If I Had One Day on the Island from Lost

I write these articles frequently days in advance, and so while I don't know it was a long week, it does not take a lot of psychic abilities in my life these days to be able to tell that this was probably a long week (2021 is much less stress-in-the-news and much more stress-in-the-microcosm-of-my-life for me than 2020...I still prefer the former to the latter but would prefer if both would calm down), so we're going to do something fun for Friday as I am guessing I'm not the only one who needs a reprieve headed into Valentine's Day weekend.

If you know me at all, you know my favorite thing in the world is Lost.  Whenever someone asks me a "if you could meet X character from a show?" or "if you could have one extra episode of Y?" I always know the answer is going to be related in some fashion to Lost.  One of my favorite questions to do, though, is when people ask "if you could spend one day in a TV show, what would you pick?"  And while this question, when expanded to movies/books might tempt me to explore Hogwarts or wander through Middle Earth, the reality is that I'd almost certainly go to Lost, and see if I can answer at least a few of my questions (and just live in the moment).  So today we're going to go through what I would do if I had one day on the island from Lost.

The reality is that I've gotten as close to spending the day on the island of Lost as one can get without steeping into an alternate reality.  About three years ago I went to Hawaii for the first time, and throughout my trip (but particularly the last day), I spent time just exploring & getting to see sites from Lost.  While filming had ended at that point, and you barely could tell that some of these sites were from Lost (only one person who spotted me figured out what I was doing, and was super nice & let me actually explore the Others' village by myself, which is a Top 10 life moment), and of course these are just sets it was still surreal to walk through the best moments of the show, though not quite the same route if I landed on the actual island from Lost.

(If you haven't watched Lost and want to, go watch it, and then peruse this entire tag as we talk about this show WAY more than you'd expect from a blog that went daily after it went off the air) If I only get one day, the first question is what season I'd want to show up on.  Obviously there are advantages to starting at the beginning, and being one of the castaways the first day or so on the island.  You get to see everyone new, everyone of much significance is still alive, and for the most part you could run around the island without too much hindrance (as long as you were a candidate & able to avoid being kidnapped by the Others).  If I didn't come in Season 1, I'd probably show up in Season 4, as I would have some questions for Naomi before she died, or maybe Season 2 as I also have some things I want to explore in the Hatch without Desmond getting in the way.  And let's be real-showing up at any point during the series would be a winner.

So let's start a day or two after the crash, and with me waking up on the beach.  After a quick glance at everyone & squealing internally seeing all of my favorites, I'm going to move rather quickly off the beach & hope to have time to return.  I'm using one of the more popular maps of the island (seen here) as a guide for me, and here is where things first become tricky.  Short of getting into & fixing the Dharma Initiative trucks or finding one of the boats, I would not be able to traverse the full island safely in one calendar day, even if I was starting before dawn & continued well into the evening.  The island is about 40 miles north-to-south and 30 miles east-to-west according to Rousseau's maps, and so essentially I'd need to have marathon speed, and certainly couldn't see everything.  I'm going to assume that I'm in excellent shape, though, and I am going to also assume I don't get injured or stuck in a ravine, and head east, toward the Lighthouse.

Of all of the things on the show that have fascinated me the most, few are places I want to make more connection with than the Lighthouse, which has the names of all of the candidates, and also has visions of their homes.  This always felt like a cheat, and that there were some answers in that Lighthouse before Jack busted it up, and it'd be the first thing I'd want to see.

From there, I think I'd head north, briefly stopping at the Heart of the Island (skipping the 815 cockpit, which at this point is potentially going to mean avoiding Jack/Kate/the Monster), see it glowing but avoid getting sucked in, and move toward the Black Rock.  The Black Rock, before it explodes, surely had some information on it that might have been intriguing as to how the Island functioned at the time, and to see if there were any hints that the ship was destined to go there.  This might be about the right time that I'd run across Richard (or Rousseau), both of whom I'd have a lot of questions for (namely, trying to knock some sense into Richard and asking Rousseau about what she was studying on her journey), and hope both of them didn't kill me in the process.

It would be a quick trip, because I'd want to attempt at least one last spot.  Obviously if I had a week or an extended period of time, I'd want to visit everywhere.  The Hatch, the Barracks, Hydra Island, the Temple (especially the Temple)...all of these are worth a visit.  But the true mystery, the true plothole on Lost was never anything to do with the magical island.  It was how Sayid, Sun, & Jin went by an ancient statue with only four toes and none of them bothered to go back to it, in the process meeting Jacob.

But I have the map, and I also have the advantage of knowing that Ben somehow doesn't know this is where Jacob's staying yet, so I know I won't be disturbed.  Because I have questions.  My main focus in going to these four sites in particular is understanding how the candidates are chosen, how they are eliminated, and what made someone a candidate.  I feel the show never properly explained this (though they got close), and I want an answer straight from the source.  Once I had gotten that from Jacob, I would traverse back to the survivors' beach camp, and just hang out with everyone, perhaps telling Boone to avoid climbing into charter planes (and asking him on a date), and enjoying a night under the stars in my favorite show.