Characters / Lost Main Freighter

The Freighter Science Team

The Freighter Science Team

• Anti-Hero / Anti-Villain: For much of the fourth season, the survivors go back and forth on whether or not they can trust them. It turns out they can, but it's the other people on the freighter everyone has to worry about.
• The Determinator: All of them are very driven people, even Miles at times.
• Dwindling Party: Naomi dies in the fourth season premiere, with Charlotte following around the halfway mark in Season 5, and Daniel meeting his end near the end of the same season, leaving only Miles and Frank. Subverted with Frank's apparent death in Season 6; despite poor odds, he manages to survive, and he and Miles make it to the end of the series.
• Everyone Has Standards: Save perhaps for Naomi, they all have selfish reasons for going to the Island. However, they all abandon the Freighter folk around the time Keamy and his associates show their true colors.
• Gray-and-Grey Morality
• Heel–Face Turn: We are initially given a very poor first impression of a few of them, but they ultimately become allies of the castaways.
• Rag Tag Bunch Of Misfits: An odd physicist, a ruthless anthropologist, a snarky spirit medium, and a friendly pilot.
• Science Hero: Daniel and Charlotte, at least.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Again, Daniel and Charlotte.

Miles

Miles Straume

"We just walked over a fresh grave."

Played By: Ken Leung & Lance Ho (child)

Centric Episodes: "Confirmed Dead", "Some Like It Hoth", "The End"

"I don't believe in a lot of things, but I do believe in duct tape."

A spiritualist hired by Charles Widmore to go to the Island. He has the ability to read the final thoughts of the deceased.

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• Action Survivor: Only science team member to survive (not counting Frank Lapidus, who was a helicopter pilot for the freighter).
• Ascended Extra: Of all the team he is the most focused on and, by season 5-6, is completely part of the main cast.
• A Day in the Limelight: In "Some Like It Hoth" where his backstory is revealed.
• Deadpan Snarker: Hurley said it best.
  Hurley: Oh, awesome. The ship sent us another Sawyer.
• Disappeared Dad: His father, Dr. Pierre Chang, wasn't around when he was a child since he was on the island.
• Expy: He's basically an Asian Sawyer, pre-Character Development.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Choleric
• The Friend Nobody Likes: He starts out as this to the science team, to the extent that none of them care when Sayid trades him to Locke's group for Charlotte.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Sawyer, after a few years working together. It's more prominent in the flash sideways when they are partners on the police force. They also seem very close in the main timeline (enough for Miles to call him "Jim" in a friendly manner).
• I See Dead People: He doesn't quite 'see' them, but hears little echos of them left behind.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He is extremely aggressive to almost everyone in the show. However, he has good intentions and doesn't mean anyone harm.
• Kid from the Future: After travelling back in time to the 1970s he enrolls in the Dharma Initiative and ends up working alongside his parents for three years.
• The Lancer: To Sawyer, in Season 5.
• Pet the Dog: One from from his first flashback before he even showed his nicer qualities. Miles was hired by a woman to clear the spirit of her grandson from her home. At first Miles asks for twice his fee, but when when he finds money the grandson left in his room, he gives the extra half he asked for back to the woman.
• Phony Psychic: Variation. He's a real psychic, but he regularly lies about what he sees for money.
• Only in It for the Money: At first. He also offers to tell Widmore that Ben is dead in exchange for $3.2 million, double what Widmore was paying him.
• Tell Me About My Father: His request from his mother, who doesn't want to talk about him.

Frank

Frank J. Lapidus

"We're not going to Guam, are we?"

Played By: Jeff Fahey

Centric Episodes: "Confirmed Dead"

"You know I keep thinking about how different my life would have been if I was on the plane."

A pilot who was originally supposed to fly Oceanic 815. He is selected by Abaddon to be part of the team that travels to the Island via the freighter Kahana; he brings Daniel, Miles and Charlotte to the Island by helicopter.

