Over the past three seasons, viewers have been subjected to questions concerning a research organization known as the DHARMA Initiative and with every passing episode, the mystery behind DHARMA has remained just that, a mystery. There are things we know concerning their efforts, experiments, and position with the Island’s original dwellers, but further understanding their research or fully understanding what happened to the Initiative after the Purge remain to be seen.

Last week, we discovered that three years after the Oceanic 6 were rescued from the Island, Sawyer is now Head of Security for the DHARMA Initiative, Jin is routinely scouting the Island in hopes of finding Locke or the Oceanic 6, and Juliet has “retired” from medicine to be an auto-mechanic. How this fits into the development of DHARMA is unknown, but it will be interesting to see if their involvement plays a role in the upcoming war both Ben and Charles Widmore seem to warn is approaching. That Sawyer is now Head of Security after appearing to be a security threat by Horace and the rest of DHARMA three years prior might seem ironic, it might not match wits with the irony of Juliet delivering a newborn on the Island after years of watching babies and their mothers die in the attempt.

The audience was introduced to Amy, a member of DHARMA who found herself on the wrong end of a dispute between herself and The Others (or Hostiles as DHARMA likes to call them). Sawyer, Juliet and their merrymen stumble onto the scene after hearing gun shots unfold. Upon their investigation and subsequent killing of the two Others, Amy leads the troop to camp eventually fooling them into walking through the high pitch sonic fence that have previously kept the Black Smoke away. Horace, also a member of DHARMA and a familiar face to fans, interrogates Sawyer to discover who they are and what they were doing on the Island. It is sometime after this point that we learn that Horace has planned to send Sawyer and his gang on a submarine away from the Island.

Though, Sawyer buys his team two weeks to wait for Locke’s return, there remains confusion over what made two weeks turn into three years. It may also be important to note that there appears to be no sign of Daniel Faraday or Miles in 1977 – the three years since meeting Amy and Horace. It is probably likely that those two, perhaps feeling no real connection to the Losties, decided that returning to a mid-1970’s world was better than spending time on the Island. What makes Sawyer, Juliet, and Jin convinced that staying is a good thing is unclear.

In the case of Juliet, there is the likelihood that a budding relationship with Sawyer helped convince her that the Island should be her new home despite previous tireless efforts to return to the outside world. For Sawyer, he has made it known times before that there is nothing waiting for him at home and the Island provided mostly everything he needs. Jin, on the other hand, has only a wife and daughter he wishes to see, neither of whom are in his life in 1974. There is no telling why Sawyer never considered the possibility of returning home, finding a younger Locke, and telling him what to do in 2005, but perhaps we are to believe that either the thought never crossed his mind or that he did not think it was worth the risk of leaving the Island.

The remaining mysteries and questions raised in this episode come from Faraday and Amy’s child. On the night that Horace tells Sawyer (LaFleur) that a submarine will take them off the Island, we see a distressed Faraday spotting a younger Charlotte running through the grass. This is where Lost can convince fans that the time travel element of the story will hold water once we watch the series finale in May 2010. There is a link somehow between Faraday and the Island’s past. We still don’t know how Faraday came to be around during the DHARMA discovery of the donkey wheel, and there’s still the fact that Charlotte claims that Daniel, at his current age, presented himself to her on the Island when she was a child. Does this now happen with Faraday in 1974 and is it possible that whatever it might be that explains this event, that it may help explain why Faraday became emotional upon hearing the news of Flight 815 crashing?

Finally, Amy gave birth to a baby boy in 1977. The father is Horace, but the name of the child was not revealed to the audience. My feeling is that the baby is a well-known Lost character. Which character exactly is up in the air, but for the writers to withhold the name, it makes me wonder if revealing that name will act as a minor game changer to the series.

Lost returns with a new episode in two weeks. This Wednesday you can watch a repeat of “LaFleur” at 9 PM EST.