Lost!

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by BarTopDancer

MIB = Smoky. So I look at it as Oh look, smoky is a security system for the island and takes human form for a double doubleyou tee efff situation. Is human form smoky blocked by the sonic alarm system?

I'm not satisfied by that. Smokey was never presented as a personality, more as a tool. Sure smokey seemed to have some sort of intelligence, but what we saw was very very limited. To suddenly expand that into, "Oh, actually, Somkey is a form taken by a being that's essentially on par with Jacob, previously presented as the most powerful individual in the story," was to introduce a HUGE source of power and intelligence way late in the game. A bit of a cheat IMO in that it made it entirely impossible to have been making any accurate guesses about who was running the show when.

The ash circle around the cabin was broken. Maybe he was smoky in human form and since the ring was broken he escaped. We don't know when the ash ring was broken - it could have been before 815 crashed. Though that doesn't explain how Ben was able to call/control smoky in Dharmaville to kill Kermey.

I was going to suggest that the ash circle was meant to keep Smokey IN, but Smokey was out and about the whole time they were on the island, and the ash circle wasn't broken when Locke and Ben visited. So that seems unlikely (or sloppily handled by the writers).