He s Dead John From the episode The Cost of Living To paraphrase Star Trek s Bones McCoy droll facts of life and death in space I suppose that the actor who played Mr Eko unintendedly did a favor to the producers and writers by having the plot move in a different direction sans the Eko character As we ve come to know the situation the MIB was the Smoke Monster and the contentious rival on the island with Jacob for control Since it s been established that the monster can assume the form of dead corspes on the island and uses them to manipulate the survivors there ultimately to their demise and by lying and otherwise driving ppl insane to expediate its ends then Mr Eko s death was a stroke of luck for the 815 crew Why would I say this It s because Eko was A WILD CARD AND A MAD DOG With his volatile and warped personality as mass murderer turned guilt ridden and pentative man of the cloth this was the made for order perscription of a potentially perfect killing tool to exterinate the survivors AND even perhaps the Others as Eko was uniquly capable of We ve seen how Smokey successfully drove and manipulated Russeau and later Calire to do his bidding to kill as many of the inhabitants on the island as possible With Eko MIB had the trifecta puppet Meancing strength and prowess religious fervor and needy for direction and purpose The 815 people really didn t understand whom or what they had in their midst Perhaps Ben Linus did Smokey wanted to use Eko ASAP so while the nefarious Nigerian was recuperating from his attack by the Dharma Bears Smokey arranged a terrifying image to Mr Eko that the latter was well familiar with that being the image of SHANGO S FIREY JUSTICE As the legend goes in the West African Orisha myths Shango the original Thunder God was also the diety of swift and exacting justice he would send the dancing fire to chase the guilty out of every abode of safety and rest until the evil one confessed Bravo to the writers and the actor for insering this into the plot When confronted with Smokey using Eko s dead brother Demme to manipulate him the Monster gets a big surprise and learns that Eko in his own mind doesn t think he s done anything wrong as he thought he was protecting his brother This curously enrages the monster who quickly and gruesomely dispatches Eko Perhaps Smokey surmised that Eko was too volatile even for it to manipulate and therfore was of no use to him in any attempt to kill the island s inhabitants Moral of this episode is that one should never trust a religious fanatic of any stripe Just like those two hapless fools who recently DELIBERATELY sailed into Somali waters and let themselves be captured and quickly killed by the cosairs All in the name of faith From a comment dated in the spring of 2010A D Veryverser