Our favorite Lost characters tonight showed, once again, that you can’t change the past, no matter how hard you try.

Miles caused his father to kick his mother off the island.

Jack is going to cause the incident.

Locke kept the circle of the compass being passed around for all eternity going by having Richard Alpert give it to his pre-death self as he dug a bullet out of his leg.

I had kind of psyched myself up for a very Richard-centric episode; maybe finding out more about who and what Richard actually was. Initially, I thought we hadn’t learned very much. But in retrospect (an hour’s worth), I realize we learned something very important:

Richard is eternal.

We sort of knew it, of course. He has looked exactly the same every single time we’ve seen him. But we never really knew why and theorized about it left and right and thought time travel had something to do with it. Some have suggested that Richard is smokey, and after tonight I am beginning to think that’s the answer.

Richard’s always been around and it seems he’ll always be around. He knows more about the island than anyone; he’s the only one who knows how to find Jacob. But he’s never been in charge, even though he’s seemed to be in charge more than once.

He’s the consigliere, the “advisor,” as Ben put it. Does Ben know what Richard’s true nature is?

OK, look, even if he’s not actually Smokey, he’s something akin to or related to the smoke monster.

He’s not human in the same sense we are, that’s for sure.

So, what else did tonight make me think about?

• Why does Locke need to kill Jacob? And when he says “the island” told him all this stuff, what does that mean?

• Ben needs to watch what he’s doing when it comes to Locke, no? Didn’t Smokey’s appearance as Alex pretty much tell him not to screw with Locke? (Which might negate the theory of Richard being Smokey, now that I think about it.) He certainly seemed to be indicating to Richard that he was no supporter of Locke (not that that would be a secret).

• What’s Radzinsky’s deal, really? How is he able to basically tell Horace he’s not in charge anymore? He’s more than just some crazy paranoid guy; he has some true importance in Dharma that makes Horace unable to control him.

• How badly did you feel for Juliet when Kate came onto the sub? Totally sucks for Juliet; but I think that Sawyer truly does love Juliet.

• Sayid finally learns the one person he did not kill was Ben Linus. Poor guy; he killed all those people at Ben’s urging, and the one time he doesn’t finish the job, it’s when he tries to kill Ben.

• When Jack keeps insisting on how they need to make it all as if it never happened, is he completely ignoring the fact that that would mean Kate would go to prison for the rest of her life, or has he just completely forgotten? Or does he just not give a crap anymore? (I think that’s the most likely, and I have utterly joined the anti-Jack camp.)

• If you don’t watch “coming next week” trailers, don’t read the rest of this one — OK? If you’re still reading, you watched the trailer: We see Sawyer, Juliet & Kate back on the island next week, so wtf is up with that? We know the submarine gets away from the island, because that’s how Miles & Charlotte ended up leaving.

Next week is “The Incident,” which we’ve wondered about for years, ever since we first saw “Marvin Candle” in the film in The Hatch. It’s the two-hour finale, setting us up for the final season ever of Lost.

Waaah.