There are so many moments that defined the series for me and got me more and more hooked, right up to the end. I think one of the most significant moments was the start of Season 3. Very much like the start of Season 2: an “unknown” and strange location, music, the back of someones head… was this a flashback? So captivatingly intriguing. Questions flicked into my mind: pre-island? Who are these people? And then the realization: THE OTHERS LIVE IN HOUSES.  ON THE ISLAND.
Oh, the georgousness of it all! Then the shot with the plane overhead splitting and crashing.  Such a pivotal moment.  I introduced my best friends to Lost and there were certain episodes that I wanted to watch with them to see their reaction (“The Constant”, Charlies’ death, “Flashes before your eyes”, etc.) and this was one of them. They sat there stunned and then both exclaimed THE OTHERS LIVED IN HOUSES!
I wonder how many others around the world had the same reaction. For me it was pure bliss. The show had changed direction and my perceptions were wrong, there was a whole new concept. Thanks Lost for so many great moments!

It’s hard for me to choose an intense and original Lost moment after so many contributions to your project. They are all “my moments” too… Lost is plenty of great and epic moments, in every season, in every episode and even in every scene.
In Lost we saw many hugs. They leave, they come back and reunite again and every time there are “hugs moments” and we love them… and usually they are happy moments. But there’s one really sad hug for me and it’s in season 3’s episode 21, “Greatest Hits”, when Charlie and Desmond are leaving the shore and Hurley arrives because he’s “sick of trekking” and wants to “help you guys out. I’m a really good paddler” and he doesn’t, but — sigh — we all know that Charlie is going to die. They are friends and it will be probably the last time they will meet together but Charlie has to be rude. He says “You can’t go, Hurley. Because… you’re too big! You won’t fit in the boat” and when Hugo leaves Charlie hugs him and it’s really a sad but nice hug. For me it’s the true “goodbye” of Charlie probably more than the “Not Penny’s boat”. There will be no big celebration for Charlie’s death in season 4 but I consider that little hug the biggest goodbye ever for a main character… and yes that’s my moment. I miss Lost.

I didn’t have the pleasure of watching Lost until after it had finished. But from the moment I watched I was hooked, I watched episode after episode, season after season. I reached Season 5, and I remember thinking that Lost would never return to it’s best, it was still gripping but it wasn’t the flawless show it once was. And then “The Incident” arrived, half a season had been spent preparing for it (though for me it was a number of hours) so I was wishing so badly that it would live up to half a season worth of waiting. And when it finally arrived it didn’t disappoint. No episode had ever been more gripping than it, and no scene more gripping than the Incident at the Swan Station.
Jack, Sawyer, Kate and Juliet all stood around the shaft with a hydrogen bomb that would supposedly reset the crash and take them back to LAX in 2004. Juliet and Sawyer make eye contact, Juliet knowing she’ll never have met him but letting him go because she loves him and want him to be free from the Island. As the bomb falls drown the shaft the characters close their eyes thinking they’ll next open them on September 22nd 2004 to a fantastic score by Michael Giacchino that has stayed in my mind ever since.
The characters wait… Nothing happens and Sawyer opens his eyes before saying one of the most memorable quotes in Lost history: “This doesn’t look like LAX“. Then the chaos begins, smoke begins to fly out of the shaft and then everything metal begins to fly into it, the drilling apparatus begins to collapse and now the characters are thrown into madness. Miles’ dad is trapped under the metal and Miles runs to help before telling him to get as far away as he can. Jack is hit over the head by a toolbox and falls unconscious. Phil attempts to shoot Sawyer, but not before a metal pole flies through his chest. Chains then wrap themselves around Juliet and pull her into the shaft. Kate and Sawyer try to save her, Kate is unable to pull off the chains, her hand begins to slip away from Sawyer’s she tells him he loves him, knowing her time is up and if she doesn’t let go and so will Sawyer’s as the drilling apparatus is about the collapse. Sawyer pleas with her not to let go but she does, flying down the shaft and leaving Sawyer. Kate pulls him away with the help of Jack before the shaft collapses on top of Juliet.
This scene is my Lost moment because it had everything, the emotion as Jack prepares to drop the bomb and as Juliet’s hand slips away from Sawyers. Jaw dropping moments of chaos, the Incident is perhaps the most audacious and incredible moment since the crash. It taught me never to doubt Lost again, it didn’t just make up for a season that was nowhere near it’s best, but it also put all the other incredible scenes to shame. It ends with a cliffhanger as we’re left wondering what on earth will happen. Are they going to return to LAX or has Juliet died for nothing? It will stay with me forever, the perfect combination of emotion and action. Lost at its best.

