Jack Shephard

Dr. Jack Shephard is a fictional character of the ABC television series Lost played by Matthew Fox. It is believed that Jack Shephard was born between 1969 and 1970. Jack is the protagonist & de facto leader of the crash survivors.

During the first four seasons, Jack was the antithesis of John Locke (Terry O'Quinn). However, after his experiences off the island and his final encounter with John Locke in Season 5, he becomes a man of faith, even to the point of becoming John Locke's spiritual successor in the final season and taking over as protector of the island. He is the love interest of both Kate Austen (Evangeline Lilly) and Juliet Burke (Elizabeth Mitchell) and the half-brother of Claire Littleton (Emilie de Ravin) and is often the rival of Sawyer (Josh Holloway) for both leadership of the survivors and the affections of Kate and Juliet.

Arc

Prior to the crash

Jack was born into a successful family, with aspirations of following in his surgeon father's footsteps. He attends Columbia University and graduates medical school a year earlier than any of his classmates. Despite Jack's gifts as a physician, he is haunted by his broken relationship with his father, an alcoholic who had previously told Jack that he did not have what it takes to be a hero, as he would be unable to cope with failure. Early in his career as a spinal surgeon at St. Sebastian Hospital, Jack operates on a young girl and accidentally severs a nerve sac in her spine. Following a brief panic, his father urges him to count to five, allowing Jack to regain his focus and repair the damage. While embarrassed that his father had undermined him during his first solo procedure, Jack comes to regard this as a pivotal moment as someone in a leadership position. He learns that fear is real, but he can allow it to affect him only for a short period of time before he regains control of a situation. Immediately after the operation, Jack has an exchange with Jacob (Mark Pellegrino), in which their hands touch briefly.

In 2001, Jack operates on Sarah (Julie Bowen), who had been involved in a car accident. Speaking to Sarah before the operation, he vows that he will "fix her". Actually certain that Sarah will become a paraplegic, Jack is astounded that Sarah can move her toes. The two marry in early 2003, but their marriage deteriorates and Sarah has an affair in December 2003. Jack contests the divorce and becomes obsessed with finding out the identity of Sarah's lover, even accusing his father and physically assaulting him at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Jack is arrested and bailed out by Sarah, while his father relapses, having achieved fifty days of sobriety in February 2004.

Jack retreats to Phuket, Thailand, for months and becomes romantically involved with Achara (Bai Ling), a secretive tattoo artist with a gift of seeing a person's true self. Achara tells him, "You are a leader, a great man, but this—this makes you lonely and frightened and angry." Jack demands a tattoo of his description; Achara reluctantly agrees, but Jack is mysteriously beaten by locals and banished the next morning.

In July 2004, he relieves his father during an operation because Christian is drunk; but he had already caused irreparable damage and the woman dies. Jack exposes his father as a chronic alcoholic and ends Christian's career. In September 2004, Jack's mother Margo (Veronica Hamel) orders him to find and return Christian, who has exiled himself to Australia. Later, Jack finds out his father has died and goes to Sydney to identify his body and make arrangements to have it flown back to Los Angeles for a rushed funeral. Jack boards Oceanic 815 bound for Los Angeles on September 22, 2004, with his father's casket in the cargo hold.

On the island

On the island, Jack plays a key role in the survival of his fellow forty-seven survivors in the immediate aftermath of the crash, instructing others to help those with injuries and using his medical background to personally assist the wounded. The survivors almost immediately look to Jack as their leader; however, he is reluctant to embrace the position and repeats his father's rationale that he does not "have what it takes." Exhausted through his tending of the wounded, attempts to rescue drowning survivors and deprived of sleep, Jack begins to chase what he believes are hallucinations of his father in the jungle. He drops his skepticism of the situation when he finds his father's coffin in some caves, but it is empty. Still struggling to cope with demands of him by the castaways, he meets fellow survivor John Locke in the jungle, who provides some guidance for Jack's leadership. Jack returns to the beach camp and gives a speech on how they are going to live on the island and informs them of the caves; one part of his speech—"live together, die alone"—becomes a mantra of him and the survivors. Through his medical tending and visibility within the camp, Jack quickly develops many personal relationships with the castaways, most notably finding a potential romantic interest in Kate Austen, a right hand man in Hurley Reyes (Jorge Garcia) and a mutual respect for former military torturer Sayid Jarrah (Naveen Andrews) in the early days after the crash.

