You gotta give the Lost writers a lot of credit. Over the course of six seasons, the storytellers behind the hit ABC drama actually did answer the vast majority of the questions they raised. We know, for example, why Oceanic 815 crashed on a tropical island, why the survivors found polar bears there, why there were Others (and immortal beings) on the seemingly deserted isle, and whether our heroes were actually dead the whole time.
Still, some mysteries remain, whether by narrative oversight or producer decree. We can grow flash-forward beards and shout “We have to go back!” as much as we want, but no number of return trips to the Island will yield answers. Here are some of the questions nagging us the most.
1. Who was with “Christian Shephard” in the cabin?
In the Season 4 premiere, Hurley (Jorge Garcia) stumbled upon the same cabin to which Ben (Michael Emerson) took Locke (Terry O’Quinn) to meet Jacob (Mark Pellegrino). This time, though, Hurley peered through the windowed front door and saw Christian Shephard (John Terry), Jack’s (Matthew Fox) seemingly dead father, sitting in a rocking chair. But then another face appears in the window, startling Hurley, who bolts. We later learn that Christian was one of the Man in Black’s (Titus Welliver) disguises. So if that was the Man in Black, who was the other man? There was a fan theory that it might’ve been Jacob, but if so, why the menacing disguise all of a sudden?
2. What were Ben and Charles’ rules?
When Keamy (Kevin Durand), leader of Charles’ (Alan Dale) mercenary team, kills Alex (Tania Raymonde), Ben’s adoptive daughter, in Season 4’s “The Shape of Things to Come,” Ben is shocked that Charles “changed the rules.” And when Ben confronts Charles in London at the end of that same episode, and Charles asks Ben if he has come to kill him, Ben says, “We both know I can’t do that.” Why, though? Whose rules are these, and what are they? Are they related to the rules by which Jacob and the Man in Black must abide?
3. Who was in the outrigger?
Amid the time flashes in Season 5’s “The Little Prince,” Locke, Charlotte (Rebecca Mader), Daniel (Jeremy Davies), Miles (Ken Leung), Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell), and Sawyer (Josh Holloway) take an outrigger and start paddling toward the Orchid station. But then another outrigger appears, and the people in that vessel open fire. Another time flash takes our heroes out of harm’s way, but we never learn who those other people were. (The show’s producers have admitted that they chose not to answer this question for the sake of more interesting stories.)
4. Why didn’t Sun end up in 1977 with her friends on Ajira Flight 316?
Season 5’s “Namaste” had Sun (Yunjin Kim), Kate (Evangeline Lilly), Sayid (Naveen Andrews), Hurley, and Jack — five of the Oceanic Six — all end up back on the Island after Ajira Flight 316 crash-landed on the nearby Hydra Island, thanks to Eloise Hawking’s (Fionnula Flanagan) knowledge of the Island’s rules. But because Ajira 316 wasn’t enough of a match to Oceanic 815, things got wonky, and everyone in the Oceanic Six except Sun ended up in 1977. Yes, all those other characters were at one point candidates for Jacob’s successor, but if Jacob crossed Kate off the list for becoming a mother, surely he’d do the same for Sun.
5. Who was the Mother?
We got an exposition dump in Season 6’s “Across the Sea,” when we met Allison Janney’s Mother character, the woman who finds Jacob and the Man in Black’s biological mother, kills her, and then raises the boys as her own. She serves as protector of the Island’s light until she passes that mantle to Jacob, and then she’s killed by the Man in Black, who has by then discovered her crimes. But what’s her origin story? How did she get to the Island? As she herself says, “Every question I answer will simply lead to another question.”
6. Why did only some characters move on together?
Lost’s polarizing series finale reveals that the flash-sideways world is a space outside of time where the Islanders can find one another, regardless of when they die, and “let go” before “moving on” together. That group includes a batch of Oceanic 815 survivors, plus Juliet, Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick), and Penny (Sonya Walger). We get why some major characters are absent — Michael’s (Harold Perrienau) spirit is stuck on the Island and needs Walt (Malcolm David Kelley) to get unstuck, Ana Lucia (Michelle Rodriguez) is “not ready,” Eko (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) seemed to find his own afterlife with his brother — but where, for example, was Miles?
