MOM ISN'T THE SMOKE, BUT SOMETIMES NEITHER IS THE SMOKE MONSTER by Eric101

There has been some heated discussion as to whether or not Mom is the Smoke Monster. Some say yes, some say no. At first, I was of the opinion that she was – she appears to Claudia much as the monster appears to Eko, and she somehow managed to single-handedly and in one night fill a hole with dirt, carry a 200 lb man and off an entire village of Romans.

On the other hand, she is stabbed in the back by the MiB. So unless she is like Flocke is now, the Smoke Monster taken corporeal form in the body of the “real” Mom (which I highly doubt – it’s simply too convoluted), I must revise my original assumption and say that I now believe unequivocally that she isn’t the Smoke Monster. However, she was able to “summon” the dark energy of the island (the "smoke") to do her bidding.

Here's how I figure: Remember that scene in season 4 when Ben went to his closet, pulled a little stopper on a puddle of water, draining the water, then moments later the smoke appeared and killed off Keamy’s crew? I think Mom did the same thing. (It’s notable that there is water in Ben’s closet [no pun intended] which needs to be drained for the smoke to appear, just as there is water above the central cave entrance to this mysterious energy).

How, you ask, if the Smoke Monster hadn’t yet been created? Simple. The smoke Ben summoned wasn’t what we've come to refer to as the Smoke Monster (the MiB). Rather, it was the island’s “security” device (how Danielle Rousseau refers to it, based on its behavior, one supposes). What Ben summoned was in fact the dark energy of the island, the counterbalance to the light energy, the very same energy that Jacob unleashed when he sent his brothers dead body careening into the cave pool.

Like yin and yang the darkness and light keep each other in check, neither one dominating the other (this stays within the overall theme of the show). The energy in the cave is both light and dark, good and evil – Mom says so herself.

So the smoke is a security device, whereas Smokey (Flocke) is not. He’s his own entity. Which means sometimes when we saw the smoke, we saw the security device (the first appearance of the monster, the attack on the pilot – I believe this resulted from Ben’s pulling the plug, as it were - or the attack on the French expedition crew, perhaps the result of Horace? [Horus, by the way, is the Egyptian god of protection. Horace is also fascinated with Egyptology - note Amy's Ankh. He also built the cabin that the MiB later used, he claimed for himself and "missus." An aside: methinks he was in fact being manipulated by the Smoke Monster, as a potential candidate to help him off the island, just as Ben would later be.]) Other times it was Smokey (basically any encounter where the Monster “reads” the people it encounters – Kate, Juliet, Locke, Eko, etc.).

Jacob knows this security device can be harnessed (learned it from Mom?), shows it to Richard who in turn shows it to Ben (and, since it was also discovered by Horace [he built his house over it] knowledge and use of this device resulted in his death – they were discovering too much [i.e. the frozen donkey wheel they located at the beginning of season 5], proving too much of a threat).

The security perimeter built by the Dharma village (and the Temple) protects the Dharma folk and the Others from Smoke Monster [read: MiB] specifically, not from the smoke [read “security” device] per se. Jacob and Richard kept this secret from the Others (just as Ben would keep his encounters with “Jacob” in the cabin secret from Richard). Richard perhaps told Ben the smoke was not only the island’s protector, but also its judge, perhaps to account for Smokey’s apparently “rogue” and otherwise unaccountable behavior (hence, the need for a security device to protect them from the island’s “security” device).

Ben was being played by both sides – the MiB and Jacob – as they cannot struggle directly because of the “rules.” So when Ben comes to be “judged” he believes he is being judged by the Island’s “security” device, and not the MiB.

To come full circle, Mom knows of this device, she pulls the stopper, unleashes the smoke, which destroys the village. I’m stumped, however as to how the monster fills up the hole or carries the MiB – perhaps that’s where Mom’s super strength and determination that some non-Smoke Monster Mom theorists propose. I don’t think that negates my theory, as proposing the opposite (she is the monster) doesn’t explain this apparent inconsistency either.