Ben good guy/bad guy?
It seems that this season, the producers are trying to get the viewers thinking about who really is the bad guy, Ben or Charles. The most significant scene is when Ben kills Locke. Clearly it’s important because Ben could easily have let John finish the job himself. There must be a reason why Ben killed Locke and didn’t let him kill himself. I don’t believe it’s because Locke mentioned Eloise Hawking (thats a smokescreen) in my opinion. I think it’s because to commit suicide is to commit a sin. Ben wants John to be as pure as possible. It’s clear that John had to die anyway, to recreate the conditions of the original crash, and if Ben wanted Locke out of the way completely he wouldn’t have kept his body on ice, and then finished Lockes job by working more on Jack and rounding up the others. I think Ben is the good guy.
i dont believe that ben knew before killing jhon that he nedded to take him back, i think it was a momentouse crack in bens plan because after he murdered ben he cleans up his tracks THAN goes to see eloise and she tells ben that Everybody needs to go back. Only after does he go put johns body on ice.
i meant ben murdering jhon. oops
Ben knew what he was doing when he killed John. I agree that he didn’t stop John from killing himself just so he could learn about Eloise Hawking before John died. Ben didn’t learn anything about Eloise other than her name and that she was in LA. He must know who she is if that information alone is going to be at all useful. If he knows who she is then he must know that he must contact her about getting to the island.
I think Ben cleaned up his tracks because he had to in order to make it look like a suicide. His killing Locke may have been the bidding of some higher power from the island or whatever, but it’s still illegal to murder someone. He couldn’t take the chance that a murder investigation would mess up his plans. Plus, I think he needed Jack to think that Locke committed suicide. I can’t say if that makes Ben a “good guy” or not, but I don’t necessarily think that he didn’t know beforehand that Locke had to go back to the island too.
its probably because ben doesn’t want certain people to think john was murdered, i don’t think he cares much about authority, but more about what Mrs. Hawkins and the 815ers would think and how he could get them to go back – especially Jack.
but if he knew that jhon needed to go back why didnt he just take the body out and clean up after? i mean why the hell clean up all your prints and whatnot Than take the body down?
ah username that makes sense.
How would he explain that to the O6 if he had the body? “Look, John killed himself. See, I have the body right here.” They’d say “Dude, you killed John!”.
Regardless of who is protedting the island from the other (Ben/Widmore) Ben murdered John. He murdered Keamy. He orchestrated the purge. He is a bad guy. And keeping Locke pure? Come on, Locke wasn’t pure the moment he threw his knife into Naomi’s back.
I have to say the Naomi knifing threw me when it happened, but we’ll see. I just don’t see the point of the whole talk john down then kill him anyway.
if bens such a hot shot he could have the body taken care of get his fancy laywer work out the legalities, post an obituarie and wait for someone to show. wait thats what happened, and jack found out later it was a suicide, so nobody asked the question let alone cared.
There would be plenty of questions if Ben had shown up with a body. Even if he took it to his lawyer. What would his lawyer do? Call the cops and say “I have a body here… he wasn’t murdered by my client Ben Linus… we, uh, just found him like this. You can take my word for it because I’m a lawyer”. Ben needed someone else to discover Johns body and report it so it was believable.
These are totally things I’ve been wondering about too. I couldn’t see the point in talking Locke down then murdering him but I’m guessing the reason for that will be revealed eventually.
Whether or not Ben is a good guy or bad guy is something I’m guessing won’t be revealed till very close to the end. It’s such a central point. And still, I guess it’s possible that both Widmore and Ben are bad? And by bad I simply mean have evil intentions. The fact that Ben has murdered could be argued to automatically make him evil but that’s not really the point.
And for me personally, the introduction of little Ben has really swayed me. He is just so cute and had such a horrible childhood i have sympathy for him. The writers are definitely on to something with the whole “what is good and evil” and I think the answer won’t be simple. I mean, just look at Sayid.
killing doesnt make you evil if you are killing for the right reasons, such as killing someone evil who can/will kill good people.
“I often laughed at the weaklings, who thought themselves good because their claws were blunt.”
-Nietzsche
ben got hurley out of jail-hurley confessed- was seen holding a gun and covered in blood.
