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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, "Follow The Leader", saw several upheavals of power across the board as the pieces moved into place for the final showdown. Bombs, bottles, beat-downs, betrayals and a mission to murder...

This episode was different from the others this season in that it featured no flash-forwards or flashbacks, instead following the events simultaneously from a roving perspective. As such, we'll take a look at where the many different groups of survivors finished up.

1977

Who: Jack, Sayid, Kate, Sawyer, Juliet, Hurley, Miles, Jin and Pierre Chang Where: Under, in or leaving Dharma village

After weeks of inaction, Jack found what he believed to be his purpose and sprung full force back into hero mode. Taking on Faraday's mission, he convinced Eloise Hawking and Richard (but not Charles Widmore) to help him in his quest to detonate Jughead, destroy the island and negate everything that happened since the crash of 815. In doing so, Jack was revealed to be the one who originally planted the idea of Faraday's brilliance and the possibility of him altering the past in Hawking's mind.

While following Richard to the bomb, Kate announced her intention to leave in opposition to the plan. The Others initially try to stop her but the timely return of Sayid resulting in a dead Other meant Kate was free to go. Living off the land and in hiding since shooting young Ben Linus, Sayid assumed Kate's role in the group and they continued on, finally arriving at where Jughead has been buried for the last 23 years... right under the Dharma village. Did Dharma have any idea of what lay beneath when they constructed there? If they were living right above it, could the leaking Jughead be responsible for both Lara Chang's cancer and possibly even Ben's later tumour?

It was interesting to note Sayid's take on their possible attempts at changing the past; he still believed he had been successful in killing Ben, just that it had not resulted in any change. Was this a clue as to what might happen if Jack was able to change the course of events – could an alternate timeline begin after change big enough to affect everyone?

Having refused to give up Kate and their friends, Sawyer and Juliet broker a deal with the power-mad Radzinsky in order to get off-island before the incident. Quiet thinker Horace lost all face and even Pierre Change was forced to concede to the Swan station genius. Attempting to confirm what Chang was telling them, Sawyer conceded and drew a map to the Hostiles location for Radzinsky in return for safe passage for he and Juliet on the sub; could this map be the basis for the blast door map Radzinsky later spends years working on, hoping to enact his vengeance against the Others?

Unfortunately for Sawyer, his plan to get himself and his lover rescued had a wrench thrown in with the arrival of Kate, captured while attempting to sneak back into the Dharma village. With the three of them now submerged, heading off-island, will they be forced to find another way back at a later time? Could the sub make a stop at The Looking Glass station? Or will they really leave the island and make it big by betting on sporting events they know the results to, Biff Tannen-style?

Our final group saw far less screen-time but Hurley served just as an important role, if not more so, than Jack and Sawyer. Unable to answer the very questions he'd told Sawyer he was worried being asked upon arriving in the Dharma village in ‘Namaste', Hurley well and truly let the cat out of the bag in front of Pierre Chang, confirming everything Faraday had told him in the previous episode and setting off the island exodus. This led to a brief but touching moment where Chang and Miles acknowledged their relationship, followed later by the heartbreaking moment Miles realised his father sent his wife and son away in order to save them, at his own suggestion – another case of a character impacting on their own history and, especially in this case, being the cause of their own suffering.

However, seeing these events unfold left us with a difficult question. We saw Charlotte and Miles both boarding the sub to leave the island, something we know always happened. In both cases, we know they were only convinced to do so by Faraday believing he was changing the course of events with his plan to blow up Jughead. But if they always left, doesn't that mean all of this, every step of Faraday's plan, has already happened and will be doomed to fail again?

2007

Who: Locke, Ben, Sun and Richard Alpert Where: Others' beach camp

While Richard built a boat-in-a-bottle that looked like the Black Rock, Locke strode in the Others' camp with a boar across his shoulders, ready to make up for the three year of lost leadership time. Richard noted a difference in Locke and he wasn't wrong; reborn Locke is a man of decisive action, demands and smugness. He and Ben seemed to reverse places in this episode with Locke trying his hand masterfully at deceit and manipulation of Sun, Richard and the Others as a whole. He has no intention of saving the survivors stuck in 1977 and is now forcing Richard to lead them to Jacob, not to meet him but to kill him.

Richard Alpert had a few moments this episode that caused him to lose some of his all-knowing allure. He had no idea where Locke had been for the past three years since disappearing in the season four finale. Richard told Sun that he knew the 1977 survivors because he had "watched them all die", yet Locke later told her otherwise. Locke was revealed to have given Richard the information to pass on to his past self, not Jacob, even further establishing the loop these two are stuck in together. Considering how much Locke has been communing with the island of late, could we have been wrong about the importance of Richard? Has he been Locke's pawn all along?