Getting to know the background of Jack has always been insightful. In episode 20, “Do No Harm”, Jack says to Sara, “I didn’t write any vows. I’ve been trying to for a month, but I couldn’t. So I started to wonder why that was. And as time went on it only got worse, because I’m not good at letting go. Or maybe I’m afraid of what will happen if I fail. But I know one thing. I would have never been able to write anything as beautiful as what you just said. And last night, Sarah, when you were talking about the accident, you got it all wrong. I didn’t fix you. You fixed me. I love you, Sarah, and I always will.” It’s the kind of love that isn’t only understandable, but down right real. It’s the transition that Jack finally makes in the finale of acceptance that brings this side of Jack full circle.

This moment is magic because it’s a simple one, and because it couldn’t work if the characters didn’t have the consistency they earned season after season. This is also a scene sublimated by a music which reinforce the mythology.
We find ourselves with Hurley, Sayid, Miles, Jack and Kate near a Dharma Van. Jack just fought with Sawyer, his face severely damaged. Now he prepares himself to lay the bomb down the hatch of the Dharma Station under construction. Kate watches him, she half-says a phrase she can’t finish – Jack is already gone. There’s decency between the two, the decency of two lovers who lived too much, experienced too much and whose passion has cooled down. They aren’t able to express what they feel for each other anymore. Facing such an intense moment, they don’t know how to act.
Jack goes alone fighting the Dharma, his shoulders heavy, not knowing what he does. This clean and dull character lost himself along the way for a season, but now he finally comes back as a tormented – and way more interesting – hero.
He crosses Sawyer and Juliet. They glance at each other. Juliet sees Jack as a possible way out of the Island. Sawyer meets his old antagonism. This time though, it’s Sawyer who try to preserve lives, and preserve a society against Jack, who has become a savage, anarchic force, menacing to blow everything up.
This tiny scene reunites four characters thickened and matured by five seasons. We as viewers are too much involved not to fear the final issue of Jack’s mission: a general, back-to-the-plane amnesia, or the destruction of the Island.

My Lost Moment was found in the season 3 episode “The Glass Ballerina”. It was when Jack was in captivity of the others on Hydra Island. Ben went to talk to Jack. Jack didn’t believe Ben had contact with people off the Island. So Ben said that since Flight 815 had crashed, Bush was reelected, Christopher Reeve had died, and The Boston Red Sox had won the World Series. Jack, being a die hard Red Sox fan, didn’t believe him at first, because it had been 86 years since they had won. Then Ben showed him a tape of the last inning of the world series. The tape gave me the chills. I am a very big Sox fan. It brought the biggest smile to my face. I remember watching the game live and it was amazing seeing it once more. That is my Lost moment.

My Lost Moment came in the last minutes of season 3…
…but first let’s take a step back. I owned a small business called Lombardo Barnyard. Its timeline ran congruent to that first few seasons of Lost. Lombardo Barnyard starting around the first season, and Lombardo Barnyard ending when…
We never made any money and we never had success in the true sense. I was young and it was just something I created with a friend, kind of a joke really, to put on events and impress people. We had fashion shows of transforming dresses and clothes made out of garbage. We hosted dance parties sponsored by Pepsi. We wrote books and created collectable card games featuring our friends as the hero cards. We did this for years all the while losing fans and money until one day, during a poorly attended 24-hour dance party, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I ran home mid-event crying and freezing. I took a nap, but not before sending an email calling it quits to the world. It was over, Lombardo Barnyard was dead.
When I awoke from my nap it was all a rush, I was free, it was over, I was supposed to be happy, right? The next few months I put on a big smile to the world, all my friends, my family, they said, “You look good, more alive.” It was a façade. Inside I was dying. No more events. No more projects. No more standing in front of crowds of people, speaking, dancing, presenting, and having them follow my every word. Lombardo Barnyard was the past. This is when I saw the finale of Season 3.
We find Jack sporting an unkempt beard and sitting on the floor of his apartment surrounded by maps and charts. I saw myself. In the shadows of my own despair, in my moments alone from those who were happy for me, I too would lay facedown and shirtless on the floor. Around me boxes of old clothes I was going to turn into crazy fashions, notes on books I was going to write. Cans of pop were spilled, not from a party, but from my degrading sense of cleanliness. I was falling apart. I was Jack Shepard.
And there he was, a shrived piece of who he used to be. Jack Shepard, going back to the one person who would understand, his partner in all of this, Kate. And he explained the Golden Ticket, wanting the plane to crash, how he’d sacrifice anyone and everything to go back. I’d give it all for one more moment in front of those crowds. On the Island Jack was under so much pressure leading the people. They hung on his every word for survival. People would live and die by his word. How can one man handle such pressure, Jack couldn’t, and either could I, we snapped, both of us. We wanted off the Island. But then we found what was off the Island… Nothing. Nothing is on the other side. I was there. Jack was there. We were there together, same time same place. And he yelled, “We have to go back! We have to go back!” I yelled that to my Lombardo Barnyard partner, and he, like Kate, just walked away. And there we were alone with nothing… with nothing.
When the episode ended all my friends gasped in glee about what treasures were hidden months away in season 4. While they speculated and theorized, I slipped out a side door. No one saw me. I could only stare straight ahead and squinted to keep my tears in. I’ve never felt this way, so connected to a character. He was me, on screen. And I walked for miles alone outside, not able to keep my thoughts and emotions together. After hours of walking I wondered into a gym I had a pass for but seemed to never use. And there, in my street clothes I ran. Tears ran down my face and I just ran.
I ran all night… and I never got back.