Jack becomes increasingly tense when the castaways are threatened by an indigenous island people whom they refer to as "the Others". An Other,Ethan Rom (William Mapother), infiltrates the survivors, kills one of them and kidnaps the pregnant Claire Littleton (Emilie de Ravin) and Charlie Pace (Dominic Monaghan), who are eventually recovered. Two weeks later, Danielle Rousseau (Mira Furlan), a woman terrorized by the Others in her sixteen years stranded on the island, arrives at the beach camp to inform the survivors that "the Others are coming" and that they must take cover if they hope to survive.

Jack's leadership begins to be undermined by the adventurous and enigmatic Locke, whose jungle explorations and lies regarding them result in the death of Boone Carlyle (Ian Somerhalder), despite Jack's fervent efforts to save him, which start Jack on another run of sleepless nights. Having disappeared after dropping a critically injured Boone to Jack, Locke returns at the funeral and Jack publicly attacks him physically. The next day, Locke leads Jack to a metal hatch in the ground that he and Boone had excavated, but were unable to break into. Obsessed with finding a way to open the hatch and seeing a dual purpose in the hatch as a potential safe haven from the Others' imminent attack, Locke suggests that they use some of Rousseau's dynamite to open the hatch. Rousseau leads Jack, Locke and a party through the jungle and a section that she has dubbed the "Dark Territory" to an old slave ship called the Black Rock that contains dynamite and is oddly shipwrecked miles from the island coast. On their way back, Jack encounters the island's often heard but rarely seen monster, which is a long column of black smoke.

Jack descends into the hatch on the night of November 4, at which point he has spent forty-four days on the island and five castaways have died under his leadership since the immediate aftermath of the crash. In the hatch, which turns out to be a scientific research station called the "Swan" that has been abandoned by the 1980s Dharma Initiative organization that built it. Jack and Locke find Desmond Hume, a man living alone, who is entering a series of six numbers into a computer every hundred and eight minutes—a large timer is nearby—to offset a gigantic pocket of electromagnetic energy being harnessed by the station that would bring about the end of the world were the numbers not entered. The hatch is also found to possess many commodities of civilized life, including electricity, running water, indoor plumbing, a record player, exercise machines and guns. Jack is reluctant to take the leap of faith to enter the numbers and the hatch increases the tension that leads to multiple confrontations within it in the now-ideological conflict between Jack and Locke, with Locke defining Jack as a "man of science" in contrast to his self-identification as a "man of faith".

One day, Michael Dawson, whose son Walt Lloyd (Malcolm David Kelley) was kidnapped from a makeshift raft on the night that the survivors blew open the hatch, locks Jack and Locke in the hatch's armory, informing that he is going to look for his son and does not wish to be helped. A week later, Rousseau catches one of the Others: Ben Linus (Michael Emerson). Sayid Jarrah (Naveen Andrews), a former military toruturer among the survivors, interrogates the man, who lies and claims that his name is "Henry Gale". Jack and Locke keep Ben captive in the armory and Ben toys with Jack and Locke's contempt for each other. Michael returns, frees Ben and kills two castaways, but frames Ben for these by shooting himself in the arm to make it look like Ben escaped. Michael recruits Jack and a few others for a rescue mission to the Others' camp, but he leads them into a trap as part of a deal that he made with the Others that grants him and his son a boat and directions to escape the island. On November 27, the survivors have been on the island for over two months or sixty-seven days when the Others capture Jack, Kate Austen and James "Sawyer" Ford.

Jack is imprisoned for a week in an underwater cell of another of the Dharma stations, the Hydra, on a small island off the coast of the main one, while Kate and Sawyer are kept in cages just outside the station. Ben reveals that he needs Jack to operate on his spinal tumor and Kate and Sawyer are being used as leverage. Jack is adamant that he does not cooperate with his enemies until he discovers that Kate and Sawyer have had sex in their cages, at which point Jack bargains for a boat ride off of the island. During the surgery, Jack makes an incision in Ben's kidney sack and holds him hostage, while Kate and Sawyer are given time to escape on a canoe back to the main island. The Others take him back to their home in the barracks for five days on the main island, where he develops a more friendly relationship with them and particularly Juliet Burke (Elizabeth Mitchell), who is set to exit the island via submarine with him; they kiss twice in the next two weeks. However, Kate and Sayid arrive at the Barracks in an attempt to save him, while Locke blows up the submarine to their surprise and horror. The Others abandon the Barracks with Locke, leaving Jack, Juliet, Kate and Sayid behind.

