‘Lost’ Season 6 Episode 8 ‘Dr. Linus’ focuses on the wicked and very sad Ben Linus, former leader of the Others, now in fear for his life in one time line and living a pathetic life of a High School history teacher in another.
Spoilers surely follow.
In the Island Does Not Get Blown Up timeline, Linus is running for his life from the Temple and the carnage left by the Not John Locke creature. Linus runs into the party of escapees, including Sun, Miles, Frank, and Ilana, the mysterious guardian of the candidates for protector of the Island. Linus soon learns that he has jumped from the frying pan into the stove top when Miles, who has communion with the dead, reveals that Linus killed Jacob, the former protector.
Ilana does not take this well. She overpowers Linus, chains him up, hands him a makeshift shovel, and tells him to start digging his own grave.
Meanwhile, in the Island Gets Blown Up timeline, Linus is nonplussed to be placed on detention supervision duty by the principle of his school. This is just one more insult in what has shaped up for Linus to be a pretty humdrum, miserable life. The only bright spot is Alex, his adopted daughter in the other timeline, his brightest student in this one.
It is Alex that provides Linus the key to Linus perhaps doing something significant with his life besides trying to drum into skulls for of mush the facts of the life of Napoleon. It seems that Alex overheard the principle galloping the school nurse in the school clinic. Linus suborns the science teacher to hack into the teacher’s emails and gets physical evidence of the affair.
It turns out that blackmail is a gun with only one bullet. The principle, evil cool customer that he is, informs Linus that if he goes down, so does Alex’s hopes of getting into Yale. But there is a compromise struck. The principle maintains his job, Linus is taken off detention duty, and Alex gets a glowing letter of recommendation.
Back in the Island Does Not Get Blown Up timeline, Linus informes Ilana how much he really regrets having killed Jacob, remembering how he felt when the Alex of this timeline had been killed before his eyes because of his blundering. Perhaps realizing that the best revenge is leaving Linus alive, Ilana releases him.
Meanwhile Richard appears and diverts Jack and Hurley away from going back to the Temple, and instead directs them to the beach, where the group including Linus is trying to set up some kind of livable camp. They are welcome most warmly.
Off shore, without a fuss, a periscope appears. It is attached to a submarine commanded by none other than the nefarious Charles Widmore, who no doubt means everyone on the Island harm.
Source: Lost, Dr. Linus, TV.Rage
