Season 4, Episode 9:
The Shape of Things to Come
At the Barracks, Keamy forces Alex to disable the sonic fence, but sends a message alerting Ben that it has been breached. The group fortifies one of the houses, while Sawyer alerts the other survivors. Several unnamed survivors are killed, but Sawyer rescues Claire when her house is blown up. Keamy sends Miles to give Ben a message that he will kill Alex unless Ben surrenders. Ben tries to resist Keamy's threats, and tells him Alex is not his daughter, so Keamy kills her. Ben, shocked, goes to a hidden room in his house. After he emerges, the Smoke Monster appears and attacks Keamy and his men. The survivors run for the trees. Sawyer, Miles, Claire and Aaron head for the beach, but Locke demands that Hurley stay with him and Ben, as they need his help to find Jacob's cabin.
In flashforwards, Ben wakes up in the middle of the Sahara Desert. He overpowers two soldiers who find him there, and checks into a hotel where he has a pre-booked room. He sees a news story about the death of Nadia, Sayid's wife. He meets Sayid at the funeral, and tells him she was murdered by one of Widmore's assassins. Ben helps Sayid track the man down and kill him, and Sayid demands that he help him find more of Widmore's men to kill. Ben confronts Widmore in his hotel room, and promises to kill Penny in revenge for Alex's death.
Tropes in this episode include:
- Bait-and-Switch: When we first arrive at the Barracks, Sawyer, Locke, and Hurley appear to be having a heated discussion about something, before it's revealed they're actually playing Risk.
- Blatant Lies: In Iraq, Ben tells Sayid that he used Desmond's boat to get to Fiji and then chartered a plane. Considering that we first see him wearing a DHARMA parka in the middle of the Sahara, we know that he got off the Island by some other means.
- Bus Crash: Nadia is revealed to have been murdered by one of Widmore's assassins shortly after marrying Sayid when he got off the Island.
- Character Name Alias: Ben uses "Dean Moriarty", the name of a character from On The Road, as an alias off-Island.
- Continuity Nod: Widmore keeps a bottle of MacCutcheon's on his bedside table.
- Due to the Dead: Ben sends everyone else running for their lives after the smoke monster is summoned, but he himself stays behind to close Alex's eyes and say his farewells.
- Everyone Knows Morse: Daniel is able to convert the satellite phone into a telegraph in order to send a message to the freighter. When he asks what happened to the doctor, he claims the response was that the helicopter is coming back. However, Bernard is able understand the actual message, which claims the doctor is fine.
- Futureshadowing:
- Ray washes up on the beach with his throat slit, though when Faraday contacts the boat to ask about this, they say that he is fine. How he was killed, and why the freighter crew said this, isn't revealed until later.
- The first of Ben's flashforwards, where he wakes up in the middle of the Sahara Desert, wearing a parka with a DHARMA Initiative symbol, directly connects to his final on-Island scene of the season.
- Godzilla Threshold: Once Alex is killed, Ben realizes that all bets are off, as Widmore and Keamy have "changed the rules", and so he summons the Smoke Monster in response.
- Gut Punch: Alex's death demonstrates just how dangerously sociopathic Keamy really is. Even Ben is shocked into a near comatose silence, having never anticipated that Widmore would stoop to such depths in his quest to regain the Island.
- In-Universe Catharsis: Sayid kills Bakir on the first shot, but keeps shooting his body until he’s out of bullets and keeps pulling the trigger until being told to stop.
- Never My Fault: Widmore has the nerve to claim that Alex's death is Ben's fault, rather than his own, despite the fact that he knowingly sent a psychopath like Keamy to the Island and gave him carte blanche to kill anyone he needed to in order to capture Ben. Ben doesn't buy it for a second.
- Redshirt: No fewer than 3 unnamed survivors are killed just a few feet away from Sawyer during the mercenary assault. He himself is unscathed apart from getting blood spattered on him.
- The Reveal: Ben's conversation with Charles establishes that he has a much deeper connection to the Island than Ben had been telling Locke.
- Revenge by Proxy: Ben tells Widmore that he plans to murder Penny as revenge for Alex's death, so that Widmore will know how it feels to lose a daughter.
- Reverse Psychology: Ben masterfully uses this to trick Sayid into becoming his personal hitman, by telling him to go home and forget about it after he helps him kill Nadia's murderer. Sayid all but begs him to help him track down more of Widmore's men so he can kill them too.
- Summon Bigger Fish: Ben summons the Smoke Monster to take out Keamy and his mercenaries.
- What Year Is It?: Ben casually asks the date like a normal person when he checks into his hotel in Tunisia, but double checks that it is 2005, to the confusion of the woman behind the check-in desk.
- Would Hurt a Child: Keamy continues his all-out assault on the Barracks undaunted when Alex informs him that there is a baby there. He also executes the sixteen year old Alex in cold blood.
