haha good ole Jim
Im "lost" for once
I cant decide if Widmore is the bad guy or Ben, or if they are 2 bad guys competing for the same power. I am leaning more towards Ben being the good guy though, which was my initial thought....heres why
In the recent episode where we met Suns baby, before she turned the TV off there was a show playing on it which was Expose (the show Nicki was in) and it was a scene where someone was pulling the Long Con that Sawyer did...pulling down a briefcase and letting it fall open spilling money everywhere. There have been many references to Long Cons, expose's etc. In Expose, The Cobra was revealed to be the boss....a good guy turning out to be bad. Making him neutral. A lot of the shows symbolism hints at balance, neutrality (the black and white stones, adam and eve, among other things) and im wondering if all along we have been given clues not to trust our initial judgements about people. Over the course of the show we have had our perceptions altered on Sawyer, Sun, Juliette, Ben, well...most of them so we should not assume we know who is "good and bad".
I also think that Ben is protecting the island from the world, and in doing so, is protecting the world from the island.
My Grand Theory is that once someone leaves the island, they cannot die off it and have to return to the island to die. Imagine what kind of army Widmore could build if he could train soldiers on the island....they wont be able to die once of it so are indestructible. Is it a coincidence that the village on the island is called "the barracks"???? I think the Dharma Initiative were doing just that, and thats why Ben purged them...to protect the world from a potentially indestructible power.