Lost on "Lost"? Here's a Pre-Finale Recap
The series finale of "Lost" is swiftly approaching, and even those who faithfully watch the show might not feel properly prepared for the drama's two-and-a-half hour ending on Sunday night. To help newcomers and veterans alike catch up, here's a season-by-season breakdown of the major plot points from the series.
Obviously, spoilers abound beyond this point. But if you're planning on watching the finale, you're probably not too worried about finding out what came before. Also, this isn't meant to be an all-encompassing summary of the series - just enough so that you can watch the finale without being any more confused than the rest of the "Lost" fans.
Season 1
- Oceanic 815 crashes on an island while traveling from Sydney to Los Angeles.
- The major survivors are: spinal surgeon Dr. Jack Shepherd; fugitive Kate Austen; unlucky lottery-winner Hugo "Hurley" Reyes; con-man James "Sawyer" Ford; married Korean couple Jin and Sun Kwon; pregnant Claire Littleton; Iraqi torturer Sayid Jarrah; wise Rose Henderson; wheelchair-bound John Locke; Boone Carlyle and his spoiled stepsister Shannon Rutherford; heroin-addicted rock star Charlie Pace; construction worker Michael Dawson and his son, Walt.
- The island has supernatural properties. Locke regains his ability to walk, the survivors find and kill a polar bear and the Oceanic pilot is devoured by what looks like a black cloud of smoke (which fans quickly dubbed "the smoke monster").
- Also on the island are the "Others," a group with unclear intentions who are living on the island.
- While hunting for boar, Locke comes upon a piece of metal buried in the ground. He enlists the help of Boone to dig it out, and they discover it's the door to an underground hatch. There are numbers written on the door - 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42 - that are also revealed to be the numbers Hurley previously used to win the lottery. They show up often throughout the seasons, both on and off the island.
- Claire gives birth to a baby boy, named Aaron.
- Locke and Boone also discover a beech plane lodged in the trees in the forest. Locke instructs Boone to climb up to the plane, which crashes to the ground. He dies back at the camp.
- In hopes of leaving the island, Michael constructs a raft and sets sail with Walt, Sawyer and Jin. Another boat appears in the distance, but its captain and crew are members of the Others. They kidnap Walt and set the raft on fire.
- After Boone's death, Locke returns to the hatch and screams in anguish. A light shines up from inside the hatch, cementing in Locke's mind that it is his purpose to be on this island, and to open the hatch. Under fear of an attack from the Others, some of the survivors procure dynamite from the Black Rock, an old slave ship that crashed on the island centuries earlier, and blow the hatch door open.
Season 2
- The hatch is revealed to be constructed by a scientific research team called the Dharma Initiative, that lived on the island in the 1970s. There are multiple stations throughout the island, with different names and purposes. The hatch is called the Swan, and is used to control the high amounts of electromagnetic energy around the station.
- Desmond Hume, a Scottish man who ended up on the island after his boat crashed there (he had been trying to sail around the world in order to impress Charles Widmore, the father of his girlfriend, Penelope), has been living in the Swan station, where he must press a button on a computer inside the Swan every 108 minutes. If he doesn't push the button, he claims, the world will end.
- Michael, Jin and Sawyer survive the raft explosion and wash up on the island shore, but are found by survivors from the tail end of the Oceanic 815 plane, which crashed on a different part of the island. This group is led by Ana Lucia Cortez, a Los Angeles cop with an extreme attitude. There is also Mr. Eko, a former Nigerian drug warlord, Libby, a wealthy widow, and Bernard Henderson, Rose's husband.
- Jin, Sawyer and Michael bring the Tailies back to the main camp, but en route Ana Lucia accidentally shoots and kills Shannon.
- A man named Henry Gale sparks a debate among the survivors - he claims his balloon crash-landed on the island (yes, that's Gale as in Dorothy and "The Wizard of Oz"), but some think he's a covert member of the Others. They lock him in the Swan's weapons room, and Jack and Locke argue over how to deal with him.
- Michael runs off into the jungle to find his son, and comes across the Others. They offer to give back Walt if Michael returns to camp and frees Henry Gale. He also must return to the Others with four people from the survivors camp: Jack, Kate, Sawyer and Hurley. Michael returns and carries out his plan, shooting and killing Ana Lucia and Libby in the process.