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• Ace Pilot: Frank is a hell of a pilot, having made two successful crash-landings (the fact that they were crashing wasn't his fault) with minimal casualties. He also manages to get a crashed plane held together by duct tape in the air again.
  Miles: Hey, hey, Lapidus, where's the chopper? Where did it crash?
  Frank: Crash? The hell kind of pilot d'you think I am? I put her down safe and sound right over there.
• Action Survivor: He's an average guy, but circumstances force him to take action. He stands up to Keamy repeatedly, only relenting when others are put in danger. He's also handy with a gun fearlessly makes successful crash-landings and survives getting hit by a steel door in a sinking submarine.
• Advertised Extra: Somewhat in Season 6. While he's promoted to the main cast, he never gets a sole centric episode. His role mostly consists of hanging around in group scenes and making the occasional Deadpan Snarker comment. It's to the point where after the bomb in the submarine goes off in "The Candidate", everyone just assumes that he died alongside Sayid, Jin, and Sun until Miles and Richard find him floating at sea in the series finale. His main purpose doesn't reveal itself until the finale when the group needs to leave the island and he pilots them to safety in the Ajira plane.
• The Alcoholic: Alluded to. Naomi refers to him as a 'drunk' and the reason he didn't make the original 815 flight was because he was hung-over from the night before. By Season 6, he seems to have cleaned himself up.
• Big Ol' Eyebrows: He has 'em.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Frank may be an alcoholic Conspiracy Theorist, but he's an exceptional pilot, managing to land a helicopter, undamaged, on the Island during a storm.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Frank tries to deny Keamy a return to the Island on these grounds; the Freighter can't approach the Island on its own, so anyone who wants to get there would need to be flown by Frank, meaning that Keamy can't just kill him for refusing to fly his men back to the Island to kill everyone. Keamy gets around this issue by killing other people to force Frank's cooperation, which ultimately works.
• Conspiracy Theorist: He believes (correctly) that the wreck at the bottom of the ocean is not Flight 815.
• Cool Old Guy: Frank's an Ace Pilot and a courageous old badass.
• Deadpan Snarker: Frank has some fun lines.
  "Jack, now I know I'm new to this group and everything but isn't this the place where everybody starts jumping up and down and hugging each other?"

  "Half the stuff [Faraday] says goes way over my head, the other half goes way, way over."

  "As long as the dead guy says there's a good reason, I guess everything's just peachy."
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: In "316", when Jack realizes that Frank is the pilot of the Ajira flight and asks to see him, Frank's reaction is to greet Jack warmly without making much out of it. While he does wonder why Jack would be going to Guam, it's more in a casual way, thinking they're just making conversation. It's only as Frank's eyes drift off to the other areas of the cabin and he spots the rest of the Oceanic Six onboard that he realizes things are not going to go according to plan and that the group is probably on their way back to the Island.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Phlegmatic.
• Nice Guy: While a bit eccentric, Frank is a solid, dependable friend, willing to stand up to a raging Keamy to protect innocent lives.
• Not Quite Dead: While no one explicitly comments on it, Frank appeared doomed after the explosion that sunk Widmore's submarine and killed Sayid, Jin, and Sun. The finale reveals that he managed to survive, clinging to a bit of flotsam from the wreck that floated in the water.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: The submarine explodes 12 days after the Ajira 316 crash. Frank is revealed to have survived in “The End”, which takes place two days later. Frank stayed on a single broken piece of the submarine in waters that were previously established to have sharks in them for two days.
• Only Sane by Comparison: He's an alcoholic and a Conspiracy Theorist (although some of those conspiracies turned out to be correct), but Frank is still the person closest to normal in perhaps the entire cast. Weirdest damn funeral he's ever been to.
• Promotion to Opening Titles: For Season 6.
• Spot the Thread: Frank realizes that the supposed Flight 815 wreckage is a fake when he sees the pilot's body; having known Seth Norris for years, Frank knows that Seth never took off his wedding ring, and Seth's supposed corpse wasn't wearing one.
• Unfazed Everyman: Frank reaches a point where he just accepts his crazy circumstances with a dry look or snarky quip.

