I think that Jacob and The Foe are Manifestations of the Island’s schizophrenic Good/Evil aspects and that they each have their Human Followers
I think Jacob’s Children believe in Choice, Honesty, Selflessness, Loyalty, Non-violence, Penitence and Forgiveness - all of which Jack was tested for (by Ben) at Hydra. These are the folks who used sling-shots and trank-darts instead of guns - and we’ve seen precious little of them. These may be the members of Family Richard who are currently at The Temple.
The Foe’s Children are cruel, unforgiving Haters who are quite willing to kill (using guns or grenades) without hesitation or remorse. Ethan, Danny, Colleen, Mikhail, Bea, Ryan, Greta, Bonnie, Jason and others belonged to this group - and, thanks to Ben have been erased in Ben’s Second Purge. Their Leader is/was Charles Widmore - whose personality they reflect.
I think that Ben’s pre-crash Family included both “wings” of The Family: Widmore ‘Loyalist ‘ “Hater” members, who followed his orders (sometimes reluctantly) and Good Guy non-killer members, presumably including Cindy and Karl - who were giving the kidnapped kids “a better life” that the lives of Kate and James.
I think The Rules surrounding Charles’ Banishment included a Rule whereby his Loyalist Hater members could not be directly harmed by Ben, in return for which they were obliged to obey him. This uneasy Truce (during which both Jacob and The Foe prepared to break their circular Impasse) endured from The Purge until the arrival of Flight 815.
Flight 815 included a number of Social Misfits - a pair of Murderers (James/Kate), a Torturer (Sayid), an Adulterer (Sun), a violent Mob Enforcer (Jin), a pair of Spoiled-Brat incestuous siblings (Shannon/Boone), a drug addict (Charlie), an unmarried mother (Claire) who had put her own mother into a Coma, three emotional cripples (Jack, Eko and Ana Lucia) and an emotional and physical cripple (Locke) plus a number of less messed up folks like Michael, Walt, Rose, Libby and Bernard.
The fact that Widmore (with a couple of nudges from Jacob) was mostly responsible for the selection of these passengers coupled with the fact that Ben didn’t know who was on the plane until after Mikhail had prepared his dossiers, suggests that Widmore/The Foe intended these passengers to join his Army in preparation for the S6 War.
The Tailies were attacked twice, during which most of their members were kidnapped. The Losties, however were protected from attack and some of them were healed physically and emotionally by the Light Aspect of The Island in preparation for the S6 War.
The arrival of The Losties enabled Ben’s Second Purge (which decimated the ranks of The Foe’s Island Army), during which he used The Losties to kill Ethan, Colleen, Tom, Ryan and Jason, among others - and to manipulate Mikhail into killing Greta and Bonnie before he himself was killed by Desmond. To me, this implies that Ben is a true Son of Jacob (knowingly or not) and that his killing of Jacob in 516 was not only foreseen by Jacob, but was actively enabled by him. It was Jacob who permitted (or caused) the death of Nadia, which led to Sayid becoming a self-hating Killer under Ben’s tutelage; It was Jacob who sent Sayid to 1977 to shoot (innocent) Ben - which led to Ben’s subsequent emotional damage - damage further nurtured by Jacob during Ben’s 35 years of Island servitude, and it was Jacob who goaded Ben to stab him with his final “What about you?” question - a question which reeked of dismissive Judgement.
The Foe thought he was using Ben and Locke to destroy Jacob/Obi Wan, but it was in fact Jacob who used The Foe’s Hatred and Strategy to become (post-murder) more powerful than he’d been before.
I pity Ben - as Jacob does/did, and I’m not giving up on him. I think he’ll turn out to be a Good Guy after all.
I also think that The Foe - in the form of Locke - is limited by that form. To some extent he only knows what Locke knows.
The S6 War between Not-Locke and Jacob The Resurrected ought to be a Humdinger
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