- Henry Gale, whose real name is Benjamin Linus, gives Michael a boat and instructs him and Walt to leave the island. Jack, Kate and Sawyer are taken as prisoners and Hurley is released with instructions to go back to camp and tell everyone not to come looking for their friends.
- Locke has a crisis of faith over whether or not pushing the button is truly necessary. Desmond reveals that he is the reason that Oceanic 815 crashed on the island - he pushed the button too late and the subsequent burst of electromagnetic energy caused the plane crash. Locke is not deterred and destroys the computer, but Desmond sneaks away to deploy the hatch's failsafe key. A piercing sound and flash of white light surround the entire island, and the Swan implodes and is destroyed. Everyone who was inside is safe.
- Scientists working for Desmond's love, Penelope Widmore, see the electromagnetic activity and locate the island.
Season 3
- Jack is imprisoned in an underwater Dharma station called the Hydra, while Sawyer and Kate are locked in bear cages back on shore. They - and the Others - are on a smaller, separate island off the coast from the main island.
- Jack is visited and questioned by an Other named Juliet, who was brought to the island by the Others but wants to escape.
- Benjamin Linus, the leader of the Others, offers to let Jack off the island if operates on Ben, who has a spinal tumor. Juliet conspires with Jack to purposely kill Ben on the operating table. Jack doesn't kill Ben, but stops mid-surgery and threatens to kill him unless Sawyer and Kate are given time to escape, which they do.
- Juliect defects from the Others and joins the survivors.
- Mr. Eko is lured into the jungle by a man who appears to be his brother but is really the smoke monster, which immediately kills him.
- Desmond can see the future -- in particular, Charlie's impending death.
- Sun discovers she's pregnant
- Desmond, Charlie, Hurley and Jin discover Naomi, a parachutist who says she has a boat nearby and that she was hired by Penelope Widmore, Desmond's former girlfriend, to find and rescue him. She tells them that the rest of the world believes the Oceanic 815 was found on the ocean floor with no survivors.
- Sayid wants to send a distress call to the boat using Naomi's satellite phone, but signals going to and from the island are jammed. Desmond says Charlie must go to an underwater Dharma station called the Looking Glass in order to save Claire and Aaron, and to un-block the transmissions, but he'll die doing it.
- Charlie goes to the Looking Glass with Desmond. After successfully turning off the jammer, Charlie makes contact with Penny, who knows nothing about Naomi or the boat. Charlie drowns when an Other named Mikhail sets off a hand grenade outside the communication room's porthole, but before he dies he warns Desmond by writing "Not Penny's Boat" on his hand.
- The season ends with a flashforward - instead of a flashback - with Jack telling Kate that they never should have left the island. They have been living off of the island for three years - it is now 2007.
Season 4
- Back in 2004, when the survivors learn that Penny didn't send the freighter, the Oceanic survivors split into two groups - Jack's group waits for the freighter to be rescued, while Locke's group goes to the barracks to hide.
- A physicist named Daniel Faraday, a member of the freighter crew, parachutes onto the island. His team also includes Miles, a ghost whisperer, Charlotte, an anthropologist, and Frank Lapidus, who was supposed to be the pilot of Oceanic 815 on the day that it crashed but was replaced. Miles later admits that the real reason they're there is to find Ben, and it's later reveled that they were hired by Charles Widmore to find the island.
- Ben has a spy on the boat - Michael Dawson, who left with Walt at the end of Season 2. Michael goes on the freighter under an alias with the job of making sure no one on the island gets hurt.
- A mercenary team onboard the freighter, led by a man named Martin Keamy, attack Locke's camp while looking for Ben. They kill a number of people, including Ben's daughter, Alex, before Ben is able to kill Keamy.
- Locke goes to find Jacob - the mysterious leader of the Others - for instructions on how to protect the island from the freighter team. He finds Jack's father, Christian Shepherd, who claims to speak on behalf of Jacob and tells Locke that he must move the island.
- It's revealed that Claire and Jack have the same father. Claire disappears from the barracks and leaves Aaron behind.