Daniel

Daniel Faraday

"It doesn't matter what we do. Whatever happened, happened."

Played By: Jeremy Davies & Spencer Allyn (child)

Centric Episodes: "Confirmed Dead", "The Variable"

"The record is spinning again. We're just not on the song we wanna be on."

A physicist and professor who parachuted onto the Island from a helicopter sent by the freighter Kahana. He was distinguished by his polite demeanor and his scientific insight into the Island's mysterious properties. He was the son of Eloise Hawking and Charles Widmore, who were both former leaders of the Others, and Penelope Widmore's half-brother. Daniel spent his entire adult life studying space-time. His experiments with time travel debilitated his girlfriend and damaged his memory, forcing him to flee his Oxford professorship, but his illness was healed when he arrived on the Island.

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• Absent-Minded Professor: The youngest graduate of Oxford in its history, professor in his 20s, pioneer in Time Travel, and he can barely remember anything. Until the Island heals him, that is...
• All for Nothing: His plan to detonate Jughead causes both his own death and the Incident, meaning that his attempt to prevent the plane crash ends up being what caused it in the first place.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: More low-key than most examples, but Daniel admits that he's in love with Charlotte when convincing Richard that he can be trusted to examine the hydrogen bomb.
• The Atoner: In the last few episodes of Season 4, Daniel goes out of his way to show the survivors that he means well after their bad first impressions of the Freighter team.
• Bad Liar: It's why Charlotte speaks for him most of the time: Daniel can't lie to save his life, in some cases almost literally.
• Back for the Dead: After being absent during the middle of Season 5, Daniel returns but lasts only an episode before being killed.
• Back for the Finale: Like everyone, he returns for the finale.
• Broken Ace: A prodigy who excelled at basically anything he put his mind to. His passion for music was crushed at an early age by his mother, who insists that he become a physicist. He proceeded to become a genius-level physicist and scientist who eventually dabbles in time travel, but this leads him to have a rather miserable life that is ultimately cut short.
• Cartwright Curse: Both of the women he falls in love with end up tragically dying as a result of his actions.
• Character Death: He's shot in the back by a younger version of Eloise (his own mother) while holding Richard at gunpoint.
• Child Prodigy: A child prodigy who cares only about science and graduated Oxford with a doctorate as a teenager.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: Due to his memory problems, Daniel is more than a little odd.
• The Constant: Daniel speaks the page quote to Desmond, becoming the Trope Namer in the process. According to Daniel's journal, Desmond is his Constant in case anything goes wrong.
• Death by Irony: Played for horror; Daniel is shot dead by his own mother while she is pregnant with him, and Daniel realizes as he dies that for his entire life, Eloise knew this would happen.
• A Death in the Limelight: His death echoes this trope as well. Though he was a member of the main cast, his backstory was lacking until his centric episode "The Variable", in which his past was shown and then he was killed.
• For Want Of A Nail: Most of the events of the series can be traced back to his attempt to detonate Jughead.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Melancholic.
• Gibbering Genius: When he starts talking, he doesn't stop.
• Heroic BSoD: Once Charlotte dies he barely seems to function. Until he starts thinking he can change this ever happening.
• Like Father, Unlike Son: The shy, polite, and soft-spoken Daniel is entirely the opposite of his ruthless and domineering father, Charles Widmore.
• Lovable Nerd: Daniel is one of the smartest characters on the show and also one of the most goodhearted.
• Mad Scientist: His experiments in Time Travel, while actually successful, killed all his animal test subjects because they had no concept of a constant. They also wrecked his memory and left his girlfriend Theresa permanently bedridden. Lampshaded by Sawyer, who explicitly calls Daniel a mad scientist while convincing Juliet to stick around.
• My Beloved Smother: His mother works very hard to control every aspect of his life.
• Mr. Exposition: Although you'll practically have to beat it out of him (though he doesn't quite know everything). After the episode "The Variable", he becomes a posthumous Mr. Exposition once his journal outlives him.
• Nice Guy: He is kind and has a very polite demeanor. He is clearly disturbed whenever someone in the show is put in harms way.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: His plan to detonate Jughead, a plan he created to prevent Oceanic 815’s crash, kickstarts the events that lead to the plane crash in the first place. Almost all of the events of the series are a result of his plan.
• Sanity Slippage: Daniel starts getting reckless after Charlotte dies, from risking contact with a past Desmond with a gambit that likely won't work to deciding that the best idea for all of them is to blow up a nuclear bomb to prevent the Incident and change the timeline. This comes back to bite him when he's fatally shot by his mother, and then it turns out that his plan caused the Incident in the first place.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: His entire life is one. When a young Eloise Hawking shot an adult Daniel (while pregnant with him, Time Travel and all), she spent his entire life ensuring that he would become the scientific genius that she shot and keep the timeline intact. While appearing cold and distant to him, it was because she knew his entire purpose in life was to go to the Island and die.
• Shout-Out: He is named after British scientist Michael Faraday.
• Shown Their Work: For his role, Jeremy Davies thoroughly researched Physics and Mathematics. Many of the equations seen are his own.
• The Smart Guy: Throughout his time on the series, Faraday plays an important role by sharing his knowledge of time travel.
• The Time Traveller's Dilemma: Daniel's attempts to reset time so that 815 never crashed by stopping the Incident not only results in his death, but probably caused the Incident, since we see Pierre lose his arm, a event referenced in the very first episode with him in it.
• Took a Level in Badass: During Season 5, when the time travel scenario begins. Daniel becomes more confident and begins to take a more active leadership role, challenging Sawyer, matching wits with Richard and eventually leading the mission to use the Jughead bomb to prevent the Incident and change everyone's future.
• Unwitting Pawn: To his parents.

