Other than Kate petting the horse, I don't think that we have seen anything monster-related that has definitely been real. Maybe the important thing is that Paulo used his thinking ability in conjunction with the monster to create the spiders, and that they actually existed and bit Nikki. Does this make sense?

Actually, I don't believe it had anything to do with the monster. I believe the sounds of the monster were just the thing passing by.

Dr. Artz said earlier in the episode about the Medusa spider that one whiff of her pheremones and the males would come running. Since Nikki had a spider in a jar I'm assuming that's the female spider that Dr. Artz had. She opened the jar...threw the spider on Paulo...releasing the pheremones and here comes a male to munch on her leg.

So the theory about Paulo using a thinking ability may not be correct. There is a scientific explanation behind why those spiders showed up.

Although the appearance of the spiders would jibe with my theory about the power of the Island, which is that it has the ability to affect the laws of causality to allow improbable things to happen based on people's desires.

I don't think there was supposed to be a game-changer in this episode. Do you have a link to where the producers said there was supposed to be one?

The fact that we heard the smoke monster's sound and then suddenly all of those spiders appeared proves it was more than just male spiders attracted by the scent of the female. The spiders were going after Nikki not moving to where the dead female spider was.

I don't think there was any game changer on this episode. But I do believe that the character bomb took place on the last episode on the Cooper scene...

I agree with you. I think the "magical box" Ben spoke of last episode has something to do with the smoke monster. And I think Paulo wished for those spiders to come and attack Nikki. It seems logical that the two would be linked in some way with everything appearing as it has on the island.