Source: BuddyTV
Beware, reading any further will result in major spoiling of next weeks all new episode of LOST!The February 14th Episode of LOST is titled 'Flashes Before Your Eyes' and is a big 'ol Valentine card for Desmond fans as it is entirely, 100% Desmond centric. The plot goes something like this:

After Desmond breaks from Hurley, Sayid, and Locke, and runs over a mile to the beach to save Claire from drowning, some serious questions are raised about his apparent ability to see into the future. Convinced that the former hatch hermit has developed super powers post-swan-implosion, Hurley teams with Charlie to get to the bottom of it. Desmond, on the other hand, wants nothing to do with it.

The insanely cool aspect of this LOST episode is the way it handles its flashback. For some time, the mechanism of flashback in LOST has been a little mysterious in one regard: are the flashbacks arbitrarily inserted clips, or are they memories that that characters are having at that particular moment.

Word from sources who shall remain nameless say to look for a very different flashback in 'Flashes Before Your Eyes'. A surreal, non-linear one where the events of what would be the flashbacks future impact the present of the flashbacks. According to a trusted source, we will be left wondering if Desmond is truly having flashbacks, or if we are experiencing fractured memories from a mind broken by the hatch explosion experiment, by the end of the episode this should be clear, though.

Clearing it up may be an appearance by Penny Widmore. Her presence in the episode was referenced by Carlton Cuse in a recent EW article as bringing a bit of closure to whether Desmond is seeing into the future or not.

On the theory side of things, quick thinking LOST fans have begun to form the theory following 'Not In Portland's' numerous time and black hole references that the island may be operating on a time-loop, and that Desmond's experience in the hatch may have thrown him outside of that loop long enough for him to see a complete revolution of that cycle 'flash before his eyes'.

Yes!!!!!! I have long said and argued that the place was at one time ( if not still ) a military operation.  1. Sayid - Miltary Officer 2. Kates Dad - Military  3 . Kelvin  - Military   4. Desmond  - Military 4. Locke desired to be in the military.

My stance has always been that it's a military experiment being administered as some sort of game/test thing.  Like you do rats in a maze or whatever. That  our friends were manipulated onto that flight - at least the majority of them.  Now what I've never thought is that it's a publically operated operation. Meaning it's a group of military outside of the regualr. Like, moreso that CIA or others. More like the group on SG1 - Sbootch knows what I'm talking about on that one.  They operate for our country but use unethical means for their research and experiments. Of course scientists are involved.  But I also think there were people there even before that was ever established.

Jack got tricked onto it by Christian, AnaL by Christian, Claire by that 'physic', Eko, etc., Locke ( maybe fakely paralyzed by his dad), Sayid, Sawyer, Boone by Shannon, Michael because of Walt, but  Rose and Bernard? Charlie by his brother or someone else. Hurley, the numbers. Sun and Jin by her father. Kate, the marshal.