Episode 2:21 "?" by SRG

I love how inter- related Lost and Alias have been the last couple weeks, this episode could have totally been called "I See Dead People" too. Let's get right to it!

I Dream of Yemi
Seems like Eko's brother is in everyone's dreams! We start out with Eko getting a sort of psychic dream where he sees Ana shot and dying telling him to help John (this is before anyone knew she was dead btw), followed by Yemi in the hatch telling Eko to help John find the question mark and bring his axe. Upon waking up he immediately sets out to find John and meets up with Sawyer, Jack and Kate on their way back to the hatch. A shot Michael bursts out of the hatch claiming when he woke up that Henry had a gun and shot Ana, Libby and himself. Shocked, everyone rushes into the hatch to find Ana dead. They assume Libby is as well until she suddenly spits up blood (anyone else reminded of Kill Bill?), which freaks out Michael. Eko volunteers to go after Henry and asks John to come because of his tracking experience.

While in the jungle Eko asks John about the question mark, head butts him for "being difficult" and finally gets John to relay the story of the "?" diagram he saw on the hatch door. Eko believes the drawing to be a map and they end up following it back to the crashed plane Yemi died in. They make camp for the night and John dreams he's Eko being lead up the cliffside by Yemi to something at the top. When John awakes Eko can tell he had a prophetic dream which John describes, so Eko promptly climbs his way to the top of the cliff. At first he sees nothing, then looks down at John and realizes a sort of crop circle "?" is etched into the ground with the plane covering the bottom. After pushing the plane out of the way and digging, the two find the entrance to another hatch, "Station 5: The Pearl", a monitoring facility for the other hatches. The Pearl's orientation video reveals the work in the other hatches to be nothing more than a psychological experiment, a truth that breaks John's faith in the Island, but increases Eko's. From the flashbacks we learn of Eko's time pretending to be a priest and how he was assigned to investigate a supposed "miracle" of a girl coming back to life. I think he started to believe the miracle was true until the girl's father dismissed it as mistaken hypothermia and doctor negligence. It wasn't until the girl found Eko at the airport before Oceanic flight 815 took off and told him about a message she had for him from Yemi that he started to find his faith. Knowing the dreams he and John had led them to The Pearl increased his sense of purpose for being there and thinking there is a reason for all of it that will eventually be revealed.

Meanwhile Back At The Hatch...
Jack knows he can't save Libby and puts Sawyer on the spot about giving up the heroine Mary dolls to make her comfortable, thus revealing where he's also storing the guns. Kate goes with him and discovers that Sawyer has been hiding everything under his shelter the entire time. On their way out they run into Hurley who asks if they've seen Libby...Kate has to break the harsh news about the shooting. Jack injects Libby with the heroine to ease her pain and she suddenly wakes up looking worried. She manages to say "Michael", to which Jack and Hurley assure her Michael's ok. This only makes her more frantic and she dies with her eyes and mouth open in a frightful panic. The episode closes on a slow zoom-in on Michael, looking very evil and creepy.

Interesting Tidbits
Anyone else recognize the father of the "miracle" girl? Yup, that was Claire's psychic who told her she must raise her baby and made her take flight 815. With her flashback story he seemed pretty legit, but he told Eko that he made his living as a fraud, that he dug up dirt on people and used it to exploit them. So how did he know Claire taking flight 815 would force her to raise her baby because of the crash?

"Rats in a maze with no cheese", I thought that was a great quote from John after he learned the Dharma Initiative was nothing more than a mind game. Anyone else check out www.sublymonal.com?

Something to ponder...we saw that The Pearl had monitoring videos of The Swan's hatch, does that mean there's video evidence of Michael shooting Ana and Libby? Also, if the monitoring station is Station 5, what is Station 6?

Looks like next week Michael manages to convince everyone they can take on The Others and rescue Walt and the bearded crazy guy is back. We still don't know if Michael is brainwashed or just fullfilling some sort of deal...now I'm thinking the latter, but that just makes me more angry with him. I feel weird saying this since I hated her in the beginning, but I'm actually going to miss Ana a little bit, and I definitely feel sorry for Hurley that he lost Libby. Will he ever find out she was in the same mental hospital as him? Guess we'll have to wait and see!