Man in Black

The fictional character and the main antagonist on the American ABC television series Lost is most frequently referred to as The Man in Black (but also referred to as "The Smoke Monster" or simply "The Monster" by the main characters). He appeared primarily as a cloud of black smoke until the final episode of season five where he appeared as a middle-aged man dressed in black. In season six, he primarily appeared in the physical form of John Locke (Terry O'Quinn). He exhibited the ability to "scan" the minds and memories of others, allowing him to confront characters such as Mr. Eko (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) and Ben Linus (Michael Emerson), with "judgment" (a replay of their pasts), and to assume the forms and memories of the deceased, starting with the original Man in Black himself, his brother Jacob (Mark Pellegrino), or Christian Shephard (John Terry), Yemi (Adetokumboh M'Cormack), Alex Rousseau (Tania Raymonde), and Locke. According to Jacob, who explains this to Richard Alpert (Néstor Carbonell), it is the incarnation of evil, and its primary goal—to escape from the island—would be the "end of everything good". Various other characters have implied that his escape would be catastrophic and could even cause the destruction of reality. A longtime resident of the island that serves as the main setting of Lost, the true nature of The Man in Black was long shrouded in mystery. It had been described by Lost producer Damon Lindelof as "one of the biggest secrets" of the mythology of Lost while the producers have often hinted that the black cloud of smoke was not a monster in the traditional sense. TV Guide included the character in their "The 60 Nastiest Villains of All Time" list in 2013. Arc Before the crash of Oceanic 815 Prior to the twentieth century, The Man in Black's earliest chronological appearance occurs in the sixth-season episode "Across the Sea", which depicts his birth on the island to a woman named Claudia (Lela Loren), whose ship breaks apart offshore. An unnamed woman (Allison Janney) delivers him and his twin brother Jacob (Mark Pellegrino) but kills their mother and raises the boys herself. Jacob is swaddled in light cloth while The Man in Black is wrapped in dark. The woman raises the twins to be ignorant of a world beyond the island and of death itself. She also raises them to be distrustful of humanity, whom she regards as corrupt and dangerous.