I was posting and running before.

I mean why do the Others consider it "their" island.

My personal working theory is that the island is part of Aaru (the Egyptian afterlife) and the Others are dead souls who now have eternal (after)life. Hence the island is the purview of those dead souls...the Others.

I think Smokey is the guardian of the gates or temples that souls have to pass through to reach Aaru.

There is what appears to be a woman in the shadows behind Sun just as the doors fly open and tendrils of what appears to be Smokey enter the room. As to who it is, I agree with GD that it is likely Claire.

They were there first.

Well, that too. ;)

Bleh to the afterlife theory. It's a good thought, but I will be sorely disappointed if it all turns out to be afterlife.