What was smoke monster in lost

As the smoke monster, the Man in Black is able to take on the form of dead islanders and has been waging a centuries-old war with his brother, Jacob, in an attempt to leave the island. However, J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof's original vision for the smoke monster was vastly different.

According to the Lost series bible that was compiled after the filming of the show's pilot as a sales pitch to the network, the smoke monster was suggested to have " man-made origins " that linked back to the early idea that led to Dharma Initiative, either as a result of the group's cutting-edge scientific experiments or as a security system designed to protect the island's various Dharma stations.

The document also describes the smoke monster as " more machine than animal. Obviously, these plans were changed somewhere along the way and, reading into the show's development of the smoke monster mystery, it may not have been that early on.

Early appearances of the smoke monster came with mechanical sound effects that imply technology and machinery are behind its appearance and the monster is described as "Cerberus" on the ultra-violet blast door map of the island.

Cerberus guarded the gates of hell in Greek mythology, suggesting that the original plan to have the smoke monster as a Dharma guardian system was still in place during season 2. In Lost 's fourth season, Ben is seen summoning the smoke monster from a special chamber using some kind of ancient mechanism that some suggested are responsible for the machine-like noises.

Once again, this propagates the theory that the smoke monster was still being written as a security system as late as season 4, even if the mechanical origins had been explained away by this point.

They were pretty much winging it airplane pun! If the show was done by more thoughtful writers as, say, a Netflix series today might be, there would be a lot less ambiguity. Allison Janney is the current Island Protector. Countless people are brought to the Island over these centuries, most of them do not survive. The same storm destroys the Statue of Tawaret. Richard Alpert, a mortal human aboard the Black Rock , is saved by Jacob and offered a liaison role with humans in return for immortality.

The Others kill the U. Weeks later, the Others discover strange visitors on the beach and kill several of them with flaming arrows. Frogurt is among those killed.

The newcomers then disapper without warning. The Others presumably then follow the advice regarding the bomb. He is deemed not ready. There are a number of inhabitants already on the Island who are opposed to this research team.

The five covertly join the Dharma Initiative. Rose, Bernard, and dog Vincent also arrive in as part of the same time shift. This creates worse ongoing electromagnetic issues on the Island.

Jack, Kate, Hurley, and Sayid appear on the Island an unanticipated side effect of a planned plane crash. Sayid goes rogue and is eventually imprisoned by the Dharma Initiative. Young Ben Linus frees him and subsequently Sayid shoots and abandons the young boy. Ben is sent back to live with the Dharma people. Jack spearheads a plan to blow up an atomic bomb in order to restore them to This is successful.

I guess. Juliet dies. The Hostiles become fed up with The Dharma Initiative and utilize poison gas to exterminate every member, save for Benjamin Linus, who willingly joins the Others. They are soon visited by confused time traveler, Jin, who witnesses as Mib begins to target and kill the science team. Jin is nearly shot by Rousseau, but escapes and then disappears into time.

Rousseau escapes and begins hiding out in the jungle. He will spend the next years building an empire of wealth in a bid to find and return to the Island and presumably exact revenge on Ben. Jacob is on-scene to touch and restore Locke to life.

Locke is left paralyzed and wheelchair-bound from this point until he reaches the Island. She believes she has been recruited by a fictitious company called Mittelos Bioscience. This was secretly orchestrated by Jacob, who thinks many of the passengers are good candidates to be his Island successor. The suriving crash victims begin finding hatches and question the existence of Others on the mysterious Island.

Many die. The freighter is ultimately blown up by Jacob via Michael. Jin is also thought to be killed in the explosion. Locke is thrust into Tunisia, present day. The rest are publicized in the news media as the Oceanic Six. The adults of the Oceanic Six plan to return to the Island by crashing another airplane. It works, though some are vaulted into the s past. Through a really stupid plot thread see: , the group manages to return all surviving Lostees to for a final showdown.

Ben also shoots and kills Charles Widmore. After a series of battles and convoluted missions, many die. Kate shoots and kills a newly mortal Mib. More death. They stay on the Island. Presumably, Bernard, Rose, and dog Vincent continued to live the retired life on the Island. Who Was Living There? The cabin was built as a private retreat by Horace Goodspeed, principle figure in the Dharma Initiative, sometime in the ss.

No one lived there at all, not even Jacob. This was all a con. We are told by multiple reliable narrators that women who conceive fetuses on the Island cannot survive to the end of the second trimester.

But why? No one knows for sure, not even Benjamin or Richard. Sadly, it's never explained why the Smoke Monster likes to murder people. He just does. It's also never explained how he decides to kill. It's established that he cannot kill Jacob's candidates, yet he outright kills Eko, who was indeed one of Jacob's candidates.

So why kill Eko but not the rest of them? This is a sub-question relating to the killing question. In the season one finale, Locke is grabbed by the Smoke Monster and taken to a hole in the ground. Our obvious belief is that it wants to kill Locke, but it's later made evident that the Smoke Monster cannot kill candidates even though Eko's blatant murder throws that out the window, but whatever.

So what was it doing with Locke if not trying to kill him? Or was it trying to kill him and ignoring the rules? At the beginning of season one, the Smoke Monster trolls Jack by inhabiting his dead father's body and taking it for a stroll side question - why? Just because he's bored and wants to mess with Jack?

But Jack never finds his father's body. But when Smokey inhabits Locke, Locke's corpse is still present and accounted for. So it's clear that Smokey doesn't require the physical body.

And where is Christian's body if not in the coffin? It's made clear throughout the series that Smokey can transform from people to his smoke self to his physical Man in Black form. Then why was he "stuck" as Locke throughout season six? The only thing that changed was Jacob's death, so we assume some magic wore off or something.

But it's never given a clear answer. The island's inhabitants don't have many defenses against the Smoke Monster, but the most effective method of deterrence seems to the sonar fence.