There was rather strong clues that all humans must strive for "goodness" but that all of them are flawed, even the Guardians. There's a whole motif that Men aren't purely of the Light anymore, that they've been tainted by evil. Jacob unleashing Evil was a variation on Eve and the serpent, and other similar myths, though the natures of Jacob, the mother, the other people strongly speak of this event not being the genesis of how Evil first touched humans.

And we still don't know if Smokey cares for its vehicle, if he looks for specific characteristics, or if any human body does the job. Probably not... men like Ben or Widmore were far more evil than Locke.

It doesn't look like MIB (the bastards, it's clear now they never intend to give us his name - it's their twist on "not naming evil" in myths, legends and Fantasy...) was inherently evil, it looks like the monster is some shapeless primeval Evil energy, the essence of evil, that stole MIB's personality (and appearance) when Jacob threw his brother in the light.



I see two possible explanations, with variations, for the ghosts:

1. They have their free will and are earth-bound souls by dying on or around the Island. Their motivations are their own. They are "jokers" in the game. The other explanation is that they are the pawns of a third force, neither MIB nor Jacob (or their predecessors) but of the Light/God maybe. Their motivations would depend on the real nature/purpose of the Light and the evil within (prisoner of it?)

2. Smokey was a prisoner of the Light before Jacob unleashed him, in the sense that his evil power wasn't manifested outside, and he couldn't kill directly etc. and this is what escaping through MIB's body allowed him to. However, Smokey was already able, and still is able maybe, to appear as any island-ghost he choose (and apparently in dreams/visions), to seduce people to his side. But how much he can interact with the world in that form is minimal, unlike what he can do while incarnate, in MIB or in Locke. The mother-ghost didn't just showed MIB the humans, she turned him against the Guardian, made him dissatisfied with his fate on the island and obessessed with leaving.

Personally, I think it's "option 2" in the case of the mother - she was a manifestation of Smokey seducing her son - even though I suspect there are also ghosts appearing as messengers of the Light (I don't think those were Jacob's after all, though) in the series, or as free-willed wildcards. But she could have been a manifestation of the Light testing MIB too. The same sort of temptation about "his destiny" Locke has experienced in his dreams (off-screen). What was bizarre about the ghost of the mother was that she was bathed in light, unlike most of the "ghosts" we have seen so far, though however we had seen that "look" in various dreams/visions.

I expect we'll get the answer to those questions next week or in the finale, but right now they haven't given us much about the rules, and we're at the same point we were last week to guess about the nature of the ghosts and when it was MIB in disguise and not (an early apparition of MIN under the guise of someone dead seems to me to be Mikhail in season 3. The guy was dead at the fence, Kate had checked his pulse and all. He then re appeared unharmed among the Others. Desmond then killed him with a bolt at the Looking Glass, but he rose from the dead again and re appeared to kill Charlie.

Can Smocke still make appearances as other ghosts while he is incarnated in a body (Locke's)? I'm not sure. Ilanna seemed to think he couldn't. This means there are some other ghosts, like Michael who appeared to Hurley. There are also "ghosts" all can see, like Jacob as the young boy, and other ghosts only "special" people like Hurley can see (weirdly, that includes Jacob a few times).

So many unknowns still...



He seems to absorb the personalities and memories of all those he incarnated. He's a mix of Locke and MIB now, among others I suspect.