Main Characters
Characters are listed alphabetically. "Starring season(s)" refers to the season in which an actor or actress received star billing for playing a character. "Recurring season(s)" identifies a season in which an actor or actress appeared, but received guest star or special guest star billing.
| Name | Actor/actress | Starring seasons | Recurring seasons | Episode count |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Richard Alpert | Nestor Carbonell | 6 | 3, 4, 5 | 30 |
| Richard Alpert is the seemingly ageless advisor to the leader of The Others. Richard once lived in the Canary Islands with his ailing wife in the year 1867. After accidentally killing a greedy doctor while seeking medicine for his wife, he was sold to a slaver just minutes before his execution. He was imprisoned on the Black Rock as it set sail for the New World. However, a raging storm caused the slave ship to be beached on the island. The Man in Black attempted to trick him into killing Jacob, but Richard was instead recruited by Jacob as an advisor. Jacob also granted Richard eternal youth. Richard has since acted as advisor to the many leaders of the Others, including Ben Linus and Charles Widmore. At the end of the series he is once again able to age and leaves the Island on the Ajira Flight. | ||||
| Kate Austen | Evangeline Lilly | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 | — | 108 |
| After killing her abusive stepfather (later revealed to be her real father), Kate goes on the run and is eventually captured by a federal marshal while in Australia after being taken in by a farmer, Ray Mullen, who planned and carried out his idea of handing her in for the $23,000 reward after seeing her mugshot. Kate works on his farm for nearly three months before being handed over to the cops. On the island, Kate is attracted to both Sawyer and Jack, and eventually has a short relationship with Sawyer. After escaping the island, she is put on trial for murder, but subsequently makes a highly favorable plea bargain that does not require prison time. She becomes engaged to Jack and raises Claire's son Aaron as her own, pretending to be his biological mother as part of the Oceanic 6 cover story. Before Sawyer jumped out of the helicopter that would have brought him to safety with her, Sawyer whispered something in Kate's ear, which she will not reveal to Jack. His jealousy becomes the demise of their relationship. She resists returning to the island, but eventually decides that she will. She arrives on the island in 1977 and joins the Dharma Initiative, along with Jack and Hurley. Along with them she returns to the present time and searches for Claire. She mortally wounds the Man in Black during his fight with Jack and leaves the Island with Sawyer and Claire on the Ajira Flight at the end of the series. | ||||
| Juliet Burke | Elizabeth Mitchell | 3, 4, 5 | 6 | 49 |
| Juliet is a fertility doctor recruited by the Others. She develops a relationship with Goodwin, who is killed by Ana Lucia, and Juliet blames Ben. Ben is in love with her and refuses to let her leave the island - and he orchestrated Goodwin's death out of jealousy. Although Juliet acts initially as Jack's interrogator when he, Sawyer and Kate are captured, she helps them, escapes and joins the Oceanic 815 crash survivors. She defies Ben's orders to infiltrate the survivors' camp, and she has clear romantic feelings for Jack. She is left behind when the Oceanic Six leave the island, and when the recurring time flashes leave Juliet and the others in the mid-1970s, she becomes a mechanic for the Dharma Initiative and starts a relationship with Sawyer. Juliet ultimately dies when she becomes trapped under debris as a result of The Incident and detonates a hydrogen bomb in order to reset the island's timeline. | ||||
| Boone Carlyle | Ian Somerhalder | 1 | 2, 3, 6 | 28 |
| Boone is the stepbrother of Shannon, with whom he is in love. On the island, he spends much of his time hunting with Locke, and together they find the first hatch. He slowly learns that Shannon is manipulative and does not love him, but he remains protective of her. When John's legs mysteriously malfunction, Boone climbs into a crashed plane, perched in a tree, and uses its radio to contact (although he doesn't know it) the tail section survivors. The plane falls with Boone in it, and his leg and torso are crushed. John carries him back to the camp to be treated by Jack and Sun, but Boone dies shortly thereafter. | ||||
| Ana Lucia Cortez | Michelle Rodriguez | 2 | 1, 5, 6 | 23 |
| A former LAPD police officer, Ana Lucia is the leader of the survivors of the tail section of Flight 815. She loses her job as a police officer after killing the man who had previously shot her, killing her unborn child. She meets Christian at LAX and agrees to accompany him to Australia. Before the flight back to L.A. she chats up Jack, who she doesn't know is Christian's son, at the airport bar. Ana Lucia is very protective of her fellow survivors after several are kidnapped, and she is extremely distrusting of others. She eventually kills Goodwin after discovering that he is not a survivor of the crash. She also inadvertently kills Shannon. Ana Lucia is shot and killed by Michael Dawson while he tries to free Ben, the leader of the "Others", but she appears after her death in visions to several of the characters, notably Hurley. | ||||
