Why Did They Continue to Move The Island?

[D-Roc]

Something which bugged me until I gave it somethought on way in was, why did Locke/Ben move the island once Keamy had been killed? The motivation for moving the island seemed to be because Keamy and friends posed an immediate threat to the island (they were gonna torch it) - so once he'd been despatched, why move the island?

I guess it's because Widmore wouldn't give up on his efforts to find the island and get Ben? I guess i've answered my own question, but still..it made me think for a minute.

It's amazing to think that all of the people Widmore sent to the island are dead - apart from Charlotte, Dan, Miles and Frank. I guess Widmore will discover that his plan failed once the Oceanic 6 come home?

But this raises another question - how did Widmore know for sure that Oceanic 815 even crashed on 'the' island? Why was he confident enough of this fact to go and plant a fake wreckage on the Sundra Trench (assuming it ws indeed his doing)? I guess one of Ben's captured off-island people could have divulged him with the info..?

Going back to Ben moving the island even after Keamy was dead, I guess another answer for this is Jacob - as Ben said, the passing of the torch carried with it uncomfortable circumstances for Ben - meaning that he could never come back to the island (which in itself poses more contradictions judging from the last scene of the season) as he was the only one who could move it - those are the rules, I guess (looks like Ben might be about to break them by going back?)

Again, answered my own question but glad I wrote it down..I can build upon this.

[D-Roc]

Continuing from that..another question is 'where' did Locke/ben move the island to?

Has the island moved to a different physical location..if so, where? The process of moving the island takes Ben to Tunisia (as seen in 4.09)..so where does the island go, I wonder.

Hmm, shall give this somemore thought.

[D-Roc]

Ah, of course! Ben said that the moving of the island is not an exact science - it depends on "variables", so perhaps even ben didn't know 'where' the island would be moved to..just that it would be moved? Perhaps each turn of the 'wheel' moves the island to the next 'assigned' location.

Wouldn't it be interesting if not every location was on earth..or if one location was in the sky or something. I say this partly because the "mystery tales" comic's front cover shows an island..in the sky.

Not saying this will happen, but it's an interesting to consider the possibilities.

[TheDharmaShark]

You did answer your own question lol, even though Widmore's first attempt failed, he knew the location of the Island and would keep coming back better equipped each time, so moving the Island essentially set Widmore back to square one - finding it again.

[D-Roc]

Indeed. It seems to be a game that these two are playing..obviously a game with high stakes and ultimate consequences.

I agree with the sqaure one thing - Widmore wants to torch the island, so it seems to suggest that doing so would restart the game or something..perhaps capturing Ben and torching the island would restart time of something out-there like that, as I can't see why else he'd want to destroy the thing.

Or, perhaps Widmore was once a "chosen one", and he moved the island and was therefore unable to return...so destroying the island would be his revenge on jacob, or perhaps a tabula rasa, allowing him to re-claim it..or something.

[Kiowa Warrior]

Maybe when the Island's moved some poor innocents get caught up in it, like the orginal Henry Gale: one minute he's happily flying his balloon and then suddenly an Island pops out of nowhere and he flies and crashes into the trees. Or it suddenly appeared directly ahead of the Black Rock one day, and it crashed...but the BR is quite inland, so maybe the ship was sailing one minute and then the next found themselves in the middle of a jungle.

I'm not sure about Widmore being an original Island leader/inhabitor (though of course he could well be), but more like an Island leader wannabe, who is trying to get the title and the power through artificial ways of his own devising, rather than being 'chosen' as such.

But I do love the game theories, and really do think Widmore and Ben consider it the grand prize in their on going battle between each other...in their game that may have been going on for years and years through both time and space.