Okay first of all this is making the assumption that in some way, Smokey the Island Monster was involved in tonight's episode. So far I have seen no hard evidence, except that they made a good point of bringing him up over and over through the episode... which in my experience of Lost is about as good as hard evidence as it often gets.

So, given the idea that Smokey might have had a hand in Pikki's untimely deaths, I suddenly have memories of Eko's death. We know from Eko's death that Smokey has a judge-complex, and that he has insights into the skeletons in the closet of the Losties. This resulted in Eko's ultimate condemnation and judgment.

We know that Eko was repentant; moved on from his past... yet tortured inside. Smokey decided he serve the punishment for his crimes... and Eko died.

Well there are a lot of similarities here... Paulo and Nikki have skeletons in their closet. However, Paulo evidently showed regret and ultimately just wanted Nikki to be with him. But their crime was still weighing on them... and they died. (well, at least it seems so.)

Another clue may be the airplane scene... it looks like the point of that scene was to find the Pearl hatch, but what if the airplane part was a reference back to Eko's death? hmm

So my hypothesis: could Smokey feed off of guilt and regret? Emotion? Look at Jack... his emotion over his dad... and then what? Smokey. Just another example.

Lots of thoughts going through my mind... hopefully they spur a little discussion and make a little sense. :-)

I don't think Nikki had any regret or guilt over what she did to Paulo -
He may have had regret over stealing and killing the guy but I don't think she did AND I think smokey was there for her - not him -
Coming to teach!

Smokey wasnt in this eppy at all unless he was the spiders. Nikki is was not dead when they started to bury her but Paulo was because he had been bitten by the female and the male spider Nikki was just bit by the female and thus they became like Romeo and Juliet