FEW MORE THOUGHTS ON DEAD IS DEAD

I've been thinking about Illana's question to Frank Lapidus. A lot. It's begun to consume me. And then I visited Mistaking Coincidence for Fate and read his take on Illana, had a that's what I was thinking moment and pondered even more.

"What lies in the shadow of the statue?"

In LaFleur we got to see the back of the statue when Sawyer, Juliet, Miles and Jin were flashing back and forth through time. Our glimpse was very brief but screencaps were posted on Dark UFO, Lost Media's Photo Gallery and everywhere else on the LOST internet.

But it was where they were standing when they saw the statue that interests me. Sawyer, Juliet, Miles and Jin were at the temple wall. The same place where Montand lost his arm and the very same place where Richard took an injured young Ben to be healed.Locke took Ben to face his judgement beneath this mysterious place.

Ben explained that the Others built the wall to keep the temple hidden.

"We built the wall to keep people like you out. The temple is located a about a half a mile from here" Or something close to that.

In any religion or faith, the temple is a haven, an important place to go for worship and, in times of need, shelter. It is where we go when we seek spiritual guidance and the strength to cope with hardship. It is where Ben told Richard to take their people, the only place on the island he knew where they would be safe. It was where he had sent Danielle, Karl and Alex.

I think Illana is looking for the temple. And, like Jay, I think she brought reinforcements in the form of other passengers and whatever is in that cargo crate.

However, I'm still trying to figure out who she is working for. At one time I entertained the thought that Ben had hired her to bring Sayid to Guam on the simple proof that only those in the Lamp Post knew which flight provided the best opportunity to get back to the island. Oh yeah, and the fact that I believed that only Ben knew that it was Sayid who killed Avelino in the Seychelles. There are some good arguments that it's Widmore who hired her, but how would he know which flight the O6 were planning to take? Which brings me to Eloise Hawking.

We are aware that she knows Whidmore from their time on the island. The very nature of their relationship is fuzzy at best, and we have been given hints here and there that they may have been a team at one point, leading the Others as a couple. However, there is the small matter of the births of Daniel Faraday and Penny Widmore. We now know that Charles frequently left the island and had a child with a woman on the outside. What we don't know is how Ellie came to be off the island and working in the Lamp Post.

Something tells me that she and Widmore do not have as close a relationship as they once enjoyed. Okay, that's blatantly obvious, but what if Ellie is also planning a return to the island? Aside from the O6 and Ben, I think she's the only other person who knew that Ajira 316 was their best chance of getting back to the island.

It's not perfect, but there it is. Let me know what you think.