Part 2 starts out with the revelation that Christian’s body has been lost by Oceanic; they’re really not sure where it is.  Again we’re shown both outcomes, back on the island and in the LAX terminal.  Jacob visits Hurley and tells him what to do in order to save Sayid; the group follows Hurley’s direction and they travel to the Temple.  After an encounter with a mysterious group of people at the Temple, Sayid is declared dead.  Elsewhere on the island, Ben talks with the resurrected John Locke and ultimately sees that he is in fact the Smoke Monster.  Jacob’s protectors tried to kill the impostor but are destroyed by the Smoke Monster itself.  When the mysterious Temple-dwellers realize that Jacob is dead, they start barricading the Temple in an effort to keep the Smoke Monster at bay.  They also fire off some sort of warning flare that is seen by Richard Alpert, who no doubt realizes what that means.  The episode closes as Jack and John strike up a friendship in the terminal and Smoke Monster John makes his way inland carrying an unconscious Richard.

This episode had a little more action than Part 1, and raised a few more questions, like who are these Temple-dwellers?  And Jacob only died an hour ago?  How does that fit with the time line?  We’re given a few clues (I’m sure there are many more that I missed,) as to what’s going on.  Shortly after the episode started, Sawyer makes Miles tell him what Juliet wanted to say before she died.  Miles does his “I talk to dead people” thing and tells Sawyer that Juliet says, “It worked.”  Now maybe Sawyer was still a little caught up in the moment, because he asked, “What worked?”  Duh, what do you think worked?!  My question is how does she know it worked?  She was buried under a mountain of debris.  I do have an idea as to how she knows, and I have a feeling that it may show up in a later episode.  If not, then something similar.  As Jack, Kate Jin and Hurley are working to pull an Iron beam off of the debris pile; Sawyer gets worried that he doesn’t hear Juliet’s voice.  I think that during this time she is visited by Jacob.  He could have appeared and let her know that she was successful.

We also get to see how things would have played out if the plane had landed in LAX.  As expected, Kate is forced to continue her life on the run.  Despite all of the pain and suffering along the way, I think she’s one of the characters who are better off on the island.  I also though it was interesting to see Jack and John interact in the terminal.  When John tells Jack that his condition is irreversible, Jack lets him not that nothing is irreversible.  Back in LA, John seems to be the realist while Jack has suddenly become more of a believer.  That a stark contrast from what we saw on the island after the crash.

We learned a little more about the Smoke Monster during this episode.  Evidently the Monster can’t cross over ashes (I’m not sure what kind of ashes).  Last season, as Jacob’s protectors were making their way to see him, they noticed that there was a break in the circle of ashes that surrounded his cabin.  Now that scene makes a little more sense.  It was probably put there to keep the Monster either inside or outside that circle.  Later on in the episode, One of the protectors tried using the ashes to protect himself from the Monster but is ultimately killed.  We see the ashes again at the Temple when they are setting up the barricade.

At the end of the episode, when the Temple dwellers set off the signal flare, Richard Alpert sees it, which means the survivors from 1977 are back on the same time line as the rest of the survivors.  This means that a reunion is bound to happen.  By the looks of things, I think that Smoke Monster John will probably use Richard as some sort of bargaining chip once he gets to the Temple.