I think Widmore had a strong hand in DHARMA, but I don’t think he was ever a staffer on the island. I think it was more that Widmore was funding DHARMA and co-opting their work: DHARMA / the De Groots wanted to research the island to save the world, Widmore just wants to learn the island’s secrets for his own purposes (whatever they may be). So I’m not sure we’ll ever see Widmore on the island.

Viewers have long speculated that Christian is very important to the story, so it wouldn’t be totally shocking to have some big reveal for him in the opening scene. Of the remaining choices, I think Faraday is the most likely. Given this year’s ComicCon video, my hypothesis is that Faraday and the socks in the raft were sent back to the mid to late 70′s (pre-1980, as Chang still has his arm). Daniel wrote the notes in the notebook during this time and somehow got them off the island so that they could be delivered to his younger self. Alternatively, Daniel has had Desmond/Minkowski-like trips into his own future, which is in the island’s past. He wrote the notebook in the late 1990′s when he came back to the “present” from these trips, scribbling down what he could remember.

Either way, I think Daniel knows that he won’t be seeing anyone from the “present” anymore, which puts his comment to Juliet in context: “Right, right… when I get back.”

in fact i have a theory of my own. i think charles widmore is a survivor of the purge, and somehow he ended up in the main land. since he´s been on the island, maybe working at the sawn, he´s been exposed to high levels of radiation, like Desmond, charles also has flashes (that´s why widmore gives desmond penny´s new adress, so he doesn´t change what he sees)
he knows ben hid the island, so charles somehow manages to send Desmond in that crazy round the world thing, knowing he will end up there, knowing that penny will move the seas to find him, making it easier for him to find his old island.

does this make sense to you guys?