- Kate, Jack, Aaron, Sayid, Hurley, Desmond, and Sun take off on Frank's helicopter. The freighter explodes, apparently killing the crew, Michael and Jin, who was on board in hopes of escaping with Sun.
- Ben tells Locke he must be the one to move the island, because once someone moves the island, he or she is banished. Ben goes to another Dharma station - the Orchid - and then travels below ground and turns a frozen wheel, which moves the island in space and time, to keep Charles Widmore from finding it.
- The helicopter crashes into the ocean but the passengers are rescued by Penny Widmore, who has been searching for the island to find Desmond. She, Desmond and Frank go into hiding, and the remaining passengers - Jack, Kate, Aaron, Sun, Sayid and Hurley, are "rescued" and become known as the Oceanic Six. They create a cover story in which all of the other survivors died, so that no one will go looking for the island.
- John Locke leaves the island and makes contact with some of the Six under the pseudonym "Jeremy Bentham." He tells Jack that everyone has to go back to the island.
- Locke is later found dead in New York, after apparently hanging himself. While viewing Locke's body at the funeral home in Los Angeles, Jack runs into Ben, who tells him that everyone must go back to the island - including Locke's body.
Season 5
- A flashback show Jacob, the Others' god-like leader, as a seemingly ordinary man, dressed in white and sitting on the island's shore. We know it's centuries earlier, because we see the Black Rock, the slave ship the dynamite was procured from in Season 1, sailing on the horizon. The Man in Black sits with Jacob, who tells him that one day he will find a loophole and kill him.
- After Ben turned the frozen wheel, the island begins jumping through space and time - taking the remaining survivors and the Kahana's scientific team with it.
- During a flash, everyone ends up in 1954, and they stumble upon the Others - Richard is still with them, and it becomes obvious that he never ages, as he looks exactly the same as he did in the present. Richard mistakes the survivors and scientists for members of the American army, who left a nuclear bomb on the island after World War II. Faraday tells them to bury it. We also discover that both Charles Widmore and Eloise Hawking were members of the Others.
- Charlotte dies after suffering negative effects from all the time travel.
- Jin also washes up on shore, having survived the freighter crash, and reunites with the survivors.
- Locke returns to the Orchid, where he sees the frozen wheel moving back and forth - the reason for all the time jumping. Christian Shepherd appears and tells him to find Eloise. Locke sets the wheel straight as he moves it, ending the time jumping, but moving it causes him to leave the island.
- None of the survivors agree to go back to the island with Locke. In anguish over failing in his mission, he writes a suicide note and prepares to hang himself in his hotel room. Ben appears and stops Locke from killing himself. Locke gives Ben information on Eloise, and then Ben suddenly strangles him to death and hangs him from the hotel room ceiling, staging the suicide.
- When the island stops moving, Sawyer, Jin, Juliet, Faraday and Miles are in 1974. They soon encounter members of the Dharma Initiative, who allow all of them to join their team, where they build a life during the three years the Oceanic Six live off the island. Sawyer and Juliet fall in love and begin living together.
- Eloise Hawking tells Ben, Jack, Sun and Desmond that the only way to return to the island is on Ajira Airways flight 316 to Guam, and they must recreate as many of the circumstances from the Oceanic 815 flight as possible. Desmond storms out, but Eloise warns that the island isn't finished with him yet. She also gives him Jack Locke's suicide note.
- Kate, overwhelmed with guilt about taking and raising Aaron, finds Claire's mother and leaves him with her.
- Jack, Sayid (in handcuffs, escorted by Ilana, who works for Jacob), Hurley (with Charlie's guitar), Kate, Sun, Ben and Locke's body all take off on the Ajira Airways flight. Once in the air, Jack learns their pilot is Frank Lapidus, the helicopter pilot from the freighter. He opens Locke's note, which states, "Jack, I wish you had believed me," and then the plane is engulfed by a flash of light.
- The Ajira plane lands on Hydra island (the smaller island off the coast of the main one), with the plane mostly intact. Some of the survivors are missing - Jack, Kate, Hurley and Sayid.
- Locke is alive again. He finds Sun and Ben and sets off with them to find the Others, where he speaks to Richard and orders him to take them to Jacob. Locke pulls Ben aside and tells him that they are going to Jacob because he wants to kill him, and wants Ben to be the one to do it.
