Charles Widmore is a major antagonist in the ABC series Lost. He is a former member of the Others who was exiled from the island but reinvents himself as a corrupt industrialist who is determined to get the island back from his rival, Benjamin Linus, and kill all those in his way.
He was played by Alan Dale.
His Evil Ranking[]
What Makes Him Close to Pure Evil?[]
- Even as a teenager he showed signs of sociopathy, as when he meets a time-travelling Juliet he takes her captive and threatens to cut off her "other" hand if she doesn't talk, saying the first one isn't even negotiable. When he and another Other are captured by Locke, Widmore brutally snaps his comrade's neck the moment he tries to talk.
- He's against saving a 12-year old Ben when he's shot by Sayid, saying they should have let him die.
- He takes part in the genocide of the DHARMA Initiative.
- He sends Ben and Ethan to murder Danielle Rousseau. When Ben spares her and brings back her baby Alex, Widmore tells him to kill her, only relenting when Ben challenges him to do so himself.
- He blames Ben for his exile despite bringing it on himself by neglecting his duties and leaving the island regularly for personal matters, threatening Ben as he leaves that one day he will have to choose between the island and Alex.
- He's contemptuous of Desmond Hume, considering him not good enough for his daughter Penny, and viciously insults him, wrecking Desmond's self-esteem and causing him to break up with Penny. He later intercepts all the letters Desmond wrote Penny to make her think he'd forgotten her and orders Desmond to have no contact with her.
- This results in Desmond taking part in a sailing race Widmore is sponsoring to try to prove he's good enough for Penny, making Widmore responsible for Desmond being shipwrecked and stranded on the island for three years.
- When Flight 815 crashes on the island, Widmore plants fake wreckage in the ocean (along with hundreds of bodies he dug up from a cemetery) so no one will look for them.
- He sends a team of mercenaries, led by Martin Keamy, to the island with orders to capture Ben and kill anyone else. He also breaks the "rules" he and Ben had agreed on (which mandated that their families were off limits) by authorizing Keamy to do anything he deems necessary to force Ben's surrender, which results in Keamy coldly executing Alex in front of Ben. He also shows no remorse for the deaths of Keamy and his mercenaries or for the deaths of the freighter crew who are killed when their ship blows up.
- While he ordered Ben taken alive, this was likely not out of mercy but because Jacob's "rules" forbade him and Ben from killing one another.
- He sends an assassin, Ishmael Bakir, to murder Sayid after he leaves the island, but the hit goes wrong and Sayid's wife Nadia is killed instead.
- He's revealed to have manipulated his own son, Daniel Faraday, into going to the island knowing that Daniel would be killed in the past by his own mother.
- While he makes a deal with Jacob to return to the island and stop the Man in Black from leaving, this was mostly out of pragmatism as Widmore saw this as a way to get the island back for himself, even boasting to Ben upon meeting him again that he's still a step ahead of him.
- He kidnaps Desmond and blasts him with electromagnetic radiation to test his resistance to it, fully aware this might kill him.
- He betrays his deal with Sawyer's group, capturing them and locking them in cages while having Jack's group fired on with mortars, killing some of them and forcing the rest into the jungle.
- He holds Kate hostage to force Sawyer's cooperation, saying he has no problem killing her as she's not a candidate.
- He sends his men after the survivors when they escape with the Man in Black's help, and his men open fire on them and wound Kate.
What Prevents Him from being Pure Evil?[]
- He shows genuine care for several people as he does love his daughter Penny and asks Desmond to keep her safe, grudgingly accepting that they're happy together and shows regret that his actions have caused him and his daughter to be estranged and kept him from meeting his grandson. He also shows Jin photos of his child (who Jin had never met).
- He's said to have paid for the treatment of a woman who was rendered comatose by Daniel's experiments (though this may have been pragmatic as he was using Daniel's research for his own ends).
- He shows some care for his men since he appears saddened when one is killed during an experiment and also seems shocked when his assistant Zoe is killed by the Man in Black.