You win some; you lose some.
Lost’s recipe for success includes ever-changing allegiances, malleable definitions of “good” and “evil” and a never-quite-resolved list of mysteries.  And like the scales of the astrological sign Libra, the confusion and resolution sides always seem to balance each other out. What we gain in clarity we often lose in understanding.

True to this formula, last night’s episode — the seventh of the season — served up a lot of resolution, but it also delivered a quid pro quo of new unresolved perplexities.

Namely:

Why did Ben assassinate his lord and savior, John Locke?
Could Charles Widmore actually be the good guy in all of this?
Just who is this Eloise Hawking, and why does she seem to move Ben to murder?
Did the Island’s magical powers reincarnate John Locke?
Who is this “new guy” that joined our old favorites on the flight to Guam?
Egads, could there really be more Other Others on the Island?
What’s so wonderful about Tunisia?

We can’t answer all of the above, but let’s start with the  end of John Locke, to whom this episode was dedicated (it was titled “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham”). Just as we’d come to accept the fact that Locke had committed suicide, we learn that he was actually murdered. By Ben.

WTF?

In the lead-up to Locke’s death, we’re subjected to what felt like an eternity of John standing on a desk, an orange, industrial-grade electrical cord wrapped around his neck, arguing with Ben, who pleads with John not go through with it.

What makes this development most perplexing is that we’d come to believe in John Locke as the Christ-hero of the show; a man willing to martyr himself in order to save others (and The Others, too). And it’s by way of Ben’s calm, cool insistence that we — and he, and pretty much everyone else (save the jealous, cranky Jack) — believe that John is The One. Even Jack eventually comes around. Why? It can all be traced back to Ben.

Along comes Eloise Hawking, whose existence is apparently enough to move Ben to kill his own, personal Jesus.

It’s at Locke’s mere mention of Eloise that Ben grabs the aforementioned orange cord, wraps it around John’s neck, and coolly waits for him to breathe his last gasp.

There is much speculation as to who this Eloise character is. Remember that hot, Rambo-outfitted blonde chick who threatens to kill Daniel Faraday back in episode three? Well, it seems her name is Elly (which could be short for Eloise, right?). Also, she seems to be allied with Charles Widmore.

Ah, Widmore. Clearly J.J. Abrams and the Gang want us to like him a little. He, too, makes a convincing case of why Locke is the redeemer of the Island. And, in what is almost always a surefire trick of TV to get the audience on the good side of a character, Widmore makes us laugh — if only briefly.

We learn it’s Widmore who’s responsible for the Jeremy Bentham alias. As he provides a new identity and passport to a confused Locke, explaining that this new name is a reference to an old English philosopher, he says: “Your parents had a sense of humor when they named you. Why can’t I?”

Oh, and Widmore’s the guy who sets John globetrotting around to convince the Oceanic Six to go back. Need a vacation? Don’t worry, Lost can take you around the world in under 18 minutes. We visit Sayid in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. We are whisked up to New York City to watch John have a brief conversation with Walt that essentially amounts to:

Locke: “Hey dude, what’s up?”
Walt: “Chillin’. How’s my dad?
Locke: (Pause) “I think he’s relaxing on a big boat somewhere.”
Walt: “Oh, cool.”
Locke: “Peace.”
Walt: “Peace.”

Um, OK. Then it’s off to LA, where a truly Lost-ian coincidence brings an almost-shot-and-car-accident-killed John to Jack’s hospital. Jack’s welcome was not a warm one. Ditto Kate, who disses John with a “gee, you’ve really evolved, huh?” comment. Asylum-dwelling, sphinx-doodling Hurley’s a no-go, too, first dismissing Locke as a hallucination, but then just plain dismissing him.

Locke, dejected and feeling like a failure, resigns himself to suicide. He pens that heart-wrenchingly concise suicide note addressed to Jack, grabs his self-immolating equipment and…we’re back where this recap began.

Of all the episodes this season, this one was the most satisfying from a storyline perspective. The pace was quick, it didn’t get too caught up in dropping arcane, red-herring numbers and figures, and it brought us a staggering climax to the Locke story that’s been slow-brewing all season. His death — and subsequent rebirth — brought a whole new batch of painfully unresolved questions. And it hurts so good.