If there’s one show that has a lot of mystery surrounding it, it’s Lost. During the show, we were about as confused as you could possibly be. There was time travel full of paradoxes that weren’t paradoxes, a monster made of smoke who was actually the semi-immortal form of an ancient man… it was all pretty weird.
As it reached its conclusion, we thought we’d get some answers. We got a few, but we still have a huge list of things to ask about Jack Shephard. Here is that list.
Did He Really Think He’d Seen His Father?
Okay, so we know he didn’t die thinking his father was there on the Island with him (while still living, anyway). However, on that first time Christian Shepard appeared on the sand over on the other side of the beach, did Jack really think it was him?
He does run over to see what’s going on, but by this point, he’d already quite literally seen the corpse of his father. He knew he was dead. That was the entire reason he was on the plane in the first place. As he doesn’t really think out loud, it remains unclear whether he actually thought his dad had reanimated, or if he just assumed he was imagining things.
Why Didn’t He Seem To Care About The Numbers?
Hurley was pretty torn up about the numbers throughout the entire show. After all, they did follow him around and seemingly cause him to be perfectly protected within a bubble of bad luck. Jack, on the other hand, didn’t seem to care.
He might not have noticed it for a long time, but the number 23 was behind him throughout the entire show until the revelation that he was Jacob’s number 23. Jack was dismissive of the numbers, almost gaslighting Hurley, even though a string of numbers certainly wasn’t the weirdest thing on that island.
Why Is He The Main Character?
This question goes down two routes. Firstly, the more real-life problem of Jack’s character. The central character in a show is rarely the best but they’re supposed to be relatable and pretty normal. Jack is not a relatable protagonist, and honestly, a lot of the time, viewers found themselves rooting against him. But that’s not the point. While he ends up as Jacob’s #23 and the protector of the Island, his past seemed no more intertwined in it than any of the other central characters (and less so than some of them). Why, then, is Jack the start and endpoint of the entire Lost series? I guess you have to have a main character somewhere.
How Could He See The Man In Black When He Wasn’t On The Island?
When we finally found out that The Man In Black was the one impersonating dead people on the Island and bopping about in the form of some smoke, it was made very clear that he couldn’t leave the Island. That was sort of his whole thing. Why, then, could Jack see Christian Shepard when he wasn’t on the Island? Was this some sort of unmentioned power The Man In Black had? Or was Jack imagining it this time? It’s pretty hard to tell and goes completely unexplained.
How Did He Miraculously Save Sarah?
When Jack met his wife Sarah (before she was his wife), she was on her way to a dress fitting when she collided with an SUV and ended up with some steering column lodged in her chest. After going into cardiac arrest twice, it was all looking very unlikely that she’d pull through. Somehow, Jack was able to use his massive syringe to stabilize her blood pressure and bring her back. Then he doubles up on his miraculous maneuvers by performing seemingly impossible surgery that fixes the lower half of her body. It never really gets mentioned again, so we don’t find out if Jack is simply a better doctor than he thought, or if the Island interfered for some reason.
Was He Imagining The Intercom?
When kept prisoner by the Others, Jack is put in a cell with an intercom that doesn’t work. Then he hears Christian’s voice through it. This isn’t a particularly big deal as we all know he’d encountered his dead dad a few times on the Island.
Then he hears Sawyer being tortured through it, and one might assume that the Island is controlling it to get the response they need from Jack. After that, however, Alex uses it like its completely normal. This suggests that it does work and she knows it. So which one is it, Lost?
Does Vincent Die With Him?
Right at the end of the series, Jack managed to replace the plug and restore the light of the Island, but gets enveloped by it and teleported to a river. Honestly, if you’ve never seen Lost this must all sound so weird.
He lays down next to Vincent the dog in the same place as the first episode, and finally gives up. One thing we never found out, is whether Vincent died too. The labrador managed pretty well almost on his own for several years (and who knows how many time travel ‘years’) but he isn’t present at the afterlife church. Maybe the Island has made him immortal.
Who Did He Really Love?
Throughout the series, we saw Jack fall in love with both Kate and Juliet, as well as his own wife Sarah back before the crash. The on-again-off-again relationship between Jack and Kate was frustrating and confusing, but when he met Juliet, it seemed a lot more straightforward and genuine.
Then things got confusing. Juliet told Kate that Jack loved her [Kate] and then Juliet went and fell in love with Sawyer. He reciprocated but then Jack changed his mind about the whole thing and decided to stay and protect the Island rather than move on with Kate, who had admitted she loved him. Told you it was confusing. It seems more likely that it was Kate all along, but the whole Juliet situation was never fully resolved. Maybe he loved both of them.
Why Is He… Okay?
We mentioned above how Jack isn’t a great main character because he is quite hard to side with and relate to. If you think about it, it’s sort of fair enough. Not only did he have a tough life as a doctor with an alcoholic father and a messy divorce, he was then in a plane crash, was part of various large-scale fights, and encountered a series of monsters and bizarre people, none of whom he really understood, before traveling in time (a lot), crashing another plane and then taking on a job he knew would eventually kill him. The fact that he gives a weak smile as he dies in the bamboo field at the end suggests that he was a pretty tough cookie.
Why Do We Still Have So Many Questions?
The big question about Lost is always, why do we still have so many questions? Some questions span the whole series, some are specific to individual scenes, and some are centered on one character, like Jack.
The show ended and left us with a million questions about its protagonist, none of which we’ve ever been able to answer with anything more than speculation. It’s a strange move for a series, but I guess the writers simply got a little ahead of themselves when trying to wrap everything up in those closing moments.
