Pilot (Lost)
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Plot
Part 1
The premise for the series is set forth in an indirect and incomplete manner, which has become the defining style of the series. The 14 principal cast members are briefly introduced.
Title Sequence
The show begins with a simple title sequence, with the word LOST crawling up a black screen at an angle set to mysterious music. The Pilot episodes of Lost are the only ones to begin with a title sequence; the other episodes have a cold open.
Lead-in
A close-up of an opening eye shows the pupil contracting. The tops of trees in a bamboo grove are seen through the eyes of a man (who is later identified as Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox)) lying on his back in the jungle. A Golden Labrador Retriever dog trots past through the trees. Obviously confused to how he arrived there, the man gazes about at the idyllic surroundings when his memories rush back to him. With great effort, he sits upright, revealing blood on his shirt. He bolts upright and runs pell-mell through the jungle, emerging at a beach strewn with the wreckage of a jet airliner and almost 50 confused survivors of the crash. It is later revealed that the plane was torn apart in mid-air while travelling from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, to Los Angeles, California, United States. The fuselage of the jet is still burning and one of the engines is still in operation, though its speed waxes and wanes due to no apparent cause.
Jack tends to others
On the beach, Jack moves quickly among the survivors attempting to administer medical aid, identifying himself as a medical doctor. With the help of other survivors, he pulls a man with a severed leg from underneath the fuselage. When he notices a pregnant woman (whom we later meet as Claire (Emilie de Ravin)) complaining of possible labor pains, he directs a nearby survivor (later named as Hurley (Jorge Garcia)) to help her. The chaos persists as the fuselage continues to burn and disintegrate. A male survivor is sucked into the jet engine, which explodes, sending debris raining on the beach. Jack administers CPR to a woman (later identified as Rose) who is unconscious. In a later flashback, it is revealed that on the plane, Jack was seated across the aisle from this woman and was conversing with her at the moment that the plane lost cabin pressure. She had been accompanied by her husband, who had left his seat to go the lavatory. Jack had told her that he would fill in for her husband and stay by her side until he returned.
Jack tends to himself
After administering aid to the other survivors, Jack takes a sewing kit from a suitcase and slips off into the jungle to reveal that he is a large wound on his left side. He sees a young woman (who later identifies herself as Kate (Evangeline Lilly)) standing nearby and drafts her to sew up his wound, calming her by telling her the story of his first solo surgical procedure, where he conquered his fear during an emergency by "letting the fear" in, but only for five seconds. It is also revealed through their conversation that the plane disintegrated in the air, with the tail section of the plane having fallen off (Kate claims she saw the whole thing, while Jack says he blacked out before that).
Meeting the other survivors
On the beach, Jack tends to an unconscious male survivor who is badly injured by a fragment of the fuselage embedded in his torso. Kate asks Jack if he thinks the man will live, and informs him that she was sitting next to him during the flight. Other survivors (including the father and son we later meet as Michael (Harold Perrineau Jr.) and Walt (Malcolm David Kelley)) congregate and discuss what to do with the bodies still in the fuselage. We briefly encounter the character later identified as Sawyer (Josh Holloway), lounging nonchalantly on his back on the beach. The character we later meet as Hurley salvages meals from the plane's galley and distributes them, giving two to the pregnant woman he helped (her labor pains were false, but it is revealed she is eight months pregnant). A young woman whom we later meet as Shannon (Maggie Grace) petulantly refuses a chocolate bar offered by her male companion (whom we later meet as Boone, her step-brother (Ian Somerhalder)) on the grounds that she will eat on the "rescue ship" when it arrives. Among the survivors, there is a general expectation that they will be rescued at any time. A character who identifies himself as Sayid (Naveen Andrews) organizes the clean-up of the beach.
Mysterious noises in the evening
In the evening, beyond the light of their fire, the peacefulness of the waiting is interrupted by loud terrifying noises from the nearby jungle, punctuated by the crashing of trees. The source of these noises seems invisible or hidden, and is later referred to as "the Monster". While the survivors listen to the ominous sounds, Rose remarks that the noises sound "familiar".
Search for the transceiver
The next day, Jack decides that in order to be rescued, the survivors will need to send a radio message using the transceiver of the aircraft, which is located in the cockpit, which broke off in the air. (In doing so, Jack reveals to Kate that he took a few flying lessons but that it "wasn't for him".) Based on Kate's descriptions of the location of smoke, he sets off into the jungle, accompanied — at her insistence — by Kate, as well as a character called Charlie (Dominic Monaghan). As the trio walks away from the beach, they are observed from the brush by the dog encountered in the opening scene. Kate tells Charlie he looks familiar, and he reveals to her that he is the bassist in a band called Drive Shaft.
