A couple of weeks ago, I initiated a topic of how the tremendously important theme of death played out over the course of LOST so far. After looking at the role of death in season one and taking a break to discuss leadership and LOST politics, I am ready to further the topic of death as it emerges during Season Two.
If death in season one served more of a social solidifying purpose, season two provides very little in this regard. Rather than examine how death impacts the group as a whole, death in season two seemed more about looking at the effect of death on individual characters.
For better or worse, death was used most memorably this season to stir up drama by putting an early expiration date on some romantic relationships. The sixth episode of season 2, “Abandoned,” closes with a cliffhanger featuring the oft-neurotic Shannon being shot by ever-so-lady-like Ana Lucia. This death event is dragged out to the point where it is featured in three episodes. The shooting takes place in “Abandoned,” is highlighted in a montage in “The Other 48 Days, ” and commences the episode “Collision.” The produces of the show clearly wanted to make the shooting of Shannon a big deal, and I imagine an important factor is the emotional impact the audience should feel for Sayid, who found Shannon’s affections to be a temporary escape from his musings of Nadia. Shannon’s actual death occurs in “Collision,” with a proper mourning from Sayid, who elects not to enact revenge on Ana Lucia’s accident, solemnly stating, “What good would it be to kill you, if we’re both already dead?”
In this same episode, the audience learns a bit about the leader of the Tailies, as we see Ana Lucia as a lady cop murdering a burglary suspect who shot her and caused her to miscarry her unborn child. She unloads a barrage of bullets into the man, preferring to enact cold revenge than allow the law to properly deal with him. Thus, the death of Shannon and its relation to Ana Lucia’s back story gives us some invaluable insight into the life experiences of one of the roughest characters on LOST, while simultaneously having the effect of tugging on the emotional strings of the audience as they empathize with a distraught Sayid.
Whether you are a fan of Shannon or not, her death was supposed to evoke a particular response from the audience. However, I would be skeptical to find someone who felt the death of Shannon was more gut wrenching than that of Hurley’s love interest, Libby. Hugo’s crush on Libby is so endearing that her senseless death leaves quite an impression on the audience. Ana Lucia meets her death at the hands of Michael as well, yet she fails to evoke the same level of emotional impact from the audience. It is, however, noteworthy that she appears to Eko in a dream along with his dead brother Yemi. Yemi appears posthumously to both Locke and Eko this season to guide these characters, but I will focus on Yemi in greater detail in a later post for season 3.
These tremendously important deaths of Libby, Shannon, and Ana Lucia are all accidental. I think it is in the incidental nature of these deaths that their true power lies. On the surface level, it appears inconsequential whether each of these characters lived or died. However, peeling off the superficial layers reveals deep personal significance to individual main characters. This contrasts the more collective impact of death throughout the first season. I think overall the effect is poignant for the audience (at least in terms of the death of Libby, since some viewers seem to not favor Shannon or Ana Lucia very much). The individual deaths in and of themselves did not serve to further any particular plot points, but rather enriched the complex psyches of certain characters through heavy personal emotional tragedy.
