Benjamin Linus is such a great character. Even young Ben back in 1977 can steal the show, can’t he? Sending a burning Dharma van into a house just to get Sayid out of jail. Brilliant. Okay, we don’t know if it was Ben that did it but I really want to give that 12-year-old kid some credit. I mean the most evil, callus guy on the show has to get a start somewhere. It might as well be burning vans and breaking people out of jail.
So the real question is this: Is young Ben Linus dead? Faraday and other characters have already told us that the future can’t be changed. So bib Ben will be around in the future. But that doesn’t mean he’s not dead. Characters that die on the island have a strange way of coming back to life. I wouldn’t be surprised if young Ben is dead that the Others take his body and bring him back to life. And there’s always a chance that whatever the Others do to young Ben could cause to be more than human. Someone like, say, Richard Alpert. I say this because when Ben spoke to Charles Widmore in his home back in season 3(?) Widmore told Ben that he knew what he was – not who he was.
And would anyone really be surprised if Ben turned out to be a little more than human? He seems to have an uncanny way to get inside the heads of the other characters. I like how the flashbacks showed how Ben used, abused, and manipulated Sayid -- the master torturer and gainer of information in the real world -- into killing Widmore’s men for him then coming back to Los Angeles. Ben’s always been a puppet master but this episode really brought out how he convinced Sayid that he’s nothing more than a killer. Way to go Ben! LOST would be nothing without you!