Upon returning to the beach camp, the castaways are initially distrustful of their leader and suspicious of Juliet and Jack's forbidding of them to question her. Juliet reveals the Others' plan to Jack, which is for her to mark the tents of any pregnant women for the Others to kidnap at night in a week when they raid the camp. Fed up with the Others' continued terrorization of his people, Jack decides that the only way to rid the survivors of their legitimate fear of the Others is to kill them, so he commissions Rousseau to collect more dynamite from the Black Rock. Meanwhile, a Naomi Dorrit (Marsha Thomason) from a freighter eighty miles offshore parachutes onto the island. Unable to contact Naomi's boat, as her satellite phone is broken, Jack and Rousseau lead the survivors to the island's radio tower to contact the freighter, while Sayid, Jin Kwon (Daniel Dae Kim) and Bernard Nadler (Sam Anderson) stay behind to shoot the dynamite and kill the Others. Unfortunately, three of the Others survive the explosions and gain the upper hand. The next day, Ben intercepts Jack's group and has a private conversation with him, in which he tells Jack that the people on the freighter intend to kill everyone on the island and that the Others have taken Sayid, Jin and Bernard captive and will kill them if Jack presses on his hike to the radio tower. Jack presses on, taking Ben captive and believing that Sayid, Jin and Bernard are dead; however, Sawyer, Hurley and Juliet return to the camp, kill the Others and save them. The castaways arrive at the radio tower, but Locke returns and fatally wounds Naomi with a knife to her back and holds Jack at gunpoint, warning Jack not to call the boat, as he has information that the people on the boat are not there to rescue the survivors, but to harm them. Jack calls the boat, but the survivors split into two groups that night, after they discover that Naomi had not been entirely truthful and Jack attempts to shoot Locke for his continued sabotage of his plans to escape the island. On December 21, on the survivors' ninety-first day on the island, Locke leads a group to live and hide at the Barracks, while the majority of the castaways stay at the beach camp in anticipation of their supposed rescuers from the freighter.

Jack finds out that the freighter was sent by Charles Widmore (Alan Dale), a former leader of the Others and Desmond's girlfriend's father, to extract Ben from the island. Initially, freighter helicopter pilot Frank Lapidus (Jeff Fahey) flies a three-person science team to the island to find Ben through nonviolent means; however, the science team is generally more concerned with conducting experiments on the island and are overall unsuccessful in abducting Ben. Nearly a week later, a six-person mercenary team arrives and attack the Barracks, exploding a house, killing six and planning to torch the island once they have taken Ben. Following the directions of a satellite phone, Jack journeys to the island's Orchid station, where Locke tells Jack to lie about the island to protect it if he makes it back to the real world. Jack gets on board the helicopter with a group for the freighter. Upon arriving at the freighter, they are informed that the freighter is rigged with explosives that are set to blow in a few minutes. Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sayid, Sun Kwon, Desmond, Frank and Claire Littleton's (Emilie de Ravin) baby Aaron watch in horror from above when the freighter explodes, killing all but one on it, including Michael and three Oceanic 815 survivors who had ferried there in the meantime. Minutes later, en route back to the island, the island literally disappears before their eyes. The chopper crashes in the water soon afterward due to a fuel leak and the passengers take refuge on an inflatable raft. When Penny Widmore's (Sonya Walger) rescue ship arrives, Jack orders everyone to lie about the crash, just as Locke told him to do. They spend a week on the ship before then Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sayid, Sun and Aaron head off towards another island inhabited by villagers on January 7, 2005, after one hundred and eight days away from home.

Back on the mainland

The six survivors hold a press conference six days after their return and lie that Aaron is Kate's son and that the six of them were the only surivivors of the crash of Oceanic 815 and did not encounter any supernatural phenomena on the island. The group comes to be known as the "Oceanic Six" and are regarded as heroes by the world at large, becoming celebrities after they are paid multi-million dollar settlements by Oceanic Airlines; however, they are plagued by survivor guilt. Jack returns to work at St. Sebastian Hospital.