| Michael Dawson | Harold Perrineau | 1, 2, 4 | 6 | 48 |
| Michael is a New York artist and construction worker who has not communicated with his son Walt since he was a baby. When Walt's mother dies in Australia, Michael comes to collect his son (and Walt's dog, Vincent). Michael is the first on the island to learn that Sun speaks English, and he has various conflicts with Jin. While trying to escape the Island via raft, Michael's son Walt is abducted by the Others. Michael strikes a deal with the Others wherein he exchanges Kate, Jack, Sawyer, and Hurley for Walt, and together the two leave the island by boat. However; when they return home, Walt goes to live with his grandmother after finding out that Michael killed Libby and Ana Lucia while carrying out his part of the deal. Michael tries to commit suicide a couple times but soon finds out that "the island won't let him die". He later infiltrates the Kahana freighter crew under the orders of Ben, in the hopes of making up for the lives he took by saving those of the people left on the island. He is killed in an explosion on the Kahana while trying to deactivate a bomb. | ||||
| Mr. Eko | Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje | 2, 3 | — | 21 |
| Mr. Eko is a former Nigerian drug lord turned priest who crashes on the island with the tail section survivors. After killing two of the others who were trying to kidnap him he does not speak for 40 days. Upon joining the fuselage survivors' camp, Eko becomes part of the group involved in pressing a button in a hatch. He begins building a church on the island with Charlie, but this is abandoned when he becomes obsessed with the hatch and the button within. Eko is haunted by visions of his brother, who died in Nigeria and whose body was on a plane that crashed on the island before Eko's arrival. These visions lead Eko and John to discover another Dharma station. Eko meets the smoke monster on more than one occasion in the Island's forests, and is eventually killed by it. | ||||
| Daniel Faraday | Jeremy Davies | 4, 5, 6 | — | 23 |
| Faraday is a physicist hired to go to the Island by Charles Widmore. He initially claims to have intentions to save the 815 crash survivors, but this proves to be untrue. Daniel is connected to Desmond in several ways - Desmond visits him at Oxford during a flashback in time. Later, when John moves the island, Daniel travels back in time and visits Desmond in the hatch, to tell him how to save the island. Even though he initially lied about his intent to save the survivors, Daniel ends up ferrying several of them, including Sun and Jin, to the Kahana. He is later revealed to be the son of Eloise Hawking and Charles Widmore, and is shot and killed by his mother in the season 5 episode The Variable. | ||||
| Nikki Fernandez | Kiele Sanchez | 3 | — | 7 |
| Nikki is an actress who, with her boyfriend Paulo, murders a television producer for his diamonds. When they get to the island they spend their time searching for the diamonds lost in the crash. Paulo discovers the diamonds and tries to hide them from her, but she retaliates by attacking him with a spider with a powerful paralyzing bite. However she herself is then bitten, and both are buried alive by the survivors, who mistake their paralytic coma for death. | ||||
| James "Sawyer" Ford | Josh Holloway | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 | — | 104 |
| James is a confidence man who was orphaned as a child when his father killed his mother - and himself - after his mother was conned for all their money by a man named Sawyer. All that James knows about the man who conned her is his name, and he adopts the name "Sawyer" for himself, and goes on to con various women for hundreds of thousands of dollars when he is an adult. With Cassidy, one of these women, he has a daughter named Clementine whom he has never met. He travels to Australia to kill the man he believes is the original Sawyer, but he is wrong and kills an innocent man. On the Island, he is initially disliked for his antisocial behaviour and for his practice of nicknaming his fellow survivors, but he becomes romantically involved with Kate and, eventually, friendly with the rest despite his rough personality. When John moves the island and the remaining survivors are launched back into the 1970s, Sawyer joins the Dharma Initiative under the name Jim LaFleur, and he becomes head of security because of his ability to deal with the Hostiles. He falls in love with Juliet, and they are living together three years later. Juliet later dies of her injuries she received during the Incident after the characters return to the present time, causing Sawyer to temporarily join the Man in Black. He leaves the Island with Kate and Claire on the Ajira plane at the end of the series. | ||||