- Jack wakes up after the plane crash in the middle of the island, but soon discovers it's not the present - it's 1977. Sawyer uses his Dharma Initiative connections to put them on the list of new recruits joining the team.
- Daniel Faraday tells Jack that he plans to blow up the nuclear bomb they buried in 1954. An "incident" at the Swan station in 1977 caused the release of powerful electromagnetic energy, which the Swan station then had to control. If they destroy the Swan construction site, there would be no "incident," which in turn would prevent the Oceanic crash from ever happening.
- Faraday goes to find his mother, who is still part of the Others. She kills him, not realizing who he is.
- Jack and Sayid find the bomb and remove its explosive core. Jack drops the bomb into the hole at the Swan construction site, but it doesn't detonate. Instead, a drill digging into the ground at the site hits the pocket of electromagnetic energy and everything metal starts being sucked into the hole - anything from guns to construction equipment. A set of chains gets wrapped around Juliet's legs and she's dragged into the hole. Sawyer tries to save her, but the magnetic pull is too strong and she falls in.
- Locke's group arrives at the four-toed statue on the beach's shore, where Richard says Jacob lives. Locke and Ben go inside, and everyone else waits. Ilana and members of her group join them, carrying a large crate. They open it, and inside is the dead body of John Locke.
- Inside the statue, Locke, now revealed to be someone (or something else) taking on his form, meets Jacob with Ben. Ben stabs him and Locke kicks his body into the fire.
-Juliet, badly hurt but still alive, sees the atomic bomb core near her inside the Swan site and uses a rock to smash it, causing it to explode and for everything to erupt in a bright, white light.
Season 6
- Two timelines are at work: one in which Oceanic 815 never crashes on the island (the "sideways timeline") and the original one, where the bomb was detonated.
- Before his death, Jacob designated six "candidates" to vie for his position as island protector after his death: Jack, Sayid, Sawyer, Locke, Hurley and one of the Kwons (either Jin or Sun). With Locke dead, only five are left.
- Locke is revealed to the Man in Black/the smoke monster, who has also been taking on the form of Christian Shepherd and all the other dead people seen on the island. He wants to leave the island, but can't do so unless all the "candidates" to replace Jacob are dead. Island rules forbid him from killing them himself, so he hopes to get them to all kill one another.
- Claire is found in the jungle, where she has been living alone for three years, with only the smoke monster for company. She's clearly deranged and under his influence, and attempts to kill Kate for taking and raising Aaron but is stopped by Locke.
- Jacob and the Man in Black are revealed to be twin brothers. The woman who raised them protects a cave filled with a glowing light that lives at the heart of the island. She tells the boys that every man has a bit of this light inside them, and if it ever went out, it would go out everywhere. She also says that one of them will have to eventually take over her job.
- The Man in Black, who wants to leave the island, kills their mother. Jacob, enraged over her death, throws him into the light. This unleashes the smoke monster onto the island. Jacob becomes the island's protector, keeping the smoke monster/his brother from ever leaving the island.
- Charles Widmore returns to the island by submarine. He brings Desmond with him, because of Desmond's strange relationship with time and the island's electromagnetic power.
- Desmond, in the sideways timeline, begins to recover memories from the original timeline. He then searches out the other Oceanic survivors to try and bring them all together, so they can remember the original timeline.
- It's revealed that Richard came to the island on the Black Rock, and that Jacob made him live forever so he could be a mediator between Jacob and anyone else who comes to the island. Richard can not kill himself because of the gift Jacob gave him, but the smoke monster throws him into a tree, supposedly killing him.
- The Man in Black gets all the candidates trapped on a submarine with a bomb, in hopes of killing them. The explosion kills Sayid, Jin, Sun and Frank Lapidus, but everyone else escapes. Back on the island, Jack, Kate, Sawyer and Hurley vow to kill the Man in Black.
-Jack volunteers to become the new Jacob, and Jacob makes Jack "like him." Jacob tells the other candidates that they'll have to figure out how to kill the Man in Black, before he kills them.
- Ben Linus kills Widmore, but not before Widmore reveals to the Man in Black that Desmond is a "failsafe" - an extra candidate designated by Jacob in case the other candidates die. The Man in Black reveals that he wants to blow up the island.
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