Smokey's Motivations by Smath

So now that some of the secrets of Smokey are starting to come out, perhaps we can deduce something of its movements and reasoning (apologies if this repeats another theory – there are so many to read through!)

Ben referred to the cabin as ‘Jacob’s cabin’ – which either means he’s been misled by Smokey or Jacob was indeed there and the ash circle was to keep out Smokey. It may be that there is something inside the cabin that Jacob was trying to protect. Otherwise it wouldn’t make sense for Smokey to be roaming the island before the ash circle was broken. Once the ash circle was broken, Jacob left the cabin and went back to the statue. Smokey posed as Jacob for a while and got the Others to do his bidding until being discovered (?by Richard).

As to the motivations of Smokey I think he has two possibly three reasons for killing:
Judgement – ie Mr Eko. Mr Eko wouldn’t obey Smokey and repent so Smokey killed him.
Defence – If people shoot at Smokey, he’ll kill them
Furthering his Plan – ie his ‘loophole’. This may replace the ‘judgement’ cause which could have simply been a smokescreen – Mr Eko held a fair bit of sway within some of the Losties. Or perhaps a church would have been adverse to Smokey (same way it’s implied he can’t go into the Temple).

This works when you think about the Ben summoning – he summoned when they were being attacked. The attackers would be shooting etc – would probably turn their attack to Smokey and hence Smokey reacts (like the Freighter folk). Or of course the Freighter guerrillas I’m guessing weren’t the most ‘pure’ of folk.

There’s an argument for the pilot of the plane being ‘judged’ (and there’s an argument for it just making suspenseful TV early on!) or that the pilot might help them get rescued.

I think it’s possible Jacob’s people have some kind of immunity (as they’ve seemingly co-existed with the monster OK so far – and now that immunity has ended with the death of Jacob) – perhaps as they don’t attack Smokey and are ‘innocent’ (though I would think their definition of ‘innocent’ varies from what we might expect). So Smokey wouldn’t have killed Ilana’s people if they hadn’t shot at him. And hence why Richard didn’t want anyone to shoot him.

As to Kate and Juliet - I’m leaning towards that the Smokey has had his game plan for a fair while so instead of Smokey ‘not being able to’ attack Juliet and Kate when they hid under the tree, perhaps he knew that Kate/Juliet would be required to activate his ‘loophole’. OR he still couldn’t attack Juliet because she is an Other (though she obviously did not know of her immunity). Kate was handcuffed to Juliet so Smokey knew he couldn’t hurt Kate without harming Juliet. Perhaps Smokey and Jacob have different followers – Jacob has deemed that Kate and the other 815-ers aren’t suitable to join the others (not on ‘the list’) but Smokey needs some of the Losties to help him kill Jacob.

I don’t think Smokey is just a random killer when in smoke form (he’s a who not a what, remember folks). I think he’s planned this thing for a long long time. And I can’t wait to see what comes next :D