| Desmond David Hume | Henry Ian Cusick | 3, 4, 5, 6 | 2 | 46 |
| Desmond, a former monk and member of the Royal Scots Regiment, undertakes a boat race around the world after splitting with his girlfriend Penelope Widmore. He shipwrecks on the island while on this race, and he lives in a hatch for three years, pressing a button every 108 minutes. One day he neglects to push the button, and on this day Flight 815 crashes. The survivors find the hatch and blow it open, and when they take over pushing the button he attempts (unsuccessfully) to escape the island. After he returns to the island, he moves in with the crash survivors. At the start of the third season, Desmond starts seeing flashes of future events, most of them being about Charlie's death. Later, he experiences flashes into the past. He escapes the Island with the Oceanic Six at the end of season four and is reunited with his girlfriend, Penny. They are married and have a baby boy named Charlie. Desmond has various meetings with Eloise Hawking who urges him not to marry Penny Widmore. He later finds out she is Daniel Faraday's mother, locates her through Charles Widmore, and visits her at the Lamppost. He is later brought back to the Island by Charles Widmore in order to uncork the heart of the Island to make the Man in Black mortal. It is implied that Desmond eventually returned home to Penny and their son. | ||||
| Sayid Jarrah | Naveen Andrews | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 | — | 98 |
| A former military communications officer, Sayid is haunted by his past as a torturer for the Iraqi Republican Guard. On the island, he is romantically involved with Shannon. After escaping the island and coming to America, he reunites with and marries his former girlfriend Nadia. After Nadia is murdered, Sayid is employed by Ben as an assassin to kill the associates of Charles Widmore. He later attempts to kill Ben as a child after being brought back to the island and captured by the Dharma Initiative in 1977. Sayid is shot and killed by members of the DHARMA Initiative, but is later revived through mysterious means at the Others' temple. It is implied that in being revived in such a way, he has lost his ability to feel emotion. When the Man in Black tricks Jack into carrying a bomb aboard Widmore's submarine, Sayid hurries the bomb to the other side of the vessel in order to detonate it away from the other survivors, dying in the process. | ||||
| Jin-Soo Kwon | Daniel Dae Kim | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 | — | 92 |
| The son of a poor fisherman, Jin marries Sun on the condition that he work for her father as a mob enforcer. On the island, Jin struggles as the only castaway who does not speak English, although he does eventually begin to learn. He is presumed dead by his wife, Sun-Hwa Kwon, and the other members of the Oceanic Six, when a bomb goes off on the Kahana. Kwon is later found unconscious on driftwood by a French research team in 1988, having flashed to that time period with the other people on the island. After the survivors are returned to the same timeline, Jin spends much of his time searching for Sun. He eventually finds her with the other survivors on Hydra Island. When the group tries to escape on Charles Widmore's submarine, a bomb smuggled aboard by the Man in Black detonates, pinning Sun to the inside of the sub. Unable to rescue his wife, Jin opts to die with her so they will never be apart again. | ||||
| Sun-Hwa Kwon | Yunjin Kim | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 | — | 88 |
| The rich daughter of a hotel owner/automobile manufacturer with ties to the Korean mob, Sun has an affair and almost leaves her husband Jin before the crash. They reconcile on the island and she becomes pregnant with Jin's baby. After escaping the island, Sun gives birth to Jin's baby, a girl named Ji Yeon, off the island. With the settlement money from Oceanic, Sun buys a controlling share of her father's company. Sun eventually returns to the island on Ajira Airways Flight 316 to search for Jin, but is not propelled to 1977 with the other members of the Oceanic Six and instead remains in 2007. After the timelines reunite, Jin and Sun eventually reunite. When the group tries to escape on Charles Widmore's submarine, a bomb smuggled aboard by the Man in Black detonates, pinning Sun to the inside of the sub. She is unable to escape and drowns along with her husband Jin. | ||||
| Frank Lapidus | Jeff Fahey | 6 | 4, 5 | 29 |
| Frank Lapidus ( /ləˈpiːdəs/) is a pilot who was originally supposed to fly Oceanic 815. He is selected by Abaddon to be part of the team that travels to the Island via the freighter Kahana; he brings Daniel, Miles and Charlotte to the Island by helicopter and ultimately helps Desmond and the Oceanic Six escape the Island. In the episode "316", he pilots Flight 316 that five of the Oceanic Six and Ben Linus board to return to the Island. Frank makes a controlled crash landing on the nearby Hydra Island. At the end of the series he flies some of the remaining survivors off the Island on the Ajira flight. | ||||