His lawyer was able to show that the timing was impossible.
This situation would be different.
Lawyer: We have this dead body.
Cop: Oh yeah? Looks like this guy died because something was tied really tight around his neck.
Lawyer: Yes. He hanged himself.
Cop: That so? Please explain why you decided to get him down and take his body from the scene.
Lawyer: I’m a lawyer. Ben Linus is innocent.
Cop: You know this is incriminating, right?
forget the cops..jhon is a non entitie everyone on the outside already thinks hes dead flight 815 remember,so they make up a phoney name (jeremy bentham) for the. even so i doubt his laywer has any problems lying for the right amount of money.
for the obituary.
What about the funeral director? “Don’t ask any questions about this dead guy”… that doesn’t really work.
cops lawers funeral directors ministers anybody can be bought.
anyway i just think he didnt know,and i can see that you do. but for two seconds i was sure he craked.
but you could be right too.
ekolocation, nice Nietzsche quote
i don’t particularly view the world as black or white, it’s really more a shade of gray
My impression at first was that Ben needed info from Locke, but not necessarily JUST Hawking’s name.
These were the details I’ve wrestled with on this subject. First, Ben knew that Locke had been associating with Widmore and his people since getting off the island. And he knew that once off island, Locke/Bentham immediately started tracking down all the 815ers. Prior to that point, what other 815ers had come in contact with Ben? Wasn’t it only Sayid? So Locke was on a mission and ‘with’ Widmore in a sense.
This is where it definitely starts to get murky on what is coming…because we could learn (as AES has proposed) that Ben has a major upper hand in knowing what is coming via time travel-ish abilities.
From the very least (through this point in the season) we know that Ben knows that certain members of 815 get back to the island and that other members of 815 stayed on island and traveled to the past to live with Dharma. So his whole line to Jack, “did John tell you what happened after you left…I guess we’ll never know…” thing was obviously crap then and even more evident that it was crap now. Ben knew.
But I’m just not convinced that Ben knew HOW this all was going to come together. And based on Locke’s ability to interact with Jacob and Richard and now Widmore, Ben knew that Locke might have certain pieces of information that was critical to making it happen.
I tend to think that Ben was threatened by Locke and wanted him dead, and there are various reasons why, but especially in trying to convince the O6 to return Locke and Ben had different motives. Ben probably initially thought that Locke out of the way would be easier. But Locke killing himself without sharing whatever info he had was not what Ben wanted/needed.
Those O6 can be pretty naive, except for Sun, and so it after Ben learned a bit more from Locke, the suicide would work in Ben’s favor.
If there’s actually greater good in Ben’s mind, it will be one of the best twists in the show.
Could it be that ben regrets what happened with dharma and knows how to change the past. His father is Jacob and is trapped in between times, he volunteers to be a giunea pig and the dharma experiment goes wrong. This is referred to as the incident? He now wants to change the past to save Jacob and perhaps betray the others?
Chrisk, Ben was truly freaked out when he saw that John was going to commit suicide. That is why he stopped him!
Ben fully intended to get all of the information he needed from John, but didn’t realize it would come quite so quickly as it did.
Once he had all he needed from John, he killed him.
Ben is a dichotomy of good and evil, all mixed into one!
The real question about Ben would be, is everything he is doing some sort of sacrifice to achieve what is good in the end!
Can the ultimate villain, perform acts of evil in the name of goodness?
This is the dilemma viewers have and will continue to have in order to understand Benjamin Lnus!
Ben had a distinct reaction when John mentioned Jin was still alive. That comment seemed to set the wheels in motion that led to Ben killing him.
If you agree, what part could Jin play in Ben’s decision to kill Locke?
Thinking about this more: killing Locke was a counter-move to the fact that Jin is alive. There are always references to the “game” that is being played. Somehow, keeping Jin alive was a “move” by someone (Widmore, the island) and, to counter that move, Ben kills Locke.
Ben’s a really wonderful guy. Hed do anything for himself.
My take on this scene? Well it wasn’t around Eloise. Ben was wrappin’ that cord before Locke mentioned her.
I think Locke wasn’t supposed to kill himself for the ‘dying to get back to the island’ to work.