to me, all the explanation I needed was in the last season when Jacob held the bottle of liquid to Richard and talked about the island keeping the 'evil' from getting out (smoke monster). I thought that was perfect - it was simple and made me satisfied with the current scenario.

But then, a few episodes later, the story of Jacob and his brother is revealed and the smoke monster is revealed to simply be a mistake caused by Jacob, completely negating the previous analogy, which set my mind back to square 1.

One of the things that really bugged me about the show was I couldn't figure out why we were supposed to be seeing the smokey guy as the 'baddie'. All he wanted to do is leave the island, which is all our heroes wanted to do, so we're just supposed to accept he's the villain for some reason. He was right though - he was there by accident, his mother is murdered in arguably the show's most chilling scene, and he's kept there against his will under the pretense of lies. And he's the bad guy why??