| Charlotte Staples Lewis | Rebecca Mader | 4, 5, 6 | — | 20 |
| Charlotte is an anthropologist hired to go to the Island by Charles Widmore. Miles suggests that she has been to the Island before and she chooses to stay there when given the option to leave. She later dies as a result of the ill effects of the Island's erratic movements through time after she admits she was born on the Island, her parents being members of the DHARMA Initiative. | ||||
| Benjamin Linus | Michael Emerson, Sterling Beaumon (As Young Ben) | 3, 4, 5, 6 | 2 | 61 |
| Ben is the manipulative leader of the Others. He is captured by the survivors and is held hostage in a hatch that Boone and Locke found. However Michael releases him in return for the safe passage of himself and his son, Walt, back home. In the finale of the 4th season he is forced to leave the Island after he "moves" it. He returns to the island in the fifth season with the Oceanic 6, to be judged by the mysterious smoke monster for letting his daughter die. The monster lets him live as long as he follows John which results in him killing Jacob. He begins to regret his actions and seeks to redeem himself. At the end of the series he becomes Hurley's second-in-command. | ||||
| Claire Littleton | Emilie de Ravin | 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 | 5 | 72 |
| Claire gives birth on the island to a boy and forges a strong relationship with Charlie. After being abducted by Ethan Rom, she escapes and briefly loses her memory. She is also Jack's half-sister. She is not aware of this, but Jack learns this from her mother after he leaves the Island. Claire is later seen in Jacob's hut with her father after leaving her son, Aaron, at the foot of a tree. Claire returns to prominence in season six, her time spent alone on the island having left her in a disturbed and feral state. She leaves the Island with Kate and Sawyer at the end of the series. | ||||
| Walter "Walt" Lloyd | Malcolm David Kelley | 1, 2 | 3, 4, 5, 6 | 33 |
| An elementary school student, he is kidnapped by the Others, who claim that he is "special". He is rescued by his father Michael and goes to live with his grandmother in New York. In the epilogue "New Man In Charge", he is shown to be joining Hurley and Ben as they return to the Island. | ||||
| John Locke | Terry O'Quinn | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 | — | 101 |
| After having his paralysis healed during the crash, Locke lives out his dreams of becoming a hunter on the Island. John Locke is also the name of a philosopher. Being a man of faith, he believes he has a special connection with the island, leading him to clash with man-of-science Jack. Having been "chosen", Locke becomes the leader of the Others at the end of the fourth season. Locke is eventually murdered by Ben shortly after leaving the island. When most of the "Oceanic Six" survivors return to the island, they transport Locke's body with them. Locke apparently returns to life, but this is revealed to be a deception; Locke is still dead, and the individual in Locke's form is actually Jacob's rival. | ||||
| The Man in Black | Titus Welliver; Terry O'Quinn (in Locke's form); Ryan Bradford (Boy In Black) | 5, 6 | 1, 2, 3, 4 | 41 |
| The Man in Black, also known as the Monster or the Black Smoke, is the twin brother of Jacob and the main antagonist during the final season of the series. In season one, he kills the pilot of Oceanic 815. His avatars include Jacob's twin brother, Jack's father Christian, Eko's brother Yemi, and John Locke. He cannot leave the island as long as Jacob or one of his successors is still on the island and we are told that if he does leave the island, everyone on earth will die. He first appears as a cloud of black smoke, but can apparently take on the appearance of anyone who is dead. In his Locke avatar, which we are told he cannot now change, he takes offense when Ben calls him a Monster. He claims that he is not evil, and just wants to escape the island. Thus, he begins to recruit allies to escape with him such as Sawyer, Claire, Sayid, and Kate. According to Rousseau and Ben, the Man in Black (in his Monster form) serves as a security system and judge to the Island. He has limitations. He cannot penetrate the DHARMA sonar fence, go through the ash which surrounds Jacob's cabin, or enter the temple while a guardian is alive. He cannot personally kill Jacob or any of the candidates chosen by Jacob to succeed him. He manipulates Ben, by impersonating Locke and Ben's daughter, and eventually convinces Ben to kill Jacob. He then attempts to kill Jacob's remaining candidates, and later tries to destroy the Island. Normally invincible, he inadvertently becomes mortal when Desmond Hume temporarily halts the island's primordial power. He is defeated while in mortal form in the series finale when Kate shoots him and Jack kicks him off a cliff, permanently killing him. | ||||
