My mom started watching LOST when it first premiered on September 22, 2004 and watched it religiously until the finale on May 23, 2010. To this day, my dad still brings up how emotional the finale made my mom, and I finally decided that I needed to see what the hype was all about a few years ago. A show like no other, LOST mixes drama with mystery and humor, almost effortlessly. Being stranded on an untraceable island with polar bears never sounded so appealing until you saw how said island changed so many lives.
1. Jack wakes up in the jungle.
The iconic pilot starts out with Jack on the ground after Flight 815 crashed on the island. We follow Jack as the chaos of the crash is going on and get a glimpse of the characters who we will soon hold near and dear to our hearts. Boone and his spoiled sister Shannon, Kate and her stitching skills and Hurley, who has to watch over a pregnant Claire.
2. Kate raising Aaron.
A huge shock when the Oceanic Six made it back to the U.S., we see Kate raising Aaron and presenting him to the public as her own son.
3. Not Penny's boat.
One of the single most heartbreaking episodes in the whole six seasons, Charlie is captured by the Others and Desmond goes after him. They think a boat has been sent by Penny, Desmond's significant other, but after video transmission, Charlie finds out the boat is not in fact, Penny's. The boat begins to flood and in order to save Desmond, Charlie locks himself in the room and warns Desmond.
4. "Live together, die alone."
When Jack realizes no one is coming to save them, he tells the group that they if they can't live together, they're going to die alone. This establishes our first sign of Jack being a leader, as well as unifies the group.
5. The raft.
After Walt burnt the first raft, Jin, Sawyer and Michael finish the second raft. They take off to try to find some sort of salvation, to which they find a boat. It happens to be the Others, who kidnap Walt and destroy the raft. This is our first time to see the Others.
6. The hatch.
When a blast opens up the hatch, we meet Desmond who enters the sequence 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42 into a computer every 108 minutes. He believes that if he doesn't do it, there will be a worldwide catastrophe, to which he convinces some of the other survivors.
7. The distress signal.
This is when the survivors realize that they aren't alone on the island. Shannon, knowing French, is able to translate a distress signal that has been looping 16 years.
8. Flash forward.
At the end of season three, we start getting flashforwards instead of flashbacks. Although it confuses things a bit, it gives us a glimpse of what life off the island was really like. In this scene, we see Jack telling Kate that they all have to go back to the island. Because they needed to recreate the circumstances of the first crash in order to end up back on the island, they had to transport John Locke's body with them as well.
9. The constant.
When Sayid repairs a phone for Desmond, he is able to make contact with Penny who tells him that she has been looking for him for three years. Before this, Desmond had been stuck in time between 1996 and 2004, not knowing where he was or what he was doing there. Sayid strikes up a plan to connect him with Penny to help him remember who he is.
10. Jin and Sun die.
One of our very favorite couples throughout the whole series is Sun and Jin. Although they have their own ups and downs, they remain faithful to one another until the end. When Jack realizes that he will either have to save Sawyer or die with them, he leaves them as they acknowledge their looming deaths.
11. The end.
I really wasn't sure why my mom loved this show so much until the finale. I liked it while I watched it, but the finale really brought it all together and made you love it ten times more. Jack leaves just as he came in, with Vincent by his side. In a flash-sideways, we see him arrive at the church with the rest of the Oceanic Flight 815 survivors for his father's funeral. There's speculation on what exactly the finale meant, but one thing is for sure, it brought the tears. I'm tearing up just thinking about it. Thanks, mom!
And just for good measure, one of the best scenes of the whole series.
