An Introduction to the Characters of Lost

A plane crash which no one has a right to survive occurs on a remote island whose coordinates do not exist on any known map. There are pre-existing tenants of said island who have a mysterious agenda. There is a French woman who was stranded sixteen years before our new castaways arrive and has come to terms with her isolation by developing a feral link with her new home. Various events previous to the crash and then again afterward weave all of these characters together in a continuing and often dizzying dance, with each new revelation providing more questions than answers. Add to this several entities that exist outside of our odd little isle's perimeter who also have an impact on all of its inhabitants and you have the beginning of the mythology that is 'Lost'. It is a fascinating mystery tale that is actually a wide set of stories intertwining, with enough extra twists and turns to each plot line to give any long-running daytime soap opera more than a good run for its money.

'Lost' first and foremost is a character study. And it is on a grand scale. Strangers on a flight dubbed Oceanic 815 are headed to Los Angeles, California from Sydney, Australia and become stranded together when the magnetic phenomenon, one of several anomalies residing on this twisted paradise, pulls their plane abruptly down from the sky. Shortly upon their unscheduled arrival they must learn to get along with each other and work together. Not an easy task even for people who know and care about each other, so the first season is as much about these characters learning about each other and how to cope with their diversities as well as about the new abode upon which they find themselves. And the island, as revealed in the very first episode, is a character unto itself with quirky mood swings, various deadly dangers and a myriad of secrets all its own. Much of the central plot is driven by the various background stories of each character, whose pre-island lives are revealed in a plethora of flashbacks. These flashbacks both reveal answers and lead to new questions about our various players as the dramas unfold.

Paradise

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