On the Swan blast door, the smoke monster was called Cerberus. Rousseau called it the island's "security system." As the series winds down, it is time to re-examine MIB-Smokey in terms from past seasons:
Cerberus has been described as a three headed monster, with heads of a lion, hound and wolf with a tail of a snake. Cerberus’ three heads relate to the threefold symbol of the baser forces of life. They represent the past, the present and the time yet to come.
Dante described Cerberus as “il gran vermo inferno” thus linking the monsters with the legendary worms and orms.
Cerberus is the watchdog of Hell. He is often pictured with Hades (Satan), his master. He can be found on the banks of the river Styx, where he had the task of eating any mortals who attempted to enter, and any spirits who attempted to escape.
Cerberus was notorious for not allowing mortals who were still alive to enter the Underworld, with the exception of a handful of mythological characters. Ancient Greeks and Romans placed a coin in a small cake in the hands of their deceased: the coin to pay the ferryman who ferried souls across the River Styx, and a cake to pacify Cerberus.Cerberus has become an archetype for a protector, particularly the protector of a gate, door or boundary (as opposed to a personal protector). In this guise Cerberus features widely in fiction and cultural works from the Middle Ages (in Dante's work, in Canto VI of Inferno (third circle)) to the modern time (as in Harry Potter & the Philosopher's Stone, in the character of Fluffy) and a number of modern security and warfare-related artifacts named after it.
So what is MIB-Smokey? In Season 6, he is getting into a groove of being a lying, manipulating con-artist mass murderer. In prior seasons, it appeared as an uncontrollable beast (in smoke form) who destroyed just about everyone in its path. If MIB is Cerberus, its job was to eat any humans who attempted to get through the gate to Hell. There were only a few exceptions to that rule. This rule makes some sense from S1E1 forward.
He also stood at the gate to stop any spirits from leaving Hell. If the island is Hell as Richard bellowed last week, then MIB should never have allowed any of the O6 to leave, let alone allow them to return.
There is nothing in the literature that states how one destroys Cerberus. It can only be pacified by drugged cakes, or lulled to sleep by music.
So the conclusion is that MIB as the smoke monster may not be the same smoke monster-Cerberus-security system from past seasons. Did MIB somehow fuse Smokey and himself into the Flocke form? Or does MIB (as Satan) merely "call" his smoke monster guard beast whenever he needs a destructive force?
