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Grey's Anantomy

Welcome back to the Lost Secret Clue, where we dig deeper to find the clues and secrets you might've missed to fuel your theories! This week's episode, "Dead is Dead", peeled back the layer on two of Ben's most important relationships as well as showing us our first look at the forgiving side of the Smoke Monster. Shotguns, sob stories, subs, shootings and a Smokey spectral sighting...

There we two small, non-Ben related things in this episode worth noticing. A real point was made of showing us that Locke removed then replaced his shoes while travelling between the islands. Does he know they're not his and wants to keep them clean for their rightful owner? For that matter, couldn't Christian have waited an extra day for Locke to join Sun and Frank to relay instructions and get his dress shoes back?

The other clue worth noting was the arrangement of objects in Ben's house in Otherville – everything is in the same position as when it was abandoned to Smokey and the mercenaries a season ago, right down to the pieces on the game of Risk Hurley and Sawyer were playing. This proves, once and for all, that everything is existing in the same, original universe and nothing is being rewritten by the past.

The last few episodes have seen a swing back towards the character-centric type, so let's do the same with this look at Ben. The flashback moments to Ben's past each revealed something key to us, both about Ben and his relationship with Widmore.

In the first scene, we witness Widmore and Ben original cold introduction. Widmore is unhappy about Ben's presence but relents when Richard mentions Jacob. Young Ben has no idea how he came to be with the Others, so it appears he was telling Sun the truth about not remembering past events. Ben wants to remain with the Others but Widmore says no; he can be one of them but must stay with Dharma for now. If he can't get rid of the boy, he may as well exploit him.

Moving twelve years later, teenaged Ben and Ethan plan to kill Danielle Rousseau, a task assigned to them by Widmore, but it is here we learn of Ben's Achilles heel – he can't kill a mother and leave a child to the same fate he went through. It is this same moral dilemma he later faces when attempting to enact his revenge on Widmore by killing Penny, but the emergence of her son stops him dead in his tracks. Desmond beat him senseless and left him in the state in which we see him arrive on Ajira 316.

Deciding instead to spare both mother and child, he instils the fear of the Others we come to know so well from Rousseau and takes Alex from her seemingly mad mother. Widmore claims that the island demanded her death but he is shown to be lying when he won't carry out the order himself.

These lies and manipulations, supposedly in the name of the island, eventually catch up with Widmore and we witness him being banished from the island via sub, not the frozen wheel exit in Tunisia as he had told Locke. What was it that Widmore was up to off-island that got him in so much trouble? We've seen Ben come and go from the island – was Widmore abusing the island's special qualities for profit? Or was the fact that he had a daughter, presumably Penny, with an outsider enough to get him thrown off for good?

In the present, Ben wakes from his Sun-induced coma and looks surprised to see Locke alive, a fact he explains away by stating the difference between fact and faith. While he initially claims to have returned to the island in order to be judged for breaking the rules, John eventually brings him around to confessing that he has returned to be judged for allowing Alex to die. Ben should certainly thank Locke for putting him in the correct, repentant headspace before his confrontation with the monster or he probably wouldn't have been judge so lightly, as we saw with Mr Eko.

That's not to say Ben got off lightly; far from it. Breaking down before the appearance of his deceased daughter, Ben confessed his sin and was judged worthy in the eyes of the island. Mere seconds later, Alex had Ben pinned up against the wall promising to crush him if he were to ever hurt John in any way. Everything we know about Ben stems from his constant craving for power and control, so to be told that he must now accept a role as a humble servant will be torturous. Have we witnessed a foreshadowing of Ben's eventual demise?

The hieroglyphs throughout the chamber underneath the Temple were interesting enough, mostly made up of excerpts from the famous Book of the Dead, but it was the large hieroglyphic mural that stood out the most. It depicted a dog-headed god, most likely Anubis, on one knee fighting what looked to be a representation of the monster. Upon closer examination, some interesting clues are offered up. The god appears to be Anubis, the god of the afterlife and potential candidate for the identity of the statue, but with an open, out-stretched palm, the symbol meaning to summon or invoke. To the upper-left of the monster appears to be the Eye of Horus, later know as the Eye of Ra.

However, possibly the most intriguing part of the mural is the inclusion of what looked to be non-Egyptian symbols from the world of alchemy. One of the markings looks surprisingly like the symbol for antimony, a tin-based metalloid which is increasingly being used for construction in electromagnetic semi-conductors. The religious iconography is to the left, behind the monster; could the ancient equation for summoning be what is written behind Anubis?

Which brings us to our final burning question – just what does lay in the shadow of the statue, the puzzling line threatened by Ilana before knocking Frank out cold? Could it be the destroyed remnants of the giant statue we've seen before, or will it turn out to be something far more sinister?