- Lost is one of the best series ever, but who were the show’s top characters?
- Hurley and Desmond had personalities that demanded they make our top 10.
- In a shocker, Jack isn’t the best Lost character. Who takes the top spot?
Lost is without a doubt one of the greatest television shows of all-time. From a chaotic plane crash to time travel, it’s one of the rare shows that truly “had it all”.
It also had perhaps one of the best casts TV has ever seen, with some iconic mainstays and some short-lived characters that left their mark.
The show’s mystique, cast, and story-telling still have fans wondering if we’ll ever get a Lost season 7. While I doubt it, I can at least appease your thirst for more Lost conversation with a list of the best Lost characters of all-time.
The ranking is subjective, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a character that didn’t belong in my top 10.
10. Juliet Burke
I’ll start off my top 10 Lost characters with Juliet, who was an ambiguous presence initially, but ended up being a legit confidant for the survivors.
Juliet appeared to be on the side of the bad guys at first, but eventually we learn more about her story – and find it’s a sympathetic one. She also eventually forged a relationship with Sawyer and played a key role as the series progressed.
9. Jin & Sun Kwon
They are a package duo, I’m afraid. They were together before they got on the plane, they crashed on the island together, and they drowned together at the end of the series.
Dark stuff, but this duo was dependent on each other, even if their relationship appeared frayed for stretches of the series. They had their issues communicating with the other survivors, but both Jin and Sun left a mark on the audience and had some of the better storylines in the show.
8. Hurley Reyes
Easily one of the top characters on Lost, Hurley was comic relief, and also offered a strange connection to the hatch that Locke ended up discovering.
It just so happened that the numbers on the hatch were the very numbers Hurley used to win the lottery, and with that big win followed some pretty bad luck.
Crashing onto an island would certainly qualify as such, while Hurley’s battle with mental illness and his loyalty to the survivors made him a very relatable and layered character.
7. Desmond Hume
While his stay on the series in mere doses, few Lost TV characters left an impression as quickly and as hard as Desmond.
The guy living out his days in the hatch, endlessly pushing a button to save the world, had much more story to share. His love story with Penny and his battles with her father added to the mystique of the character, while his will to get back to the woman he loved tugged at out heart strings up until the end of the show.
Are you impressed, brotha? I’d say so.
6. Sayid Jarrah
It isn’t often that you meet a torturer and feel like he’s one of your best friends, but that is the calm that Sayid brought to this series.
Warm-hearted and loyal to his party, Sayid had a dark past that ended up being rather useful on the island. Needless to say, his background made him a major resource for the survivors, and a bit of a badass for anyone watching.
Sayid always seemed to have difficulty navigating his own moral compass, which is yet another reason why his complex character was such a joy to watch.
5. Kate Austen
You never knew how to perceive Kate, who has her own dark and complicated back story. She did remind us that we can’t always judge a book by it’s cover, while her confidence and will to survive made her quite the asset on the island.
Kate’s emotional baggage and desire to win people over kept you guessing, while her touch and go relationship with Jack made the duo must-see TV on a weekly basis.
In fact, some still hold out hope for a return to that dynamic, with a Jack & Kate show being one of the better Lost spin off ideas out there.
4. Ben Linus
It’s impossible to make a list of the best Lost characters without the show’s top villain. Linus made his debut under false pretenses, setting the tone for a character who would stop at nothing to get what he wanted.
From his rich and mysterious history with the island to his throat-cutting tendencies, Ben was an iconic character from day one. To this day, I’m still not quite sure if he was good or bad.
Okay, he was pretty bad.
3. Jack Shephard
The de facto leader of the survivors, Jack never met a problem he couldn’t fix. Or at least one he didn’t think he could solve. Or at least one that he wanted to try to.
A back surgeon by trade, Jack was a workaholic with major daddy issues. While resourceful, smart, and always looking out for whoever was on his side, his inability to ever be content kept him from any real happiness.
It made for excellent drama and a pretty strong character – but one that was not without some major flaws.
2. Sawyer
I assume you might want to switch up my Lost character rankings, but I’m sorry, Sawyer is too much of a badass to be ranked any lower than #2.
And while most people listing the top Lost characters would put Jack at #1, I can’t stomach it just because Sawyer could take Jack in a fight.
Who did Kate really want between these two dudes? And was Sawyer a guy you could ever trust? I don’t know the answers to those questions. What I do know, however, is Sawyer didn’t know traditional fear, and he knew how to conduct a con.
Oh, and he shot the shit out of a polar bear.
1. John Locke
Locke is our strongest tie to how Lost ultimately unraveled, and he’s one of the most impactful characters in the pilot episode when the plane first crashes.
Obviously going from being a cripple to roaming the beach without a care in the world will change your perspective. But Locke took the baton and ran with it.
Whether he was combatting leadership, digging up hatches, or chasing smoke monsters, he was always seeking destiny. As it turns out, that was a huge part of what Lost was, and I don’t know if any character embodied the show’s messages better than he did.
There are a lot of other great characters from Lost, but these are my 10 favorite. You can mix up the rankings a bit and I doubt I’d really care, either.
All I know for sure is that Lost was a heck of a treat. I remember being fully immersed in this show back during my college days, and there simply was nothing like it.
Well, that’s not totally true. There are actually several TV shows like Lost worth checking out. But still, especially during it’s run time, it was must-watch television and you were glued to your screen while it was on.
A big reason why? The top 10 Lost characters I’ve ranked above. Feel free to share with me your personal rankings, and if you’d replace any of my choices with other options.
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Rex Ferder