Lost: Pieces to the Puzzle
By Casey Gillis on Feb. 17, 2010
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So you want to get “Lost” before the popular ABC series ends its run later this year, but don’t know where to start?
Don’t worry, dear reader, I’m here for you.
First, though, a disclaimer. There is really no way to completely catch up on this show without simply watching the previous five seasons. I’ve seen most of them myself, and I’m still confused the majority of the time.
But what I can offer is a quick-hit guide to get a beginner started.
(And, a note to “Lost” fans reading this: I’m probably going to leave out a character or storyline you deem important. For this, I apologize. There’s only so much space and, really, why don’t you try boiling this incredibly complex show down into a series of talking points. Not so easy, huh?)
Where it all began: In the pilot episode, which aired in September 2004, the Los Angeles-bound Oceanic Flight 815 crashed on a mysterious island. Of the 324 people on the plane, only 48* survived.
We eventually learn that the plane’s radio went out six hours into the flight, so the pilots planned to make an emergency landing in Fiji, about 1,000 miles off course, meaning any search-and-rescue teams would be looking for them in the wrong place.
These core survivors — only about 20 of whom we really get to know — have spent the past five seasons working together to stay alive in the midst of some pretty strange, and often life-threatening, situations.
* The second season introduced another group of survivors who were sitting in the tail section of the plane and crashed into a different area of the island. Most of them are now dead.
The island: Almost immediately, we discover that something isn’t quite right on this island.
The survivors, gathered near plane wreckage on the beach, start hearing strange noises from the surrounding jungle and, later, one of the pilots is violently torn from the plane’s fuselage by an unseen monster.
It’s a place where the sick are miraculously healed (one castaway, Rose, is cured of her cancer, while another, the previously paralyzed John Locke, can suddenly walk); polar bears and wild boars roam; and ghosts of the dead (if that’s what they really are) pop in and out.
Storytelling devices: The show has parceled out information about each character over the years, first through flashbacks to their pre-island lives (many of which reveal that the castaways had run-ins with each other and family members; some remember, some don’t), then through flash-forwards to the lives of six survivors who eventually get off the island (more on that later).
Last season was a doozy that involved time travel (the island’s electromagnetic energy sends a group of castaways skipping through time before they eventually land in the 1970s when it was inhabited by a group of scientists; see: Dharma Initiative).
This season, we’re getting what’s being called flash-sideways — basically two realities, one in which the survivors remain on the island and another where time is reset and their plane lands safely in Los Angeles. Each episode shifts between the two timelines, and one can only assume they will eventually come back together before the show signs off.
The Others: About halfway through the first season, we find out our castaways are not alone. There’s another group of people living on the island, and they have water, electricity and an evil leader named Benjamin Linus (see character list for more).
The Dharma Initiative: An organization that sent teams of scientists to the island in the 1970s to study its special properties, which include electromagnetic energy. They built a series of stations, which the castaways find as the series progresses, all over the island.
The Hatch/Swan Station: One of Dharma’s underground stations. It was originally designed to be a lab where scientists would study and manipulate the island’s energy. But after an incident in the 1970s, it became home to a computer, into which someone had to enter a series of numbers every 108 minutes. The first time the operator, Desmond, failed to punch in the numbers, the resulting energy burst caused Oceanic 815 to crash.
The Numbers: 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42. These pop up everywhere in the mythology of the show — they are the numbers that must be punched into the Swan Station computer, as well as one character’s winning lottery numbers — but their meaning has yet to be revealed.
The Black Rock: A slave ship that crashed on the island years, maybe even centuries, ago.
The Smoke Monster: A cloud of black smoke that moves around the island and terrorizes both the Others and the castaways. It can take on the form of other, usually deceased, people.
A rescue: After 108 days on the island six of the survivors — Jack, Kate, Sayid, Hurley, Sun and Aaron — were rescued. In order to protect the island and the survivors left behind, they came up with a cover story about being the only survivors.
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