Widmore has a deal with Smokey by Grimdaddy

A little history... MIB told us his intentions toward the candidates after the Black Rock landing in Ab Aeternal. The exchange went something like this:

MIB: I will kill you, J-Dogg.
Jacob: Then someone will take my throne, and it's quite possible his name will also start with 'J'.
MIB: Then I will kill your successor.

So talk of getting candidates together to get off the island in a plane always sounded suspicious. It sounded more like the rules would only allow them to be killed after they left the island, or they all had to die together by the hand of someone other than Smocke (recall that Ben killed Jacob for Smocke). I thought all along that Smocke was setting up Widmore to kill the candidates once they were pinned in the same corral. That seems incorrect in hindsight, and it appears that the rules allow the candidates to die only by killing one another off of the island.

Yet Widmore seems to be the one cryptically orchestrating everything behind the scenes. When Smokey posed as Christian Shephard and "shepharded" Locke off the island, Widmore was standing at the other end of the pipe. A series of events then took place to bring the candidates back to the island, along with Locke in a casket. In my theory, it was Widmore pulling all the strings off the island.

There's a continuing theme this season that I have not seen under any microscope. It's the idea of a "deal". I first noticed it with Sawyer and Smocke. There's a mutual distrust, but Sawyer has referred multiple times to their "deal". Yet both have double-crossed each other, and this has had near-lethal consequences for Sawyer.

Sawyer also attempted to make a deal with Widmore. Once again he was double crossed. Take Sawyer out of the equation, and I think the real deal is between Smocke and Widmore. They do not trust each other, but they have an understanding. Possibly Widmore expects to unleash Smokey in the Island's universe, and in return, he gets happy ever after and lots of power in the no-Island universe. Maybe the link between the two universes gets closed, and both players get what they want.

(I don't gravitate to the phrase 'timeline'. It feels like parallel universes to me. The phrase 'alt-timeline' is even more sketchy. How do we know which is 'real' and which is 'alt'?)

So that's the deal -- Smokey trades one universe for another. Whether Widmore lives through it -- that's another question. I vote neigh. Smokey is a persuasive fibber, and he'll kill Widmore and try to smoke up both universes.

In conclusion, Widmore is still a villain, and Smokey is his contentious partner.