As the three survivors advance into the jungle, they are drenched by a sudden rainstorm. They encounter the nose section of the plane, which is sitting at a steep angle in the trees. Led by Jack, they climb into the nose and scale the steep floor, where Jack prises open the cockpit door. Inside, he and Kate find the pilot, still in his seat, and assume he is dead — only to have him awake suddenly. The pilot reveals that the plane had lost radio contact before the crash, and had changed course towards Fiji. They were, in his reckoning, 1000 miles off course and thus no one knows where they are. The pilot locates the transceiver, but he cannot get it to function.
Back at the beach
Meanwhile, on the beach during the same rainstorm, a group of the survivors huddles in part of the fuselage. The conspicuous exception is an older man (whom we later meet as John Locke (Terry O'Quinn)) who sits alone in the rain on the beach with his arms outstretched, as if glorifying in the rain itself. A young Korean couple (whom we later meet as Jin-Soo and Sun-Soo Kwon (Daniel Dae Kim and Yoon-jin Kim)) huddles under part of the fuselage. The man tells the woman (in their native language) to remain close to him at all times.
Mysterious encounter
In the jungle, the conversation in the cockpit is interrupted by loud noises from outside the plane, accompanied by mechanical thrashing identical to the "Monster" heard by the other survivors on the beach. The pilot attempts to investigate by climbing out of a broken cockpit window. To the horror of the others, he is seized by some unseen presence while half-way out of the window and disappears. Jack grabs the transceiver and he and Kate exit the cockpit in terror. Kate notices that Charlie has disappeared. She is suspicious as he suddenly emerges from the lavatory. As the three run from the "Monster", Charlie is nearly taken by it and Jack leaves Kate to return to fetch him. She calms herself by counting to five as Jack had suggested. Later as the three walk back towards the beach they encounter the pilot's bloodied body suspended in the tree tops.
Part 2
Charlie's flashback
A flashback reveals Charlie sitting on the plane nervously tapping his fingers. He sees the flight attendants talking, presumably about him, and quickly gets up to go into one of the lavatories. He reaches the lavatory in first-class (just outside the cockpit), enters and takes a hit of heroin. Before he can flush his stash there is turbulence and he exits the lavatory and sits in the nearest seat to strap himself in. In "Pilot: Part 1" he visits the lavatory to retrieve his stash while Jack and Kate are searching the cockpit for the transceiver.
Prisoner?
Sayid (revealed to be a former communications officer with the Iraqi Republican Guard), Kate, Charlie, Boone, Sawyer, and Boone's sister, Shannon, take the transceiver inland in an attempt to use it to communicate with the outside world. On the way they had been attacked by an unseen animal, which Sawyer kills with a gun. When they look down at the dead animal, they discover with shock that it is a polar bear. Sawyer tells the others he got the gun from the body of a dead US Marshal. Who is the prisoner he was transporting? Accusations are made between the survivors.
Back at camp, Walt has discovered some handcuffs whilst searching for his lost dog, and Jack is trying to operate on the shrapnel man without most medical supplies. The man comes around during the operation, demanding "Where is she?".
The episode's second flashback of the final moments of flight shows Kate in conversation with the shrapnel man. It is revealed that he is the US Marshal and that Kate was his prisoner. After he is knocked unconscious by flying luggage, Kate does what she can to save his life by freeing herself from the cuffs and attaching his oxygen mask for him before attaching her own.
Mysterious French transmission
Sayid's effort to send a message to civilization is blocked by a mysterious transmission in French that has been repeating for over 16 years. It is revealed by Boone that Shannon had spent a year in France and thus should be able to understand the transmission. She attempts to translate the message as best she can. Shannon translates a part of the message as "It killed them, it killed them all" before the transceiver's battery goes dead, prompting Charlie to ask the question everyone has been thinking.
"Guys, where are we?"
Trivia
- Online fan forums also refer to the Monster as "The Creature", "Lostzilla", or the "Tree Crusher Monster".
- J.J. Abrams won an Emmy for directing the Lost Pilot; he, Damon Lindelof, and Jeffrey Lieber got an Emmy nomination for writting the Pilot.
