MIB

Technically this pivotal character does not have an official name, but I went with Esau from the Bible. Esau was Jacob's brother, and it seemed fitting. It can be changed when we officially learn his name and his goals.

What we do know is that he is the opposite of Jacob, we don't know which is good or which is evil although Jacob was in white and he was in black. He hated Jacob with a passion and wanted his death. He does not want humans on his island... and for Season 5 he's been going around appearing as John Locke. Everything John Locke did, it was Esau. And the last thing he did was persuade Ben to finally kill Jacob (or did he) while he throw him into a fire. He's obviously a key player in all the event that have happened on his Island.

Discuss all about MIB, speculation is welcome.

- Jacob's Enemy
- Esau [The Bible]

SMOKEY

The monster has been described by Lost producer Damon Lindelof as "one of the biggest secrets" of the mythology. It was introduced early on in the show. On the night after the crash, the survivors hear a loud, unidentifiable sound coming from the jungle and witness trees being torn down in the distance. The next morning, while discussing the sound the monster made, Rose commented that, "I keep thinking, there was something familiar about it." Jack, Kate, and Charlie saw the power of the monster up close when it ripped the pilot from the cockpit of the plane they crashed in and left the mangled body in a tree, all without being seen on-screen. In "Walkabout", Locke also had a direct encounter with the monster but was spared. When Michael later asked Locke if he had seen it, Locke lied and claimed that he had not. Locke later told Jack, "I looked into the eye of this island, and what I saw was beautiful."

In "Exodus, Part 1", Danielle referred to the monster as a "security system" whose purpose was to protect the island. Later in the episode, Locke's second encounter provided the first on-screen glimpse of the monster: a black mass of smoke accompanied by mechanical-like sounds. In "The 23rd Psalm" Charlie and Eko had a confrontation similar to Locke's. As Eko stared down the monster, the black smoke briefly flashed images of Eko's past. John Locke then stated that when he first saw the monster, it appeared as a "bright light" which he described as "beautiful," to which Eko replied, "That is not what I saw." In "The Cost of Living", the monster killed Eko by slamming him repeatedly against nearby trees and the ground. In another unseen appearance, the mechanical sounds of the monster can be heard during the episode "Exposé", right before Nikki is bitten by a "medusa spider", the same species as one of Arzt's research spiders, and in the episode "Special" when Michael is talking to his wife you can hear the monster for three seconds. In the episode "Left Behind", the monster appeared twice. It is unseen by the audience in the first encounter, when it released a series of bright flashes near Juliet. The monster appears on-screen during the second encounter, where it is revealed that it cannot penetrate the Others' sonic wave fence. Juliet tells Kate that the Others don't know what the Monster is, but they know it doesn't like their fence. When Locke holds Ben at gunpoint in "Confirmed Dead" he asks Ben, "What is the Monster?" and Ben, like Juliet, says that he doesn't know.

However, in the episode "The Shape of Things to Come", it becomes apparent that Ben knows more about the Monster than he has let on. After becoming enraged over the death of Alex, Ben disappears into a hidden room, which has an ancient stone door covered with hieroglyphs, only to emerge several minutes later covered in a dark ash like substance, telling the others they need to be as far away from the attacking mercenaries as possible. The Monster then suddenly arrives, and proceeds to attack and incapacitate all of the mercenaries. It slithers on the ground causing the Barracks to rumble and consumes Keamy's team, extending a hand-like tendril to draw back a man running from it. However, in the next episode it's revealed that the mercenaries survived albeit badly shaken. When questioned about an injured man, Keamy responds that he was, "thrown 50 feet into the air by a black pillar of smoke".

The monster later appears as a drawing in Cabin Fever. In a flashback, Richard Alpert comes to visit a five-year-old Locke in the early 1960s. Alpert becomes fascinated by a picture of the monster which Locke drew, asking Locke "Did you draw that, John?". Neither Alpert or Locke provide any further elaboration. In the picture, the monster appears to be swirling around an unidentified person.

The May 26, 2006 official Lost podcast claimed that viewers have seen the monster after "The 23rd Psalm" without realizing they were looking at it, which has led to fan speculation that the Monster actually is, or is at least responsible for, some of the manifestations that have appeared to the characters. In the March 21, 2008 official Lost podcast, Damon Lindelof said that manifestations of the Monster included Yemi, the Medusa Spider that bit Nikki, and some of Walt's appearances while he was not with the Survivors, although they were in more of a joking manner so they may have not been serious. Also, the producers have often hinted that the black cloud of smoke is not a monster in the traditional sense nor is it a cloud of nanobots.

In January 2007, producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse asked fans on Yahoo! Answers what they thought the monster was. They later picked their "favorite answer... not that it's the right answer [sic]." The response they chose suggested that the monster was "originally a highly advanced security system designed to separate participants of the DHARMA experiments" and frighten them with smoke and loud noises to prevent them from wandering outside of their hatches. However, the electromagnetic force of the island...mutated it - in the same sense that Desmond experienced time travel and can now see the future after [his] exposure - and made it malevolent and able to physically [interact with things]." The respondent also theorized that the monster could be "turned off" if the survivors found a control room for it. The producers restated that the answer could be "somewhat right, totally right - or completely off-base", but they thought it was "very cool and intriguing."

The Swan Station's Blast Door map makes several references to a "Cerberus" activity and also notes that this "Cerberus" prevents passage between certain stations, indicating the 'Security System' aspect of it may have gone down as early as 1984, which could well be the 'Incident' that Doctor Candle refers to during the Swan Stations' Orientation video. Notations on the Blast Door map seem to confirm the "Cerberus" patroling regions of the island that the Monster has been seen as well, hinting that the two may well be the same.

In a G4tv presentation of LOST in 2.0 (where Lost creators' have direct pop up windows within the episode, giving away or explaining away major plot devices, mysteries, etc), during the season 2 episode "Lockdown", Carlton Cuse confirms that the Cerberus System that is described on the Swan Station's Blast Door Map is indeed the Smoke Monster. How this will conflict with the revelation in Season 4 that the Cerberus is also mystical in nature (from Ben's entry into that ancient crypt to summon the monster) remains to be resolved.