When do the lost characters actually die

There were few dry eyes in the room as Lost' s big bosses Damon LIndelof and Carlton Cuse faced fans for the first time since the iconic TV series went off the air three years ago and answered the big questions they have never addressed:.

Here are the answers Damon and Carlton gave at tonight's PaleyFest event honoring the 10 th Anniversary of the Lost premiere. And by the way, the original plan was to screen the Lost pilot, but that plan was scrapped out of consideration for the Malaysian Air tragedy. The first-season finale was aired instead.

On whether the characters were actually dead the whole time Since the time the plane crashed : "No, no, no. They were not dead the whole time," Cuse said definitively, adding that he believes that some footage they showed at the very end of the series lead to much of the misunderstanding among fans. And when people saw the footage of the plane with no survivors, it exacerbated the problem. But the characters definitely survived the plane crash and really were on a very real island.

At the very end of the series, though? Suffice it to say, wrapping it all up over the course of two hours was a tall order, and fans came away with all sorts of different interpretations of exactly what the finale meant.

So make sure your carry-on luggage is stowed, your seat backs and tray tables are in their full upright position, and that your seat belt is properly fastened, because we're about to take a deep dive into the ending of Lost , and it may be a bumpy ride. From very early on in Lost 's run, fans worried the show would end with a "they were dead the whole time" twist. Sure, creator J. Abrams and showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse repeatedly denied speculation that the characters died in the crash, and that the island was a form of purgatory.

Still, some thought the finale's church-set ending confirmed that Abrams, Lindelof, and Cuse had been lying the whole time, and that the entire show had taken place in the afterlife.

Further evidence used to support this claim was footage of the original plane crash that aired over the closing credits, showing empty beaches, which some fans thought meant there'd been no survivors. But it turns out that the crash footage at the end was never meant to be considered as part of the finale. Instead, it was included so fans could " decompress ," readjust, and collect themselves as the show transitioned to the 11 PM news.

ABC network executives never imagined that viewers would consider this part of the show's narrative. Further, "The End" takes pains to explicitly clarify that all the events that took place on the island were, in fact, real.

During the church scene, Christian Shephard John Terry explains to Jack Matthew Fox that everything on the island did indeed come to pass. In fact, it was "the most important period" in the Oceanic survivors' lives.

After five seasons filled with flashbacks and, eventually, flash-forwards, the first episode of season six included something Lost fans were totally unprepared for: a flash- sideways , exploring an alternate reality in which Oceanic Flight doesn't crash, and the plane lands safely at LAX.

However, the plane crash isn't the only thing different about the two realities. Instead of being a con man, Sawyer Josh Holloway is a cop. And the childless Jack suddenly has a teenage son whose mother is none other than Juliet Elizabeth Mitchell , a woman he met on the island. But is this all a dream?

Is it maybe a parallel dimension created by the wonky powers of the island? Or is this the true timeline, and maybe the island is just an elaborate "what if" scenario? Well, in "The End," the flash-sideways is revealed to be the afterlife, where all the Oceanic survivors are brought back together following their deaths.

In a way, it is a sort of purgatory where they each have to make peace with the struggles of their lives before they can recognize one another and move on together. This is where the Lost finale tripped up many of its viewers, who reasonably assumed that in order for all of the characters on the show to have arrived in the afterlife at the same time, they had to have died at the same time.

But as logical as this reasoning appears at first glance, it doesn't hold up under close scrutiny. Not only does it fail to explain the presence of characters like Juliet and Ben Michael Emerson , who weren't on board Oceanic , but it doesn't account for all of the shared memories they recover once they recognize each other.

The explanation given in "The End" is that they all died at different times, some way back in season one, and others many years after the end of season six. But time works differently in the afterlife. To the characters, it feels as though they all arrived around the same time, even if their actual deaths were many decades apart.

The only thing they all had in common was that none of the characters in the flash-sideways died during the plane crash. While we'd be here all day if we tried to list every death that ever occurred on Lost , here's what we know about the deaths of the people in the church. Boone Ian Somerhalder dies in season one, succumbing to his injuries after a fall. Shannon dies early in season two after being accidentally shot by Ana Lucia Michelle Rodriguez , and Libby Cynthia Watros dies toward the end of the second season after being shot by Michael Harold Perrineau.