In July 2005, Jack delivers a eulogy at his father's funeral, albeit one without a corpse. Carole Littleton (Susan Duerden) approaches Jack in private and explains that her daughter Claire is Jack's half-sister and was on board Oceanic 815 with him. This causes Jack to feel uncomfortable around Aaron and he keeps his distance from Kate, in spite of his love for her. In 2007, Jack gets over his hesitation and moves in with Kate and Aaron (William Blanchette). In the week after becoming engaged to Kate, Jack feels his life start to unravel, as he is increasingly stressed by his medical practice, receives a cryptic warning regarding Aaron from Hurley Reyes upon visiting him at a mental institution, begins to hallucinate his dead father in the hospital and realizes that Kate is lying to him about what she is doing during the day. Jack gets a prescription for the drug clonazepam and gets drunk one night while waiting for Kate to come home, at which point he confronts her, demanding to know what she has been doing, despite her insistence that he let it go. She finally admits that she is doing favors for James "Sawyer" Ford, who is still on the island. During this argument, Jack blurts out that Aaron is not even related to Kate, which Aaron overhears; this marks the end of their engagement and Jack moves back into his apartment.

Apparently off the island, John Locke ends up at St. Sebastian in fall 2007, after being in a car accident. Locke tries to convince Jack to return to the island by telling him that horrible things had happened since he left that it is Jack's fault for leaving. Locke adds that he has seen Jack's father. Outraged, Jack tells Locke to leave the Oceanic Six alone and to get over his obsession with protecting the island. Very soon after this encounter, Jack shifts and decides that Locke was right. He grows a beard and becomes an Oxycodone drug-addicted, depressed alcoholic. In the next month, Jack takes a roundtrip flight every Friday using his Oceanic golden pass to Sydney, Tokyo or Singapore hoping to crash on the island, so that he can save his old friends. Reading in a newspaper that Locke had died under the alias of "Jeremy Bentham", Jack goes to commit suicide by jumping off of a bridge, but he gets distracted by a car crash and goes to save the victims from the burning wreck. The next night, Jack breaks into the funeral parlor that is holding Locke's body, where he meets Ben; they agree to team up and recruit the Oceanic Six to return to the island.

Return to the island

Ben Linus takes Jack to see Eloise Hawking (Fionnula Flanagan), a former Other living in Los Angeles. She explains that the island is always moving and that if he boards Fiji-bound Ajira Airways Flight 316 and does his best to recreate the circumstances of the Oceanic 815, he will return to the island. Hawking tells Jack that Locke will act as a substitute for Jack's father of the original flight and instructs Jack to give him something of his father. Jack, now believing that his destiny is on the island and more accepting of supernatural phenomena, gives Locke a pair of his father's old shoes. The Oceanic Six, although hesitant or not wishing to return to the island, are passengers on Ajira 316 and are consumed by bright flashes in the middle of their flight. Because the original flight was not recreated exactly, some of the survivors time travel and find themselves on the island in 1977.

Jack, Kate and Hurley meet Jin in the jungle, who takes them to Sawyer. An equal amount of time has passed on the island as in the real world (almost three years), but the Oceanic 815 castaways time traveled to 1977 after the island was moved on December 30, 2004. Twenty Oceanic 815 castaways died in the week after and only Sawyer, Jin, Rose Henderson, Bernard Nadler and dog Vincent (Pono) have survived of the passengers of Oceanic 815 in the three years since. Rose, Bernard and Vincent are living in the forest, while Sawyer and Jin, along with Juliet and freighter science team members Miles Straume (Ken Leung) and Daniel Faraday (Jeremy Davies), who were also on the island when it moved through spacetime, have joined the Dharma Initiative. Sawyer pretends that Jack, Kate and Hurley are new recruits from the submarine and the trio joins the Dharma Initiative. Jack is assigned the job of "workman" performs janitorial duties for three days, as he waits for his destiny to find him. Sayid is also in 1977 on the island, but awakes in a different part of the island and is mistaken by Dharma to be an Other (called a "Hostile" by Dharma). He is imprisoned, but escapes into the jungle after shooting a twelve year-old Ben in the chest. Jack opts not to operate on Ben, explaining that he did not wish to help him, as he would inevitably survive the gunshot, as he was/would be alive in 2007 and Faraday had explained that they could not change anything in the past, as this is the only version of 1977 that exists.

