Here are the 12 best episodes of Lost, the early 2000s ABC drama about a group of castaways whose plane crashes on a mysterious island somewhere in the South Pacific. We have to go back!
But First
What made Lost so successful? It became a beloved water-cooler show during its first season in 2004 due to its highly complex storyline and interwoven characters. It’s easy to spend hours debating the meaning of various easter eggs, and the show is chock full of head-scratching riddles like, “What lies in the shadow of the statue?”
Created by J. J. Abrams, Damon Lindelof, and Jeffrey Lieber, Lost is known for its fluid timeline, with flashbacks and flash-fowards that explain how characters’ backstories are interconnected. Its huge ensemble cast featured Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lilly, Jorge Garcia, Josh Holloway, Terry O’Quinn, Daniel Dae Kim, Yunjin Kim, Naveen Andrews, Emilie de Ravin, Harold Perrineau, Dominic Monaghan, Ian Somerhalder, Maggie Grace, Henry Ian Cusick, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, and Michael Emerson.
Though the plot became more convoluted as the seasons went on — and many have criticized the series finale — Lost expertly weaves supernatural and science fiction elements in with its compelling commentary on human nature.
Here are the 12 best Lost episodes, starting with the twelfth best and building to the best. We’ll consider two-parter episodes as one episode for these purposes.
Number 12: ‘Ab Aeterno’ (Season 6, Episode 8)
After seeing so much of Richard throughout the series, we finally got an explanation for why he never ages in Season 6, and it’s quite satisfying. We love it when Lost transports us to another world.
With a flashback to the 1800s, we learn that Richard is really Ricardo, a poor working man from the Canary Islands who is jailed after killing a man who refused to give him the medicine he needed to save his dying wife. He ends up aboard the Black Rock, which crashes on the island. There, he meets the Man in Black and becomes immortal, which is why he hasn’t seemed to age a day, nearly 200 years later.
Also Read: 10 Sex Scenes Somebody Should Have Stopped
Number 11: ‘What Kate Did’ (Season 2, Episode 9)
Kate’s backstory episode finally explains what she did to end up in handcuffs being escorted by a U.S. Marshall on Oceanic 815. It’s so dramatic that it’s burned in our minds (sorry, sorry).
Spoiler alert: She killed her father, Wayne, who was abusing her mother. How did she do it? By blowing up his house while he was sleeping. The kicker is that her mom is the one who turns her in.
It’s also one of many times we hear Patsy Cline during Kate’s scenes, specifically “Walkin’ After Midnight.”
Number 10: ‘Across the Sea’ (Season 6, Episode 15)
Though Season 6 as a whole left a lot to be desired, this episode finally gave us the answers we spent years waiting for regarding the origins of good and evil on the island — Jacob and his brother, the Man in Black.
We learn how the two brothers ended up on the island back in ancient times, and that their adopted mother drove a wedge between them. It also explains the well of light that serves as the source of electromagnetism on the Island.
Part of what makes this episode so satisfying is that the show had been building up to it since Locke and Walt played a very metaphorical game of backgammon early on in Season 1. It was also foreshadowed by the discovery of a skeleton in the cave in that first season, which was buried with a little bag holding two stones: one black and one white.
Number 9: ‘La Fleur’ (Season 5, Episode 13)
Season 5 gave us a delicious deep dive into the history of the Dharma Initiative, one of the coolest and most compelling elements of the show. This episode walks us through how Sawyer, Juliet, Jin and Miles ended up living in the barracks during the 1970s. Because, y’know, time travel. If you’re a Lostie, you’re already desensitized to a certain level of suspended disbelief.
Watching the next episode, “Namaste,” gives a fuller, more colorful picture of life on the Dharma compound, but this episode really set things in motion and gave us a much more humanized view of the Dharma folks than we’d had previously. It also set up the epic love story between Sawyer and Juliet.
Also Read: 12 Shameless ’80s Comedies That Don’t Care If You’re Offended
Number 8: ‘Orientation’ (Season 2, Episode 3)
We just can’t get enough of the Dharma Initiative. This episode was pretty much our first introduction to it, with Locke watching the orientation reels inside the hatch that explained the button experiment.
But of course, in classic Lost fashion, some essential information was missing from the film.
The whole button-pressing stuff is endlessly fascinating and psychologically interesting. Is the button real? Is it a just an experiment to see how much people will do if they’re told by some authority figure? Perhaps it’s a little bit of both.
