Want to take an island vacation this summer? All six seasons of Lost are streaming on Netflix in the US as of July 1, giving die-hard fans and newcomers alike a chance to enjoy the mind-bending drama all over again. The series originally ran from 2004 to 2010, premiering just days before Desperate Housewives and a few months before Grey’s Anatomy. It became an immediate hit, and it all came from an executive named Lloyd Braun sitting on a beach in Hawaii, thinking of ways to turn his vacation into a TV show. Inspired by the Tom Hanks movie Cast Away and the massive, game-changing reality competition series Survivor, Braun came up with a title — Lost — and a vague concept of plane crash survivors and total strangers learning to survive together while leaving their pasts behind. 

Once he got series co-creator J.J. Abrams involved — and young writer Damon Lindelof joined him — that idea began transforming into the show we know today.

Back then, audiences had to wait a whole week in between episodes — and spent those days (and the breaks between seasons) digging into every detail of the show on an internet landscape very different from the one we have today. Twitter didn’t exist in 2003, Myspace was brand-new, and Reddit wasn’t even launched until 2005. Watching Lost now is a completely different experience than it was then, but it can be just as good. 

If you want to go in blind, you can … or you read on for everything you need to know about the groundbreaking series. Either way, buckle up for the (plane) ride of your life.

Mario Perez

What happens in Lost?

It all started with the crash of Oceanic Flight 815, a Boeing 777 on its way from Sydney to Los Angeles. The plane broke in half in midair and scattered its passengers across a mysterious island in the Pacific Ocean. The passengers from the front half of the plane landed on one beach. Those seated in the back of the plane landed … on a different beach. Things went very differently for the two groups. Sometimes, they battled a smoke monster or a polar bear or hallucinations of dead family members. Other times, they were betrayed and kidnapped by a traitor posing as a fellow survivor. Many did not survive. 

Despite how things may seem at first, the crash survivors are not alone on the island. There are others — known appropriately as the Others — who eventually make their presence known and only further prove that this is so much more than just your basic island in the Pacific … and so much more than just a story of people surviving a plane crash. 

Who’s in the cast of Lost?

The massive ensemble cast changed throughout the seasons, though most main characters returned for the sixth and final season. Here are the key people we meet at the start of the series: 

• Matthew Fox (Alex Cross, Speed Racer) as Dr. Jack Shephard, a doctor and de facto leader with serious daddy issues
• Evangeline Lilly (Ant-Man) as Kate Austen, a mysterious fugitive who’s desperate to leave her crimes in the past
• Josh Holloway (Yellowstone, Colony) as James “Sawyer” Ford, a sardonic con man 
• Harold Perrineau (From, Claws) as Michael Dawson, a construction worker who recently got custody of his son and is determined to prove himself a great father
• Malcolm David Kelley (Insecure) as Walt Lloyd, Michael’s son, owner of Vincent the dog
• Terry O’Quinn (Resident Alien, 666 Park Avenue) as John Locke, a lonely man who just wanted to go on a walkabout
• Naveen Andrews (Sense8, The Cleaning Lady) as Sayid Jarrah, an Iraq War veteran haunted by his experiences in the military
• Daniel Dae Kim (Avatar: The Last Airbender) as Jin-Soo Kwon, the fiercely protective husband of Sun-Hwa Kwon
• Yunjin Kim (XO Kitty, Money Heist: Korea — Joint Economic Area) as Sun-Hwa Kwon, Jin’s wife, who doesn’t need quite as much protection as Jin thinks
• Emilie de Ravin (Once Upon a Time) as Claire Littleton, a young single pregnant woman
• Dominic Monaghan (The Lord of the Rings) as Charlie Pace, an addict and a rock star from the band Drive Shaft
• Jorge Garcia (Bookie, Hawaii Five-0) as Hugo “Hurley” Reyes, a good-natured man whose recent lottery winnings seem to have brought him bad luck
• Ian Somerhalder (The Vampire Diaries) as Boone Carlyle, a rich guy who’s in love with his stepsister, Shannon 
• Maggie Grace (Fear the Walking Dead) as Shannon Rutherford, Boone’s spoiled stepsister who’s in a lot of denial

Later, you’ll meet the kindhearted Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell), manipulative Henry (Michael Emerson), no-nonsense Ana Lucia (Michelle Rodriguez), mysterious Mr. Eko (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), hopeless romantic Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick), and his longtime love Penny (Sonya Walger), among others (… and Others). Recurring actors and guest stars also include Julie Bowen, Katey Sagal, Lance Reddick, Mark Pellegrino, Alan Dale, Kim Dickens, Dylan Minnette, and many more. 

Mario Perez

Where was Lost filmed?

Would you believe that they were just in Hawaii that whole time? Lost filmed all over Hawaii, on actual beaches and on soundstages set up for the show. While production would occasionally travel, various parts of Hawaii were transformed on camera into New York, Los Angeles, South Korea, Iraq, London, and a ton of other places that don’t tend to look much like Hawaii. 

Mario Perez

What are the numbers on Lost? 

4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42. Six numbers that, if you ask Hurley, are always bad news. After playing them in the lottery and winning big, misfortune followed Hurley and those around him. The numbers also followed him, showing up in various ways throughout the series. They’re everywhere, from the flight number to an engraving on the lid of a mysterious hatch found in the jungle. While it’s not vital that you remember all the numbers, they’ll be important later on. It’s also a fun game to spot all the times any of those six numbers appear on the show.

Everett Collection

Wait, what’s in the hatch?

It would spoil the fun if we told you! Just know it’s a major turning point for the series, and the revelation does not disappoint. Plus, there’s an excellent music cue that goes with it. 

Is the Smoke Monster in the hatch? 

No, and neither are the polar bears. The island in Lost is a mysterious place full of mysterious things, and not everything has a rock-solid scientific explanation. Just go with it. 

Oh my God, is that Charlie Pace from Drive Shaft? 

Yes! The famous one-hit-wonder duo known for the song “You All Everybody.” The band was actually inspired by Oasis, but the song has a rather unexpected origin story. Matt Reeves, a friend of J.J. Abrams and future director of The Batman, was watching daytime talk show The Phil Donahue Show and heard a woman say, “You all everybody acting like it’s the stupid people wearing expensive clothes.” The line stuck in his and Abrams’ brains and vocabularies and eventually became the inspiration for the song. It all may be fictional, but how often does a song become iconic based only on its title, which is also its primary lyric, which is based on a random lady from a daytime talk show? Not often! 

How does the timeline in Lost work?

Lost is, in a lot of ways, all about the past. It’s about a group of strangers coming together and leaving their pasts behind, but that doesn’t mean anyone gets to completely forget who they were or what they did before. The show uses flashbacks to slowly reveal surprising and often tragic backstories for nearly all of its main characters, adding to the significance of whatever they’re now going through on the island. 

What’s a little more unexpected is the myriad of other ways the show plays with time. Whether you’re getting the same story from multiple perspectives or jumping backward or forward or even sideways, there are many time-related twists to be found on this island. Warning: Some people look really good for their age. 

When can I stream Lost on Netflix?

All six seasons are streaming as of July 1, aka 7/1, and 7+1 adds up to … 8. Somebody warn Hurley!

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