Faraday soon reveals that he has reexamined his equations and has changed his mind with regard to how their time traveling influences the future. He hypothesies that if they made a great action, a ripple will be sent in time, meaning that they could prevent themselves from ever coming to the island in 2004, saving everyone on the freighter and Oceanic 815. Faraday proposes that they detonate the Jughead hydrogen bomb that the Others have buried on the island at the Swan site, so that it destroys the electromagnetic energy contained beneath it so that it will not cause Oceanic 815 to crash. Believing this to be his destiny, Jack agrees to aid him in his mission; however, this plan is put in jeopardy when Faraday is killed by a 1977 Hawking—then, the leader of the Others—on his way to the bomb. Hawking and the Others' constant second-in-command Richard Alpert (Nestor Carbonell) help to obtain the nuclear core of the bomb and Jack is on his way to the Swan with Sayid, who has sustained a gunshot wound to the stomach in a firefight with Dharma. Although hesitant, Kate, Sawyer, Jin, Juliet and Miles also help Jack. Jack drops the bomb's core into the Swan's drilling hole. After a tense moment, they all realize the bomb did not detonate, and the electromagnetic force destabilizes. Juliet is sucked down into the crater, and, dying from her wounds, smashes the bomb with a rock, detonating it and engulfing the Island with a bright light.

Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sawyer, Juliet, Miles, and Sayid time travel to present 2007, and Juliet dies shortly after. Sawyer tells Kate he wants to kill Jack because of Juliet's death, but later says he won't kill him because he deserves to suffer on the island.

Jack is unsure of what to do next, but the Others reappear and kidnap them, taking them to the Temple. Jack is surprised when Sayid dies and then comes back to life at the Temple, and Dogen (Hiroyuki Sanada) tricks Jack into killing Sayid because there is a darkness growing in him, but it backfires. Hurley gets Jack to leave the temple with him to go to a Lighthouse. Jack wants to see Jacob and gets frustrated when he can't. By looking into the Lighthouse mirror and seeing his name on the dial he realizes that Jacob brought him to the island for a reason. He stops Richard from trying to die at the Black Rock using this explanantion, and Richard, Jack and Hurley go back to the beach camp where they meet up with Sun, Miles, Frank, Ben, and Ilana (Zuleikha Robinson).

Richard wants to destroy the Ajira plane to prevent Locke from leaving the island. Ilana backs up Richard's plan and gets dynamite from the Black Rock, which winds up killing her in an accident. Hurley is against Richard's plan and blows up the Black Rock, getting rid of all the dynamite. Richard and Hurley ask the other people in their group to join them. Jack sides with Hurley, who wants to go talk to Locke. Jack, Hurley, Sun and Frank make it to Locke's camp while Richard, Ben and Miles head to the Dharma barracks to look for more explosives. Once at Locke's camp, Jack and Locke talk one on one.

The Man in Black asks Jack to speak with him, admitting to impersonating Jack's father since Jack first arrived on the island. Claire interrupts, and The Man in Black leaves the two to catch up with each other. Zoe arrives and demands to have Desmond returned. If they refuse, she'll have the camp destroyed by artillery shells, which she demonstrates by having her camp fire a single round nearby. The Man in Black gives Sawyer a map to a boat and asks to meet at a rendezvous point where he will be waiting with the rest of the camp. However, Sawyer is planning on betraying the Man in Black by making his deal with Charles Widmore, and he tells Jack to bring Hurley, Frank Lapidus, and Sun along to a different point as they are all leaving. Jack sneaks away with Hurley, Sun and Lapidus, but Claire sees them and follows. Once they reach the boat, Claire holds them at gunpoint, but Kate convinces her to join them. Once on the boat, Jack tells Sawyer that leaving the island is a mistake, and jumps in the sea. After swimming back ashore, he sees the Man in Black and the rest of the group are waiting. On Hydra island, Sun is reunited with Jin and she regains her ability to speak English. However, Widmore betrays Sawyer and has artillery shells fired in an effort to kill the Man in Black. Jack is injured by an explosion and the Man in Black carries him into the jungle. The Man in Black then tells him not to worry as Jack is with him now.

