The Buoy Club

Lost: The Smoke Monster's Journey from Unknown to All-Knowing

It's time for a trip down memory lane. For most Lost fans, this will be a pretty long trip. But for a new fan like me, it's only going to be a short drive. I want you to think back to the Pilot episode of this show. As we were introduced to the characters and got acquainted with the island, we got handed our first big Lost mystery: what was the monster that was terrorizing the survivors? Watching this episode over winter break (when I caught up all 4 seasons of Lost before the 5th season premiere, booyah), I remember there were a million ideas running through my brain. The conventional side said dinosaur. The creative side said giant robot. During the first season, all I really knew was that this thing could rip up trees and yank a pilot out of a cockpit.

With the reveal in the second season of the monster's true form, I would like to say any of my hypotheses were borderline correct. Not even close. When that giant black smoke monster floated out of the jungle toward Eko, my emotions fell somewhere between stunned and intrigued. In typical Lost fashion, the writers had pulled this creature straight out of left field. I mean, seriously, who could've predicted the monster was a black smoke stack? Come to find out during the show's second season, the monster could take on a corporeal form and had a habit of judging the survivors based on an unknown set of standards. After we found out Ben could summon the monster (which he did after his daughter was killed), I guess it was only a matter of time before this happened. The same way Eko was judged, Ben Linus would face the same scrutiny.

All of this does little to pull back the curtain on the secret of the monster. We know what we know and nothing else. We have no idea where it came from, why it attacks people and lets others live and how it does what it does. An IGN feature on Lost ranked the monster in the top five Lost loose ends (out of 50). I agree with their prediction that the monster will one of those loose ends that gets tied up in the show's final episodes. In the meantime, we'll just have to be contempt knowing Alex can walk out of the smoke and demand that her father follow Locke's orders. Makes perfect sense to me!

Unlike the majority of shows on television, I can say with 100% certainty that the Lost writers will find a satisfying answer to my questions. To introduce the monster in the first episode and reveal its true nature in the final one would be almost poetic. After all, if they can make black smoke into the most feared creature on the island, then they can do anything they want. Otherwise, Ben will stick Smokey on em!

Overall, this episode was a welcome return for John Locke (my favorite character) and featured a role-reversal that's going to be fascinating to watch.

BUOY CLUB GRADE: 86 out of 100.