"Not In Portland" Highlights and "Flashes Before Your Eyes" Spoilers

An awful lot of new information was revealed in last week's LOST episode, "Not In Portland," including the following:

• Juliet's married name is Burke (although we don't know her maiden name yet)
  
  
• Prior to the island, Juliet used science to successfully impregnate both a male field mouse and her sister, Rachel
  
  
• Juliet's ex-husband was killed by a bus not long after she told a recruiter that that's what it would take for her to be able to go. Suspiciously, the bus had an Apollo Candy advertisement on the side—the same brand of candy that was in the Swan station
  
  
• Juliet was recruited to come to the island, and Ethan was one of her recruiters
  
  
• If Juliet's statements to Jack at the end of the episode can be trusted, she has been on the island for 3 years, 2 months, and 28 days, and she has been kept there against her own will. Supposedly, Ben told Juliet in their private meeting that "he would let [her] go home"
  
  
• Tom reveals that Ben and Juliet have "got history"—which strongly implies a past relationship, possibly romantic based on one of Ben's comments in a previous episode
  
  
• Alex has her own boat which she uses to travel between the islands
  
  
• Ben is Alex's "dad"—although it is rather ambiguous whether he is her real biological father or simply her adoptive father

There were absolutely loads of Easter eggs in this episode. The most significant ones include the following:

• The name of the company who recruited Juliet was "Mittelos Bioscience." "Mittelos" is reminiscent of Hanso Foundation employee Thomas Werner Mittelwerk, and it's also an anagram for "lost time," as pointed out in this week's Official Lost Podcast.
  
  
• Aldo, the Other who was guarding the building where Karl was being held captive, was reading Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time." The specific pages he was reading discuss black holes and event horizons. This is another reference to the concept of time.
  
  
• If you play the music from the trippy brainwashing movie backwards, the words "only fools are enslaved by time and space" can be heard very clearly [backwards video with audio][audio only].
  
  
• Also in the brainwashing video is the text "God loves you as He loved Jacob." Jacob is the name of an Other with some sort of list, as mentioned by Pickett in the mid-season finale. Jacob is also the name of a Biblical character who had a son named Benjamin (one of the twelve tribes of Israel)—could this mean that Ben's father (or boss) is Jacob? Would this make Jacob "Him"?
  
  
• Juliet's sister used a Widmore pregnancy test, the same brand that Sun used.
  

As with any good episode of LOST, several questions arise. What about the womb shown by recruiter Richard Alpert to Juliet—was it the womb of someone on the island? If so, this would seem to explain why the Others needed an adept fertility specialist on the island. This also raises a question—why would they let Juliet go now? Have the Others overcome their infertility? This might be reaching, but did the Others' time with Walt teach them something that supplemented Juliet's research? Ben told Michael that they had gotten more than they had bargained for with Walt. I've heard a theory that the Others have decided to take Jack as Juliet's replacement, but Jack is a spinal surgeon, not a fertility doctor, and he apparently doesn't know much about other areas of medicine (judging by his weak knowledge of anesthesiology).

LOST fan Master Nak has an interesting theory about Sun's pregnancy, in light of last week's episode. Sun and Jin were told before the island that they couldn't have children, and supposedly it was because of Jin. However, after arriving on the island, Sun became pregnant. Is it possible that Sun might have been injected with the same solution that helped Juliet's sister become pregnant?

Now, on to spoilers! In this week's Official Lost Podcast, Damon Lindelof said that in next week's episode, "we will not be anywhere near Alcatraz island," but since Jack was left behind there will be "one more episode" involving Alcatraz. Carlton Cuse said that this would happen next week, in episode 9.

Carlton Cuse said that Nikki and Paulo "get a lot of play in upcoming episodes" and both indicated that those who have been pooh-poohing those characters will change their tunes later this season.

Damon said that in this week's episode, "some significant answers are going to come out as to what happened to Desmond after he turned that fail safe key."

The official ABC synopsis for this week's Desmond-centric episode, "Flashes Before Your Eyes," is a follows:

A suspicious and determined Hurley enlists Charlie to help him wrangle the truth out of Desmond, who has been acting strangely ever since the implosion of the hatch.

According to Hawaii resident LOST blogger Ryan Ozawa, in this week's episode we'll see Desmond in a suit walking out of Widmore Industries (presumably, one might conjecture, after seeing Charles Widmore). Desmond will cross paths with Charlie, who will be strumming his guitar on the street corner hoping to earn some pocket change. Later, Desmond will sit down and talk with a white-haired woman wearing purple [photo]. She will give Desmond a ring and he will give her money.

Penny Widmore and Charles Widmore will be seen again in Desmond's flashbacks. There's also a new character named Ms. Hawking (which is interesting considering the Stephen Hawking reference in last week's episode). This is just speculation, but I wouldn't be surprised if the woman in purple might perhaps be Ms. Hawking.

A recent Entertainment Weekly article claims that in episode 11 of this season, which will air on March 7th, we'll finally learn more about the Other's connection to the DHARMA Initiative, and in this same episode we'll see the Flame Station. Also, according to Michael Emerson in this article, "other people may try to swoop in and occupy [Ben's position]" while he's recovering from surgery. As I predicted previously, I believe this will be the white-haired woman who spoke Chinese in one of the LOST Moments.

I forgot to mention this in the podcast, but this week's episode also includes a scene in which Desmond tells someone "No matter what you do, you will die," as seen in promotional clips. This may be Claire, who Desmond tried to save from drowning in one of the LOST Moments which may possibly pop up this week. It's also possible that Desmond might have been talking to Charlie; in another LOST Moment which may air this week, Hurley tells Charlie "there's a good chance that you will die," and in a hiatus interview with Michael Emerson, the actor who plays Ben said that he suspected that Charlie might be next to die based on something he knew about upcoming episodes.