| Charlie Pace | Dominic Monaghan | 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 | — | 65 |
| A one-hit wonder, rock musician Charlie ends his addiction to heroin on the island and cares for Claire and her baby. After several times of Desmond predicting his death, he drowns in the Looking Glass station, trying to help the survivors communicate with the outside world. | ||||
| Paulo | Rodrigo Santoro | 3 | — | 7 |
| Paulo helps Nikki murder a television executive for his diamonds. He spends his time on the island with Nikki searching for the diamonds. He is assumed dead on the island after being buried alive, the survivors having assumed he was dead following a paralyzing spider bite. | ||||
| Hugo "Hurley" Reyes | Jorge Garcia | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 | — | 107 |
| After winning the lottery with the numbers, Hurley suffers from bad luck. He remains optimistic on the island but after escaping from it is hospitalized for psychiatric reasons that include recurring hallucinations involving Charlie. He later returns to the island aboard flight 316 and joins the Dharma Initiative in 1977 along with Jack and Kate. In the series finale, Jack makes Hugo the new "Guardian" of the Island. | ||||
| Shannon Rutherford | Maggie Grace | 1, 2, 6 | 3 | 32 |
| Shannon is a ballet instructor and Boone's stepsister, when they are marooned on the island Shannon is very unhelpful and spends most of her time sunbathing. Shannon's French skills come in handy when she translates the transceiver, and Danielle Rousseau's maps, in which she starts to begin a relationship with Sayid. Then we start to see a more friendly side to Shannon. When her brother Boone dies, Shannon is devastated, she holds Locke at gunpoint in the jungle as she thinks he is responsible for Boone's death. Before Walt leaves the island on the raft, he leaves Vincent in Shannon's care. At the start of Season 2, Shannon is mourning the loss of her brother Boone. She loses Vincent in the jungle and sees Walt. No one believes her when she tells the others. Her relationship with Sayid grows. Shannon continues to see Walt in the jungle, so she runs after him but is accidentally shot by Ana Lucia Cortez. She dies almost instantly in Sayid's arms, leaving Sayid heartbroken. At Shannon's funeral, Sayid confesses that he was deeply in love with her. | ||||
| Jack Shephard | Matthew Fox | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 | — | 113 |
| A spinal surgeon with father issues, Jack is the survivors' leader. He has feelings for Kate. After escaping the island, he ends up in a relationship with Kate but after a dramatic breakup he becomes drug-addicted and suicidal because he longs to return to the island to save everyone left behind, and return to his relationship with Kate. He returns to the island and appears in 1977 with Kate and Hurley, and they all join the Dharma Initiative. It is revealed in Season 6 that Jack is Jacob's "Candidate", and will replace Jacob as the Guardian or keeper of the island. In the series finale he kills the Man in Black and saves the Island from being destroyed, but is mortally wounded in the process and makes Hurley his successor. He is last seen dying in the same spot where he first landed on the Island. | ||||
| Elizabeth "Libby" Smith | Cynthia Watros | 2, 6 | 4 | 23 |
| Libby is a tail section survivor. Prior to the crash of 815, she met Desmond and gave him her late-husband David's boat for the around the world race that ended with Desmond crashing on the island. She is also revealed to have been a patient in the same mental institution at the same time as Hurley. She becomes romantically involved with Hurley. She is shot to death by Michael after accidentally witnessing Ana Lucia's death. | ||||
| Miles Straume | Ken Leung | 4, 5, 6 | — | 35 |
| Miles is a spiritualist hired by Charles Widmore to go to the Island. He has the ability to read the final thoughts of the deceased. He has the most cutting wit out of the Kahana away team members, earning him a comparison to Sawyer by Hurley. It is later revealed that he is the son of Dr. Pierre Chang. In the series finale he leaves the Island on the Ajira plane. | ||||
| Ilana Verdansky | Zuleikha Robinson | 6 | 5 | 16 |
| Ilana claims to be a bounty hunter working for the family of Peter Avellino, who is an employee of Charles Widmore, and who is killed by Sayid. She captures Sayid and puts him on Ajira Flight 316. After the crash she leads a hostile takeover of the Flight 316 survivors with Bram and several others. She asks Frank Lapidus if he knows "what lies in the shadow of the statue", then knocks him unconscious when he is unable to answer. It is later revealed that she was brought to the Island by Jacob, for the purpose of protecting the candidates for Jacob' replacement. While on a mission to prevent the Man in Black from leaving the Island, Ilana is killed when she mishandles dynamite. | ||||
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