[caption id="attachment_1154" align="aligncenter" width="450" caption="Is Claire Dead?"][/caption]
Claire's Story
Over the course of seasons one through five of LOST we've watched the characters follow paths to enlightenment, revelation, depression, or their fatal end, though we do not yet know where each character's development will take them.
We've most recently followed the Oceanic Six through their adventures with the Dharma Losties, but several other characters were not featured in season five of LOST, leaving Claire as the main cast member currently shrouded in the most mystery.
Claire began her journey by attempting to do what she felt was best for everyone. She planned to give up her fatherless baby for adoption, even at the warning of a fake psychic who warned Claire not to let her baby be "raised by another" (or "an Other," as some theorized early in the series). She got on Oceanic flight 815 anyway, L.A.-bound in order to meet the family that was supposed to adopt her baby. Unfortunately, when the plane crashed on the Island, she was forced to have her baby there. But through the help of Charlie and other Losties she seemed to take a liking to being a mother. The downside was constantly having to protect her son from kidnappers, though she herself was eventually taken and left with no memory of the ordeal.
Throughout several seasons of worrying about her son Aaron's safety -- or "Turnip Head," as Charlie lovingly called him -- Claire constantly yelled "Moy baybee!" in her Australian accent. This gradually brought her character into the background, possibly because of other stories that needed to be told, or perhaps because the writers did not know what more to do with a mother and her son at that point, as we already had Michael screaming "WALLLT!!" for far too many episodes. Her arc picked up again once the Staff medical hatch was discovered alongside Kate and Rousseau, where she recovered memories from her kidnapping, which included Ethan injecting her with medicine that was supposed to help the baby live. She later escaped her kidnapping with the help of Rousseau's daughter, Alex, after overhearing that the kidnappers would let her die during the delivery of the baby. (On a side note, the fact that Kate was present in the medical hatch with Claire and Rousseau, who were both mothers, could be seen as foreshadowing for Kate's role as a mother in season 5).
Unfortunately, after having Charlie end up on bad terms with Claire and Charlie's untimely death the romantic plot between the two had gone, and no more major stories were told involving Claire until the bizarre, unprecedented behavior she exhibited during the attack by the freighter in season four. She left baby Aaron by a tree and followed what appeared to be Christian Shepherd -- Jack's dad and Claire's dad -- who she knew was her father, as he had taken her to coffee once before to discuss pulling the plug on her coma patient mother. Her strangely irresponsible act left Aaron by himself to be found by Sawyer and put in the care of Kate.
This action put Aaron -- a character we've been led to believe is important -- to be raised by someone who is not his real mother. Like the fake psychic warned Claire against in what seemed to be a true moment of vision, Aaron was raised for three years by another, and eventually handed off to Claire's mom, who is somehow out of her coma.
We saw Claire in Jacob's Cabin with Christian when Locke visited. She seemed overtly happy and more alive than ever before, but showed no regret or acknowledgment of the fact that she left her friends and only son. We also saw Claire in Aaron's room in Kate's off-island dream, when she tells Kate never to take Aaron back to the Island. Whether this was a projection of Kate's fears or Claire or the smoke monster actually projecting herself/itself is up for discussion, but on LOST dreams mean something.
In the next and last season of LOST we will see a lot more of Claire. Her story is intertwined with Christian's, Aaron's and Kate's. In "The Incident," Sun found Charlie's Driveshaft ring in the turned-over cradle, long abandoned with the old camp. It stands to logic that perhaps either Sun or Kate giving Claire the ring will jog her memory of Charlie and Aaron and snap her back into reality. In the end Claire will be one of the remaining survivors, as we have yet to see Desmond's vision of Claire getting on a helicopter come true, and if this vision does not happen it would render the episodes involving Desmond's time travel and Charlie's death moot and unimportant, as Charlie only sacrificed himself to save Claire. Kate also set out to save Claire by returning to the Island.
Let's count the connections: We have one character who died for her, one who returned to the island for her, a son, one character who is her half-brother, a mother who came out of a coma, and a dead father who is walking around. With so much revolving around Claire she seems too crucial to the show to continue to take a back seat. In the final season we will see her heavily affect the outcome of events as we learn more about Christian's influence over her, and perhaps even see her play a role in the ending events of the series.
