Welcome to IGN's new weekly feature, "Lost Mysteries." Each week we take a look at one mystery from Lost and go over what we've learned to date, what we still don't know, and our theories on what it all may mean.

This week we're taking a look at Eloise Hawking – a character we've only met a few times, but who is quickly becoming very important due to her vast knowledge regarding the show's overall mythology.

SPOILER WARNING: Details from the most recent Lost episode, "316," are discussed, so if you haven't seen it yet consider yourself warned. Also, potential spoilers for upcoming episodes are discussed, if any of Our Theories are correct.

We first met Hawking in the Season 3, Desmond-centric episode, "Flashes Before Your Eyes" – an installment that is very pivotal in the series, as it was the first known instance of any sort of time travel by one of the main characters. When Desmond becomes unstuck in time, he finds himself reliving his days with Penny, before he ended up on the island. Wanting to rectify his past mistakes and marry Penny, he goes to buy her a ring – only for the shopkeeper, Ms. Hawking to tell him this will not happen.

Ms. Hawking suddenly reveals herself as someone with direct knowledge about Desmond and about the way the island (and indeed the entire world) works. She tells Desmond he must end up on the island, pushing the button in the hatch, or "every single one of us is dead." And she gives Desmond a demonstration about fate by pointing out a man on the street moments before scaffolding falls and kills him. Her following speech about how that man was destined to die, and nothing could prevent it -- if he'd been warned about the scaffolding something else would have killed him soon after – echoes statements Lost producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse have made regarding time travel on this series.

We wouldn't directly see Hawking for quite awhile after that, but she did make a tantalizing cameo in another Season 3 episode, "Catch-22" - glimpsed in a photo with Brother Campbell, the Monk who briefly employed Desmond, and who would end up introducing Desmond to Penny.

Season 5 however has brought Eloise Hawking back in a big way. By the end of the second episode, "The Lie," it was revealed that Ben was working with Hawking, or actually, working for her, in his quest to reunite the Oceanic Six and send them back to the island. She states "God help us all" over the very thought of their mission failing, and has set up shop underneath a church, aided by an array of seemingly outdated computers.

Most fans assumed Hawking was Daniel Faraday's mother, after she returned just as Faraday begged Desmond to find his mother – a theory quickly proven to be correct in last week's "This Place Is Death."

This week's episode, "316", picked up from that confirmation, as Ben, Jack, Sun and Desmond went to see Hawking and got a ton of information from her. We learned the place she was watching over was a DHARMA station called the Lamp Post and that the (old) technology inside was how DHARMA found the island in the first place – after a "very clever fellow" built the large pendulum inside the Lamp Post, realizing that the movements of the island – which are constant – could be calculated and predicted.

She told the group the flight they needed to be on in order to reach the island again, and that in order to return there, they needed to recreate the circumstances of their first crash as much as possible, which is why getting the Oceanic Six back together was so important. And she also revealed to Jack that Locke had killed himself, and left a note for Jack that she had in her possession – and that the body of Locke would serve as a "proxy" for the body of Christian Shephard, which was originally onboard Flight 815.