For a slew of fans over the past six years, Lost has meant so much to so many people. You don’t have to be a scholar to decipher its vast themes. Entire seasons have been marked with an over–arching theme to go along with the multitudes of ideas being bantered about on and off the Island. Here’s a quick rundown.
Season 1 – Man vs. Nature
A series about a group of crash survivors on an Island? It doesn’t get much more man vs. nature than that. But of course, Lost runs deeper than that. Besides the literal nature of the Island, the castaways must individually deal with their past lives. Sayid leaves the beach camp at one point because he can’t bare the thought that he broke his vow to never torture anyone again. Kate constantly deals with her past as a fugitive. Jack struggles with leadership problems. But more than any character, John Locke fights against his misfortune as a broken–down paraplegic and becomes not just a man of nature as the castaway’s premiere hunter, but also a man whose faith edged the group closer to the Hatch.
Season 2 – Man vs. Technology
While it is was apparent throughout the first season that there was more to this Island than it seemed to be, the second season blew the doors off (no pun intended), as the castaways unite with the survivors of the tail–section crash and discover all kinds of hatches throughout the Island. As the group pushes a mysterious button in place of a strange Island inhabitant, Locke’s faith is tested when he begins to believe that pushing said button is a joke. We also learn more of the Island’s own back story: these stations were man–made creations; conceived and produced by a group known as the DHARMA Initiative. The Swan hatch may have imploded, but the faith vs. science debate was well out of the bag by the end of the series’ sophomore season.
Season 3 Man vs. (Other) Man
When all is said and done, the third season of the series is the most under–appreciated due to a mini–season of six episodes at the beginning of the run, in which we were introduced to another location – Hydra Island – and the full community of The Others. After two seasons of barely seeing the Island inhabitants, we finally learned a lot about the indigenous peoples, particularly Benjamin Linus and Juliet Burke. The season also gave us the near–climactic confrontation between the two groups, seeing the castaways finally contacting the outside world. The Others would still be on the Island, but never as strong as they were at the beginning of the season. The war between the castaways and the Others would give us the show’s most heart–breaking causality as Charlie would sacrifice himself and alert Desmond that the boat coming to the Island was ‘Not Penny’s Boat.’
Season 4 Man vs. Destiny, Part 1: Denying Destiny
As The Kahana and their mercenaries aimed their efforts towards torching the Island, on the mainland we would meet the Oceanic Six, a smaller group of survivors (Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sayid, Sun, and Aaron) that made it back to the real world. No matter how happy or miserable they all were to be back home, experiences would begin to compel them back to the Island. On the Island, as John Locke inched closer and closer to what he believed to be his own destiny (as leader of the Others), his unique commune with the Island grew stronger. The big reveal at the end of the season–Locke’s quest to meet his own fate would eventually kill him.
Season 5 Man vs. Time
After Benjamin Linus turned a giant wheel at the bottom of the Orchid Station, the Island moved through time – 1954, 2004, 2001, 1988 and undetermined dates before eventually stranding Sawyer, Juliet, Miles, Faraday, and Charlotte in 1974. There they would become members of the DHARMA Initiative. Ben and Jack would conspire to bring the rest of the Oceanic Six together to get them back to the Island. Aboard Ajira Airlines Flight 316 they would be successful, although Kate, Jack, and Hurley would end up in 1977 while Ben, Sun, Lapidus, and a resurrected Locke would end up in 2007. We also met Jacob for the first time, along with the Man–In–Black, who after at least a century found his loophole and figure out how to kill Jacob.
Season 6 Man vs. Destiny, Part 2: Accepting Fate
With the detonation of Jughead in 1977 bringing our lost–in–time castaways back to 2007, an alternate universe would be created as well. In this reality, Oceanic 815 safely lands in Los Angeles. Throughout this season, in both realities, our heroes would be asked to accept their fates or if they could change their history as Desmond tries to awake the consciousnesses of those castaways who landed safely at LAX. Meanwhile in the original timeline, the remaining castaways, along with Richard, Ben, and Ilana choose sides between the Man–in–Black who wants to leave the Island, and being an acolyte of Jacob’s, defending the Island and keeping the Man–In–Black from ever leaving.
