Lost Analysis: Mysteries and Unanswered Questions – The Smoke Monster

He showed up in the pilot to kill the pilot. At that point, we didn’t know much about the monster other than it had something against Greg Grunberg. Since then, we’ve learned a lot more about it. That it’s made of smoke for one thing. That it’s rather judgmental for another. It’s also able to be repulsed by electric fences and is summoned by Ben emptying his toilet.

But there’s obviously way more to Ol’ Smokey than that. He’s the archetypal Lost mystery – as the writers acknowledged in Season Four when Ben, pleading for his miserable, awesome life, promised to tell Locke anything he wanted to know. Locke’s first (and only) question: “What is the smoke monster?”

Tell me your secrets, Smoke Monster

Tell me your secrets, Smoke Monster

Of course, we didn’t get an answer at that point because, uh, Ben lied. But we will get an answer in the final season. Right? Right?!?

What Exactly We Need To Know

  • Who built the smoke monster?
  • What, exactly, is it? (Is it a manifestation of Jacob’s friend from the Season Five finale?)
  • Why is it on the island?
  • Who controls it?
  • How does it decide who it kills and who it does not?

Why The Smoke Monster Question Needs To Be Answered

As mentioned above, it’s the archetypal Lost unanswered question. If they don’t answer this one, then who knows what they’ll answer.

Odds of the Question Being Answered?

42-1 on

Closest thing we have to a certainty on this show. Smokey’s the big question. If they don’t answer that, there will be rioting in the streets (not to be confused with Dancing In The Streets – which is far more pleasant and easier to dance to)



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