Number 7: ‘Man of Science, Man of Faith’ (Season 2, Episode 1).
Excusing Jack’s very unconvincing wig (see above), this episode is a really great Jack flashback. It explained a lot of his neuroses around fixing people, specifically in the case of his future ex-wife, who he met during spinal surgery — so romantic.
It’s also when we met Desmond for the first time, getting the backstory of how he lived in the hatch pressing the button for years. There’s an unforgettable needle-drop moment when Desmond plays “Make Your Own Kind of Music” by Cass Elliott. Plus, when its revealed that Jack and Desmond met once, pre-Island, we heard Desmond’s famous line for the first time: “See you in another life.”
Number 6: ‘Walkabout’ (Season 1, Episode 3)
This is the episode that first gave us a glimpse into the multi-layered backstory of one of the show’s strongest and most important characters: John Locke. Here, we learned what Locke was up to before the Island — that he was paralyzed in a wheelchair, and that he had been turned away for that reason from a walkabout in Australia.
It’s also the first time we heard the iconic line: “Don’t tell me what I can’t do!”
Also Read: 13 Very Profitable Movies That Made 100 Times Their Budget at the Box Office
Number 5: ‘The 23rd Psalm’ (Season 2, Episode 10)
This episode gave us not only Mr. Eko’s backstory, but an explanation as to how the small plane that Boone and Locke found in the jungle ended up on the island.
Leave it to Lost to provide an entire, complete character arc for Eko’s brother, Yemi the priest, in a single episode through one heart-wrenching flashback — and then to wrap it up with a devastating bow as we watched Eko lay Yemi’s body to rest.
Number 4: ‘Exodus’ (Season 1, Episodes 23, 24 and 25)
One of the most jarring scenes in the series is in the three-parter Season 1 finale. Believing for one brief, shining moment that they’ve been saved, we watched the smiles melt away from Michael, Jin, Sawyer, and Walt’s faces as they realize they’ve been captured by the Others.
It’s a powerful finale to one of the most iconic first seasons in television history.
Number 3: ‘Through the Looking Glass’ (Season 3, Episodes 22 and 23)
This two-part episode, the Season 3 finale, was another heavy hitter.
Killing off one of the most beloved characters of the first three seasons — Drive Shaft bassist Charlie of “You All Everybody” fame — was one of the saddest and most dramatic deaths on the show. In his final moments, he gave Desmond a warning: “Not Penny’s boat.”
But what really set this episode over the edge was that it left us with that shocking final scene explaining that what we previous assumed were flashbacks of a bearded, alcoholic, Jeep-driving Jack were actually flash forwards — to after a successfully escape from the Island. He famously pleaded with Kate to return to the Island, giving us one of the show’s most iconic lines: “We have to go back!”
Number 2: ‘Numbers’ (Season 1, Episode 18)
4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42. This episode is what hooked many fans on Lost back in Season 1. It’s one of the show’s most compelling riddles. The show never fully explains the meaning behind the numbers, other than that they corresponded to each of Jacob’s potential “candidates” to inherit the Island.
In this episode, we learned that the reason Hurley was in Australia was because he was looking for the origin of the numbers. After using them to win the lottery, he came to believe that they were cursed, and that he’s the reason that Ocean flight 815 crashed on the Island.
Number 1: ‘The Constant’ (Season 4, Episode 5)
If this episode didn’t make you cry, I don’t know what will. The love story between Desmond and Penny was one of the purest and most powerful of the entire series.
It was also a great showcase of Lost‘s fascinating approach to time. When Desmond and other characters came “unstuck” in time as a result of the island’s strange electromagnetic properties, he had to find his “constant” — a person who exists in both his past and present timelines — or die.
Lucky for him, he got ahold of his long-lost love, Penelope Widmore. In a show that poses a lot more questions than answers, this episode offered at least a little very welcome resolution.
Honorable mentions: The Man Behind the Curtain (Season 3, Episode 20), Solitary (Season 1, Episode 8), Exposé (Season 3, Episode 14)
Liked This List of the 12 Best Lost Episodes?
Let us know in the comments if you agree or disagree.
You might also like these: 12 Best Seinfeld Episodes or these: 12 Behind the Scenes Stories From Blazing Saddles.
Main Image: A promotional image of Evangeline Lilly in Lost. ABC