Jack awakens on Hydra Island with Sayid by his side. The Man in Black arrives and tells them that Sawyer, Claire, Kate, Frank, Hugo, Sun and Jin have been taken prisoner by Charles Widmore. The Man in Black plans to help them escape, run for the Ajira plane and leave the island before Widmore knows what is happening. While Jack agrees to help, he insists that he himself will not leave the island. At Hydra Station, Widmore has Sawyer's group thrown inside the animal cages. Sayid turns off the camp's generator, bringing down the sonar fences which had been keeping the Man in Black at bay. The Man in Black then attacks as the Smoke monster, allowing Jack to free Sawyer's group. After reuniting with Sayid, they head into the jungle to find the Ajira plane. The Man in Black reveals to the group that Widmore has rigged the plane with C4. Unable to take the risk of using the plane, the Man in Black decides to escape using Widmore's submarine. As they head to the docks, Sawyer asks Jack to stop the Man in Black from getting on board the sub.

At the docks, the survivors manage to board the submarine while Widmore's men attack from the jungle. Kate is shot during the ensuing gun fight, but Jack manages to get her on board after pushing the Man in Black into the water. In order to prevent the Man in Black from entering, Sawyer has the sub take off without Claire. On the sub, Jack discovers the Man in Black has planted the C4 in his bag and has set a timer to detonate. Unable to reach the surface in time, Sawyer attempts to defuse the bomb. However, Jack tells Sawyer to let the timer reach zero, believing that nothing will happen to them because the Man in Black is unable to kill them himself. Jack explains that the Man in Black united the candidates because he needed them all dead in order to leave the island, and has come up with a plan that will trick them into killing one another by mistrusting each other. Sawyer is unconvinced by Jack and pulls the bomb's wires, causing the speed of the bomb's countdown to accelerate. Sayid tells Jack where to find Desmond Hume and runs to the back of the sub with the bomb. The bomb detonates, resulting in a massive explosion that proceeds to flood the sub. Frank is knocked out by a door as it gives way to the water. Sun is pinned down by fragments of the submarine. Hurley exits the sub with a wounded Kate, while Jin, Sawyer, and Jack try to help Sun. After Sawyer is knocked unconscious, Jin convinces Jack to leave with Sawyer.

Jack, Sawyer, Kate, and Hurley regroup at a nearby beach, and mourn those who died.

Moving on, Jack determines that he must go find Desmond since he is important to the Man in Black's plans. While looking for him, they encounter Jacob, who explains his reasons for why he brought them to the island and that the MIB must be stopped from escaping the island and putting the light at the source of the island out. He then gives them a choice of which one of them should replace him as leader of the island. Jack volunteers and becomes the new protector of the island.

While heading towards the source, they encounter The Man in Black, who has now caught Desmond. Noticing that Jack has taken Jacob's position, he says that it was the obvious choice. Jack tells him that he will kill him as they both head toward the source. Once they arrive, Jack and the Man in Black head into the cave and lower Desmond into the light. The MIB tells Jack that it is reminiscent of when he and Locke were exploring the hatch. Jack reminds him he is not John Locke and that he disgraces Locke's memory by wearing his face. After Desmond removes the pedestal from the source, the island starts to collapse; however, the Man in Black is now mortal. Jack attacks him but is knocked out by him.

Later on at the cliffs, the Man in Black is about to escape before he is stopped by Jack. They engage in a vicious fight in which he mortally wounds Jack. Just when he is about to kill Jack, Kate shoots him. Jack stands and kicks the Man in Black off the cliff, killing him. Jack then says he must go back to the source to stop the island from being destroyed and tells the others to get on the plane. He and Kate profess their love for one another and share a kiss before parting ways. He heads back there with the help of Hurley and Ben. Realizing that he is going to die, he appoints Hurley the new protector of the island once he is gone and heads down into the cave. Once there, he rescues Desmond and puts the pedestal back on the source, restoring the island to normal. Having been teleported by the source, Jack walks through the bamboo field and collapses in the spot where he first awoke on the island. Vincent sits next to him as Jack looks in the sky and sees the plane with his friends leaving the island. He smiles and closes his eyes as he succumbs to his wounds.

Alternate Timeline

In the alternate timeline Jack's father still dies in Australia (see The End below for clarification), but the plane does not crash. During the flight, Jack saves Charlie, who was choking in the bathroom on a bag of heroin he had tried to hide by swallowing it. When they land, Jack is informed that the airline has lost his father's coffin, and they are not sure where it is. In the lost luggage department, Jack meets Locke, who comforts him saying that they only lost his father's body, not his father. Jack then gives Locke his business card and offers a free consultation regarding his paralysis.

