Haven’t been keeping up with the survivors of Oceanic 815? Catch up here. By Josh Wigler The cast of “Lost” Photo: ABC With its dense mythology and complicated character arcs, “Lost” doesn’t make it easy for the uninitiated to grasp the show’s high concepts, particularly this late in the game. But if you’re interested in catching the series finale on Sunday, even if you haven’t seen one episode, worry not — here’s everything you need to know about “Lost,” leading to the final hour. “Lost” opened with a simple premise: The passengers of Oceanic Flight 815 survive a horrific plane crash and find a new home on a mysterious tropical island. Things took a turn for the bizarre with the introduction of a polar bear, a wisp of black smoke known only as the monster, an 18th-century slave ship called the Black Rock and a secretive sect of island natives known as the Others, among other oddities. But “Lost” found its heart through the plane crash survivors: Jack, a heroic doctor with an obsessive need to fix everything; Kate, a fugitive with nowhere left to run; Sawyer, a conman hiding the heart of a hero; Hurley, an overweight multi-millionaire with an unlucky curse; Sayid, an Iraqi torturer looking to put the past behind him; Jin and Sun Kwon, a married couple with trust issues; Claire, a pregnant woman unsure about becoming a mother; and Locke, a paraplegic whose spine is healed by the island, leading him to believe that he and his fellow survivors were always meant to be here — an assertion that Jack initially rejects. Over the years, new characters joined the cast — Benjamin, the deceptive leader of the Others; Juliet, an Other who ultimately falls for Sawyer; Desmond, a romantic hero with a unique relationship to the space-time continuum; Daniel Farraday, a physicist who actually understands the space-time continuum; Miles, a mercenary who can communicate with the dead; and Richard Alpert, an ageless man who serves as the emissary to Jacob, the centuries-old all-powerful ruler of the island. It’s ultimately revealed that Jacob summoned our heroes to the island in order to find his eventual replacement as a leader: either Locke, Hurley, Sawyer, Sayid, Jack or one of the Kwons. But Jacob has a nemesis in the form of the smoke monster, a shape-shifting entity that can impersonate dead bodies. Jacob, who just so happens to be the monster’s brother, has imprisoned him on the island, and it appears that he can’t leave until Jacob and the candidates are all dead. Getting to the candidates isn’t easy, as a group of survivors (Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sayid, Sun and Claire’s baby, Aaron) managed to leave the island, while the remaining castaways were thrust backwards in time to the days of the DHARMA Initiative, a group of ’70s-era scientists researching the island’s secrets. Locke too left the island to convince Jack and the others to return, but he was unsuccessful and subsequently murdered by an escaped Ben. Ben used Locke’s death to galvanize a broken and suddenly faith-driven Jack into bringing his friends (and Locke’s corpse) back to the island. Some of the survivors traveled back to the DHARMA days as a result, while Ben and Locke’s body landed in present day. There, the monster assumed Locke’s identity and fooled a shell-shocked Ben into killing Jacob. With Jacob dead and one candidate down, the monster’s plan was in full effect. Meanwhile, Jack believed he found his purpose on the island: to detonate a nuclear bomb, as blowing up the island in 1977 would prevent Oceanic 815 from crashing in 2004. The plan backfired, killing Juliet — Sawyer’s girlfriend at the time — and returning the survivors to the present day island. But it appears that the bomb’s detonation worked to a degree by fracturing the space-time continuum and creating a sideways universe where Oceanic 815 landed safely in Los Angeles. In this world, near-death experiences and true love have unlocked certain characters’ memories of life on the island. At the moment, a self-aware Desmond is guiding characters in both universes towards an unknown goal. With the candidates back in the present, the monster (in Locke’s form) tried to convince them all to leave the island with him. After multiple failed attempts, he successfully lured Jack and the others into a submarine and planted a bomb in Jack’s backpack. Sayid sacrificed his life trying to take the brunt of the explosion, but Jin and Sun (and probably pilot Frank Lapidus, who was knocked out by the explosion) drowned in the sinking sub as the rest escaped. Now, it’s up to Jack and his surviving allies to defeat the monster and prevent further catastrophe. But questions remain — what happens if the monster leaves? Who will replace Jacob as the island’s leader? What is the significance of the sideways universe? With only three and a half hours remaining before the final curtain call, not even the most devout of fans can predict how “Lost” will end. Head over to the MTV Movies Blog to vote for the “Lost” Awards from now through the finale. Related Photos Spin-Offs For The Characters Of ‘Lost’
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‘Lost’ Cheat Sheet: Everything You Need To Know Before The Finale