Charlie Dominic Monaghan dies in season three, drowning after warning Desmond Henry Ian Cusick that the boat outside is "not Penny's boat. Juliet dies at the beginning of season six after falling down a shaft and detonating a bomb.

Sayid dies midway through season six saving his friends from a bomb, and Sun and Jin die later in the same episode, drowning together in a sinking submarine.

And Jack dies at the end of the series finale, after being stabbed by the Man in Black. There are also a good number of deaths that are left up to our imaginations. Kate, Rose L. And as the new protectors of the island, Hurley Jorge Garcia and Ben likely outlive the other survivors by quite a wide margin, but at some point, they must eventually die as well. A good portion of the finale focuses on the question of who will fill Jacob's Mark Pellegrino role as the protector of the Heart of the Island, which turns out to be a magical, glowing pool at the island's center.

This pool is supposedly the source of all life, death, and rebirth, and according to Jacob, it's the cork holding back a malevolent force that could destroy the world. In the finale, this is revealed to be a literal cork, which Desmond pulls to drain the pool, nearly getting everyone killed.

The Heart of the Island also emits a strong electromagnetic field and can manipulate space and time, as evidenced by the relocation of the island and the time travel in earlier episodes. It's also implied to have a form of consciousness, or at least self-preservation, granting immortality to the humans who are willing to take on the responsibility of keeping it safe.

While some of the earlier mysteries of Lost were revealed to have at least moderately plausible sci-fi explanations, the Heart of the Island requires viewers to accept some elements of the supernatural as well. No details are ever given about the origins of the Heart of the Island, but it's said that a piece of its light is inside every living thing, and if it goes out, so do we.

Throughout the series, we see that many of the characters on the show have some sort of connection before ever boarding the plane, implying that they were always predestined to board the same doomed flight and end up on the island together. However, in Lost 's final season, we learn more about the way that Jacob has been pulling strings for years, traveling around the world in order to bring a group of potential "candidates" to the island, in the hopes of finding someone capable of taking over for him as the island's protector.

He knew his brother, the Man in Black Titus Welliver , was searching for a way to kill him and would eventually succeed. Jacob's intent was to find a successor before that happened. Jacob chose people who reminded him of himself — individuals who were alone and flawed, and who'd come to depend on the island as much as it would rely on them to keep it safe. All of the survivors of Oceanic fit this criteria, and as the series progressed and he was able to observe their interactions on the island, Jacob began slowly whittling down his list of candidates.

None of the connections we saw between the characters in flashbacks were fated or accidental. All of them were engineered by Jacob. Throughout the series, one of Lost 's most enduring mysteries is the nature of the smoke monster, a seemingly sentient column of black smoke that occasionally attacks and even kills people on the island. And it turns out that the smoke monster is another form of the Man in Black, Jacob's immortal twin brother. So how did that come about?

Well, after killing their mother, the Man in Black is transformed when Jacob throws him into the Heart of the Island. For the next years, Jacob and the Man in Black oppose one another, as the Man in Black searches for a way around the supernatural law that keeps him from killing Jacob. As the smoke monster, he can't be killed, but he also can't leave.

Over the years, he assumes his smoke monster form in order to kill the candidates Jacob brings to the island, hoping that if Jacob dies and leaves no successor, the Man in Black can finally leave. The final ever scenes of Lost are intercut between events on the island and an alternate timeline known as the flashsideways — scenes that replace the flashbacks and flashforwards for the entire final season.

These flashsideways scenes come after Juliet Elizabeth Mitchell , stuck in the s, detonates a hydrogen bomb in the closing moments of season five in an attempt to prevent the hatch from ever being built.

The logic is that, should the hatch never be created, Oceanic Flight will never crash on the island. The flashsideways show what would have happened had the plane landed safely in Los Angeles. All season long, viewers see the characters rubbing shoulders with one another in Los Angeles, unaware of the events of the past five seasons. Many create a shared afterlife together. Several characters have reappeared after death.

Some were ghosts. Some were the Man in Black. Michael imagines a dead Libby as his nurse. It is unclear if Boone's appearance to Locke in the sweat lodge is truly an appearance, or occurred while Locke was having an induced hallucination. Lostpedia Explore. Explore Wikis Community Central. Register Don't have an account? View source. History Talk 0. Main article: Redemption.