It is also revealed a six-year old Jack had his appendix removed.

In "Lighthouse", it is revealed that Jack has a teenage son named David who is emotionally distant to his father. Jack and David's relationship mirrors that of Jack and his father, Christian. Jack, however, recognizes the growing rift between him and his son, and makes amends to David by telling him that he can "never fail" in Jack's eyes. Jack meets Claire at the reading of their father's will but the incident is interrupted by Locke; who was the victim of a hit and run carried out by Desmond. Jack is needed to operate on him.

When Locke awakens after the surgery, Jack informs him of a new surgery that the medical team was working on that could allow Locke to walk again. Locke refused, causing Jack to grow curious of why Locke did not want the surgery. He gets in contact with Bernard Nadler, a dentist who performed an emergency oral surgery on Locke and his father, Anthony Cooper, after their accident. They discover not only that they were both aboard on Oceanic Flight 815, but that they were sitting across from each other. Jack asks Bernard if he knows anything about the accident, and Bernard replies, noting doctor-patient confidentiality. He did, however, tell Jack the name of the other person who was in the accident with Locke, Anthony Cooper.

Jack visits the facility where Cooper is being treated and runs into Helen, John Locke's fiancee, who is also visiting Cooper. Jack asks Helen if she is also seeing Anthony, and she urges him to leave, mentioning the surgery that Locke refused. After Jack informs Helen that just saving Locke's life is not enough, she introduces him to Cooper, who is completely paralyzed.

Jack returns to Locke at the hospital, who wakes up from a nap saying phrases from his island life, such as "Push the button" and "I wish you had believed me". Claire arrives at the hospital in search of Jack, who leaves the room, confused. He greets Claire, who asks if they can talk. Jack buys a candy bar and offers Claire a seat. Claire shows Jack a box, telling him that their father especially wanted her to have it. She asks Jack if he knows what it is, to which he responds that he does not. They later discover that they, too, were on the same flight back from Sydney, Australia. Jack later encounters Locke in a hallway in the hospital, leaving, and tells him that he went to see his father, claiming that he thought that if he knew what got him into the wheelchair, that it could help him find out why he didn't want the surgery. Locke finally tells Jack how he and his father got into a crash, revealing that he and his father were in a plane crash after Locke had received his private pilot's license. Jack tells Locke that Locke told him that his father was gone, telling Locke that his is gone too, and that punishing himself won't help him move on. Jack once again offers Locke the surgery, which he once again refuses.

While at home, Jack notices that his neck is bleeding again. He than has breakfast with David and Claire and recieves a call from Oceanic Airlines claiming they have found his Dad's coffin, unaware that the caller is in fact Desmond.

In "The End" (final episode)

Jack says that he will see David later at the concert and heads to the hospital. He then performs spinal surgery on John Locke who afterwards, almost immediately regains movement in his feet after surgery. While Jack is examining him, Locke regains his memories of the original timeline and for a split second, Jack has a flash of him and Locke exploring the hatch. Disturbed by this, Jack heads to the concert to see David, but not before Locke telling him "You don't have a son", referring to his island existence. It is also revealed that David's mother is in fact Juliet.

Jack arrives late at the concert to find Kate waiting for him there. He feels like he knows her from somewhere deducing it to Flight 815, however she says this is not where he knows her from. She touches him and he begins to see memories of him and Kate from the original timeline but stops. Kate says he must come with her so that they can "leave".

They arrive at the Church where Jack was going to have his father's funeral. Kate tells Jack that he can go around the back to see his father and that the other survivors will be waiting inside. Jack touches his father's coffin and his memories of the plane crash and island come back. He is then surprised to see his father standing behind him. When he asks how he is there, Christian replies "How are you here?" and Jack realizes that he is dead. Christian tells Jack that this reality (referred to by the producers and fans as the flash-sideways timeline) is actually a form of purgatory which the main characters from the island created, so that they could meet each other, and that the lessons from the island impacted their lives in the flash-sideway world. Jack is shocked to know that all the survivors are dead, and realizes that he is too, but Christian tells him that time is irrelevant here; some died before him and some died long after him, and it's time for them to "move on". Inside the church Jack and the survivors all are reunited, and exchange hugs and farewells before all sitting down as Christian open the doors to the church. This releases a bright light that engulfs everyone in the church as they smile.