Charlotte

Charlotte Staples Lewis

"Would it make any sense if I told you I was still looking for where I was born?"

Played By: Rebecca Mader & Maya Henssens (child)

Centric Episodes: "Confirmed Dead"

A gifted cultural anthropologist who grew up on the Island, where her parents were members of the DHARMA Initiative. She eventually escaped with just her mother, leaving her father (and possibly two younger sisters) behind. She spent the rest of her life trying to find the Island again, partly because of her mother's insistence that she had made it all up, and partly for a chance to find her father again. She finally parachuted back onto the Island on day 91, as part of the freighter science team.

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• Action Girl: Although not up to the standard of some other characters, Charlotte is fearless and doesn't hesitate to leap into action.
• Adventurer Archaeologist: Although it's largely off-screen, Charlotte is heavily implied to be an Indiana Jones-type who travels the world uncovering digs related to the island.
• Back for the Finale: Like everyone, she returns for the finale.
• Badass Bookworm: Comes with being an Adventurer Archaeologist.
• Character Death: Charlotte dies of temporal displacement.
• Cloud Cuckoolanders Minder: For Daniel, a job which she has taken on her own initiative.
• Fiery Redhead: She's a blazing redhead with strong emotions.
• Flat "What": To Daniel, after he watches her knock Kate out with the butt of her pistol.

• Go Out with a Smile: Played tragically; as Charlotte dies, she mentally flashes back to her first meeting with Daniel, and she dies innocently smiling as she says "I'm not allowed to have chocolate before dinner".
• Hot-Blooded: She can be very aggressive with people.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Charlotte is quite rude and stand-offish with the survivors, although to be fair, this was likely a side-effect of being shot in the chest not long after landing. She eventually softens up, and early on shows her caring side with Daniel.
• Meaningful Name: She shares her middle and last names with famed English writer Clive Staples Lewis.
• Omniglot: She speaks several languages including Korean.
  Translator: How many different languages do you have to read that in before you believe it's true?
  Charlotte: How many different languages are there?
• Sanity Slippage: An effect of the temporal displacement she starts to suffer from.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Much like Libby before her, she has a fairly short run on the show, and is among the few main characters never to get her own centric episode. Although she had a brief flashback in "Confirmed Dead", and part of her backstory is explored via time travel when the other characters join the DHARMA Initiative in the 70's.