Lost's Ben: The Finale Will Make You Eat Your Soul

Michael Emerson rocks our world.

We just chatted up Lost's Ben Linus about the season-five finale, and according to Emerson, who's been a very reliable source in the past, we're in for just about the two craziest hours of television ever aired!

Find out why he says that Lost's last two hours of the year might truly be the most game-changing finale yet...

As a Lost fan yourself, how shocking did you find this season's finale? Is it more shocking or less that the season-three finale where we learned Jack and Kate got off the Island?
Ours is a show that specializes in big shock endings, but I think season five...None of the other shock endings left me wondering how the show goes on. We have two kinds of huge shocks at the end of this one. Each one alone would be enough to keep an audience eating its own soul for the whole hiatus, but with two, I don't know what you can do with that.

It's like nine months until season six! We're gonna die!
[Laughs] It's going to be a long one. I'm sorry.

It's OK, just come to Comic-Con this summer and talk to us. Now, does Ben still have a plan?
I think Ben has a lot of layers of plans, but I think we're way off the main stem of anything that works for him. I mean, Ben's doing like moment-to-moment scrambling now.

Ben's role was always all-knowing evil overlord of the Island—and pardon me for using the word evil, I know that's debatable—but these days he seems very buffeted by circumstance. Will we see a different persona for him in season six?
Ben has tended to swing like a pendulum from positions of power to positions of questionable circumstance, but I think it's possible that we could have a wholesale change in how Ben ticks next season if the circumstances of the show are as altered [as they would seem to be]. If there's a wholesale set of new problems, Ben's role may shift at the same time. Actually, I'm curious to see. If Ben has a dramatic life in season six, I'll be curious to see what the nature of it is.

Ben tried and failed to kill Penny this season. Will he try again, or is he done with that effort?
I think he has bigger fish to fry. And I think he's still digesting what happened that day.

Getting his ass kicked?
Getting his ass kicked is all in a day's work—in fact, that's a strategy of his—but there's the business of how Penny escaped his wrath. What was the trigger? What was the thing that made that not happen? And what must he be thinking about it? We shall see.

Ben has tried and succeeded to kill Locke once this year. Would he try again, or does he believe Locke is untouchable, which Locke almost seems to believe about himself?
Yes, John Locke is certainly newly expansive and bold. He seems not to have any of his old vulnerabilities. I think Ben would think twice about attacking John Locke on a purely physical plane.

Are you already eating your soul over the finale? Any theories on those two giant shocks?

Lost's two-hour season finale airs next Wednesday at 8 p.m. on ABC. See you there!

50 Cent: Is He Still Firebug Suspect?

Forget da club. 50 Cent is in the clear.

Or is he?

The hip-hopster, whose real name is Curtis Jackson, has announced on his community blog, ThisIs50.com, that he is no longer a suspect in the 2008 blaze that gutted his New York mansion and nearly killed his former girlfriend and their then-10-year-old son.

"The police department and insurance investigators ruled that there is absolutely no proof or evidence suggesting that Curtis Jackson or any affiliated parties were involved," the statement reads. "Curtis Jackson has just been cleared of all the accusations. The investigation will continue until the guilty party is found."

Not so fast, say the Long Island cops. A spokesman for the Suffolk County police says the case remains open and no one has been declared beyond suspicion.

Fiddy's ex Shaniqua Tompkins, their child, Marquise, and four others barely escaped by jumping off a roof when the suspicious blaze swept through the $1.4 million home a year ago. She claims the rap star or his associates torched the house to get her out. Tompkins and Fiddy had been embroiled in a nasty legal battle at the time.

The estranged couple have since hammered out a custody arrangement that granted him visitation rights with Marquise. However, the "In da Club" performer has filed a $20 million defamation suit against Tompkins over the fiery accusation. Separately, a Manhattan judge dismissed a $50 million suit she filed against 50 Cent seeking half his assets.