Jacob's been the key to the mystery for about 3 seasons and now he's shown to be just as in the dark as we are. He doesn't even really know why he's guarding the light other than his mom told him to.
From my blog posting about Across The Sea...
The black smoke isn't Jacob's brother anymore than it is Locke. It took the form of Jacob's brother for the times it had to deal with Jacob, as it has always done. It took the form of lots of people after Jacob released it.
Jacob doesn't seem to know unless drinking that wine reveals what it's all about... she did say 'we're the same now' or something to that affect.
I don't know about that.
It still posseses the brother-specific aim to leave the island. Or do you think that's a very general "malicious diety" attribute?
pardon my ignorance...but i seem to be in the minority.
why do most of you believe that smokey isn't jacob's brother..but a total entity altogether?
we see a lot of fake jacob's brother interacting with jacob, presumably after jacob put MIB and non-mom in the cave. hence jacob would know that the guy he was playing senet with is actually smokey (in MIB form) and not his brother. whats the point?
Well, it's made of smoke. Even if it is Jacob's brother, how do you keep sentient smoke from leaving an island? It can fly. It can just fly away from the island "across the sea" so to speak, if it wants to.
I figure it must not really want to.
The only thing we have seen that messes with it is a sonic fence, which, how does that work? How come this sentient smoke from the bowels of the island can be stopped by a sonic fence?
Jacob never had one of those to keep it on island, and he obviously can't stop it from moving around on the island. It does pretty much whatever the heck it wants on island. Unless you have a fence.
maybe there's a force on the island (much like the magnetic fields) that keep it there....which may makes some sense...maybe your "sonic fence" is actually a magnetic fence....who knows.
Just checked. In "House of the Rising Sun" Jack identifies the corpses as being dead around 50 years due to decomposition of their clothes.