Ana Lucia Cortez - Arc

Arc

Prior to the crash Ana Lucia Cortez is an officer in the Los Angeles Police Department who becomes pregnant, but loses the baby after being shot by a suspect at a burglary scene. She spends several months in physical and psychological therapy, and when the suspect is arrested, she refuses to identify him. After his release, she kills him outside a bar. Ana Lucia decides to leave the force and eventually finds work as an airport security guard. She meets Christian Shephard (John Terry) at the airport bar, who asks her to accompany him to Sydney as a bodyguard, however in Sydney the two part ways. Ana Lucia buys a ticket on Oceanic Flight 815 to return to Los Angeles. In a brief flashback in the first season finale, she flirts with Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox) at a bar at the airport, unaware he is Christian's son. The pair arrange to continue their conversation during the flight. During the flight the plane splits in half, with the two parts crashing on different sides of an island; Ana Lucia is one of the tail section survivors.

The story of how the tail section survivors cope during their first forty-eight days on the Island is shown in "The Other 48 Days". After landing in the ocean, Ana Lucia does her best to help everyone in need. That night, some of the survivors are kidnapped by the Others, the mysterious inhabitants of the Island, then a few nights later, nine more are taken. During the second raid, Ana Lucia kills one of the Others and finds a list on him, which has descriptions of the victims. Suspecting fellow survivor Nathan (Josh Randall) as a traitor, she moves everyone inland, digs a pit and throws him in it until he confesses. When he disappears one night, the small group heads further inland, discovering a bunker known as the Arrow. Ana Lucia and Goodwin (Brett Cullen) trek atop a hill, where she tells Goodwin she has worked out he is the real traitor. After a struggle, she impales him on a broken stick, then returns to the group and tells them they are safe. Fellow tail section survivors Libby (Cynthia Watros) and Cindy (Kimberley Joseph) bring Jin (Daniel Dae Kim) to her after discovering him washed up on shore. He breaks free, so Ana Lucia follows and finds Michael (Harold Perrineau) and Sawyer (Josh Holloway). Jin, Michael and Sawyer are thrown into the pit, and Ana Lucia follows, pretending to have also been captured. Once she believes they are fellow 815 survivors she releases them, and they travel to the camp of the other survivors. When they near the camp, Ana Lucia mistakes Shannon (Maggie Grace) for an Other and shoots her fatally. The on-island events of "Collision" show her guilt after Shannon's death. She has Shannon's lover Sayid (Naveen Andrews) tied up and refuses to let the group move on. After some reasoning from Libby, she reluctantly lets them go. She is invited into a bunker the fuselage survivors found to interrogate a man claiming to be Henry Gale (Michael Emerson), and manages to receive a map to his crashed balloon. She takes Sayid and Charlie (Dominic Monaghan) with her, and eventually discovers the crash site, and the body of the real Henry Gale. In her second centric episode, "Two for the Road", Ana Lucia attempts to speak to Henry again, but she is assaulted by him and nearly killed. Seeking revenge, she seduces Sawyer and steals his gun. She returns to the hatch and attempts to kill Henry, but is unable to bring herself to do it. She confides in Michael, who offers to kill him on her behalf.

But when she hands him the gun, he shoots her in the heart, killing her. She is buried next to Libby, who was also killed by Michael. After her death she makes three further appearances: in a dream to Mr. Eko (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) in "?", as a vision that Hurley (Jorge Garcia) has in "The Lie", and in a flash sideways in "What They Died For".