LOST 5.12 “Dead is Dead” pregame

Welcome to the latest edition of LOST Pregame, where you’ll find all the pre-Lost-viewing goodness you require before watching a new episode of the show. Tonight’s episode, number 5.12, is entitled “Dead is Dead,” and it focuses on one Benjamin Linus. Here’s the official logline for the episode, courtesy of ABC:

“Dead is Dead”

Written by Brian K. Vaughan & Elizabeth Sarnoff
Directed by Stephen Williams
To atone for sins of the past, Ben must attempt to summon the smoke monster in order to be judged.

Based on the previews and the guest cast list (which includes the actors playing Richard Alpert, Alex, young Danielle Rousseau, Penny Widmore, Charles Widmore, Frank Lapidus, and young Ben), here’s what we can expect to learn from what’s sure to be a mythology-heavy episode:

• Why Ben came back to the island
• How Ben was able to return to the island, after he told Locke that turning the frozen wheel would mean that he never could go back
• And perhaps most pressing for Lost romance fans… Did Ben kill Penny back in Los Angeles, before joining the Oceanic 6 on Ajira 316?

From that same info, we can infer that we probably shouldn’t expect to see much (if any) of the castaways that are stuck back in 1977 in this episode. Instead, it would appear that the action will be centered around the present day. We may also get some highly-coveted intel on just what happened when Richard Alpert took young Ben inside the Temple, via adult Ben returning there now.

Thanks to Watch With Kristin, here are a couple of brief video sneak peeks of the episode.

Finally, Entertainment Weekly‘s Doc Jensen has posted his early thoughts on “Dead is Dead,” if you enjoy that sort of thing.