Everyone’s favorite moments are already perfect but I wanted to add one that is particularly important to me.
When Kate and Sawyer are back in their cages after their first day working for the Others and after they kissed, Sawyer says : “I noticed something else, too. You taste like strawberries.”
Sawyer is always trying to look like this tough and not so sensitive guy and he has a hard time expressing his feelings and we he does it, you have to translate it! This phrase is his own way of saying that he likes her and I thought it was very sweet. He doesn’t want people to see that he cares but you can just read it in his eyes that he’s falling for Kate.
So I wanted to honor this moment where Sawyer opens his heart in a beautiful way — in my eyes at least !

Season 2 is when Lost locked me in.
Its opening sequence is jaw-breaking, and the absurd role of Desmond in the Swan station immediately alludes to psychological topics that fascinate me: routine, mental conditioning, self-motivation… And soon, the whole push-the-button dilemma becomes the next big thing. But the best is yet to come.
When Locke and Mr Eko discover the Pearl station, we start seeing the Swan station from a different perspective, through the explanatory video: “Your duty is to observe team members in another station on the Island. These team members are not aware that they are under surveillance or that they are subjects of an experiment. […]  You will record everything you observe in the notebooks we provided. […] Each time a notebook is filled with the fruits of your diligent observation, roll it up and insert it into one of the containers provided. Then, simply place the container in the pneumatic tube and – presto! – it will be transported directly to us.”
Feeling of “Aha!” moment – the numbers-entering requirement was a joke all along, how could Desmond have been such a fool?
Except the joke is on us, we just don’t know it yet.
Because the story does not end there. In fact, it reaches a whole new level in the last episode of the season, when Kate, Jack, Hurley, Sawyer and Michael stumble upon the other end of the pneumatic tube. It’s a dump. A dump of containers. Containers of notebooks. Notebooks that were never being read, notebooks that were never intended to be read.
Desmond thought he was pursuing something, when in fact he was the guinea pig of an experiment, observed by someone else, who in turn thought he was pursuing something, when in fact he was the guinea pig of an experiment, observed by someone else: me.
Second “Aha!” moment, quickly overridden by a puzzling question: What if we were also part of another layer of the experiment? Who is observing us?
I actually never gave much thought to this question, but the simple fact that this question popped in my head, even for a couple of seconds, created a special bond between Lost and I.

My Lost Moment happens in Season 3, when Ben and his father drive to the hill for a beer. It turns out to be their ultimate discussion. Benjamin solemnly asks his father if he really holds a grudge against him for having killed his mother when he was born. Roger can’t really answer him. This is very touching, but Ben is ice-cold. He shows no emotion — then put a gas mask under his father’s eyes, who doesn’t seem to understand what’s happening. Without a glance for his father, Ben proceeds to open the gas cylinder. While Roger spits blood, agonizing, you can feel Ben’s coldness in his eyes, matched by an intense soundtrack. Then he returns to Dharmaville. Terrific piano theme. All those bodies on the ground, innocent people who probably met the same distressed fate as his father… Those images, combined with the music, really are THE Lost Moment that could make me cry, because even if Ben looks unfazed, you can already tell the sadness and remorse in him.