Personality

Throughout the series, it has been stated numerous times that Jack is a natural leader. This has been demonstrated many times by his ability to think quickly and analyze crisis situations. Jack intentionally represses many of his emotions of fear and anxiety, usually in order to remain strong for the other crash survivors, as he is the one they turn to during crises. Initially, he rejects claims of many of his fellow survivors, such as Rose Nadler and John Locke, who believe they are on the Island for a reason and that the Island has mystic properties. He does this to not give his fellow survivors false hope. On the Island, Jack also seems to repress his deep love for Kate Austen, which he has only twice ever fully admitted to, and even then only once in a very emotional tone of voice. However, after escaping from The Island, Jack and Kate admit their love, move in together, and raise a child. Jack's habit of repression sometimes does flare out, usually in his propensity to become violent when he is enraged. He is also prone to become highly obsessive and willing to do anything to help the survivors, even if it's to his detriment. Jack is deep down a very caring person and has sacrificed himself for his crashmates several times. After being rescued, he sinks into alcoholism and drug abuse out of severe depression. He blamed himself for leaving almost all the fellow survivors behind while he was safely rescued. This leads to his delusions that his father is still alive and a suicide attempt, which indicate that Jack has not been completely able to cope with what happened on the island. Digital Spy's Ben Rawson-Jones marked a "difference in the characterisation of Jack [who] has become known as the trustworthy, honest type since Oceanic Flight 815 crashed, so his blatant lies about the island under oath were definitely dramatic."

After being rescued, seeing visions of his father, and being visited by John Locke, Jack's outlook underwent a fundamental change. He began to believe in fate and destiny. When Juliet asked Jack why he had returned to the island, Jack told her "because I was supposed to". Jack's personality still retains his self-confidence, assuredness, and change which can be likened to resemble the position of John Locke in the period when Jack was the leader, but this time Sawyer is the one doing the calculating and leading. He has further proven himself a man of faith by his recent actions such as refusing to leave the island and "taking a leap of faith of the boat when told to by Sawyer.Jack change in faith lead him to be Locke' spiritual successor to the point where he told The Man in Black he disgraced John Locke's memory by wearing his face. Jack's faith eventually lead him to sacrifice himself to stop the island being destroyed as it was "what he believed he was meant to do".

Development

In the original outline of Lost, Jack was going to be killed halfway through the first episode. Lost creator J. J. Abrams was interested in Michael Keaton for the role, as Abrams wanted to work with him. However scripts were never even sent to him, as the character was made into a regular, and Keaton wasn’t interested in a series. The producers felt that if the audience became attached to the character during the first episode, and then he was killed, they might resent the show. His death was meant to shock the audience so they would never know what would happen next. The role ended up going to Matthew Fox, who was “very excited” about it, as it was the genre and tone he was looking for.

Tattoos

For story purposes, the tattoos on Jack's arm read: "He walks among us, but he is not one of us." However, Matthew Fox already had the tattoos when he started on Lost. The producers considered putting make-up over them but, instead, decided to keep them and just fit them in with the plot.

According to Assistant Professor Xinping Zhu of Northeastern University, the tattoo is made up of four Chinese characters from a poem written by Mao Zedong in 1925, and the Lebanese Phalangist symbol. Fox's tattoo translates to "Eagles high up, cleaving the space".

In an interview, Fox said that, for him, getting a tattoo is a "pretty intense experience" and something he would not do in the "spur of the moment". He thought it was a "really cool idea" for Jack to have tattoos. Since Fox used tattoos to represent memories or meaningful events in his life, the writers took a similar approach when dealing with Jack's tattoos.

Reception

BuddyTV praised Matthew Fox's lead role performance in "Through the Looking Glass" as "Emmy worthy" The San Diego Union-Tribune's Karla Peterson praised Fox's work in "Something Nice Back Home", The Palm Beach Post's Kevin Thompson "thought [that] Matthew [Fox] did a nice job conveying a wide range of emotions—scared, haunted, frustration, jealousy, just to name a few" in the same episode.

Matthew Fox won a Satellite Award for Best Actor in a Dramatic Television Series for his role as Jack in 2004. He was nominated for a Golden Globe in 2006 for Best Actor in a television series - Drama and a Television Critics Association award in 2005 for Individual Achievement in Drama. He has also won two Saturn awards, including Best Actor on Television in 2005 and Best Actor in a Television Program in 2007.