lost

Lost Babies: A Comprehensive Guide to the Cuties

You may think that Lost is about time travel, faith versus reason, life choices, or a battle to determine the fate of the world, but really, it’s about babies: How are they born? Who are their parents? What do their names mean? More often than not, they’re born into incomplete families; other times, there is an abusive or neglectful parent who haunts them. Sometimes, their parents die. This season we’ve met Desmond and Penny’s kid, Charlie, and Dr. Pierre Chang’s son, neither of whom is cloaked in death. Does this represent a meaningful break from the past, or are there heaps of tragedy lying ahead? Who cares, we just love the precious little faces of newborns!

He was the fetus that survived a plane crash, and then was born on an island where babies supposedly cannot be. On top of that, he unwittingly became a member of the Oceanic 6, and thus an international celebrity. Recently, he disappeared for mysterious reasons. Did he vanish in the night like his Aussie mommy-gone-missing, Claire, or did he just get the itch to run like surrogate mom Kate? Only time will tell.
Something of a miracle baby herself, Ji Yeon was born to Sun after she left the Island. Though it was feared she might be the product of an extramarital affair, a well-timed ultrasound proved that the baby was Jin’s and essentially saved the marriage. Now in South Korea, Ji Yeon seems to be spending more time with Grandma than with her mom, who doesn’t seem to mind abandoning her daughter for a risky return to the Island. It’s a real shame, because our hearts melted when she told Sun, “Come home, Mama! I miss you.”
We’ve only just met this little guy, but he’s already become one of our favorite babies, mainly because he’s the son of hot couple Desmond and Penny. Though his grandfather is the evil and powerful Charles Widmore, this tot’s named after the ex-druggie Brit who died to save Desmond’s life. That he was born on a boat only ups his cool factor, but let’s hope he doesn’t get into sailing the way Daddy Desmond did.
If there’s one person in the world you couldn’t get Sawyer to crack a joke about, it would be the darling daughter he’s never met. It can’t be easy having a long-gone dad who conned your mom out of $600,000, but we suspect she’ll be okay, since her dad set up a hefty bank account for her while he was in jail. We know she’s still on her dad’s mind, since he most likely whispered something about her into Kate’s ear before dramatically jumping from the rescue helicopter. We just hope that she isn’t, like her namesake song, “lost and gone forever.”
His arrival on the Island as a 10-year-old boy revealed how special he is, but Walt had been unique since birth. Son of struggling-artist-construction-worker Michael Dawson and law student Susan Lloyd, he was raised by his mother in Amsterdam until her passing. Apparently capable of extraordinary powers, he proved to be too much for the Others to handle, and he and his father were the first to leave the Island as a result. The other thing he’s capable of is a bad attitude, which he must have inherited from chronic yeller Michael.
We met her once long ago, but we can’t forget how important, for a newborn, she was. For her dad, Liam, she represented a new life free of drugs and focused on family. But for Uncle Charlie, who missed her birth so he could get a heroin fix, she signaled the end of a musical career and the high-flying life that had gone along with it. But if it wasn’t for her, Charlie would never have ended up on Oceanic 815 and gone on to be a hero.
Has a baby without a name ever been the topic of so much gossip? Presumably born in the seventies, he’s the son of the man of many names who appears in all of the DHARMA orientation videos. And since there are no coincidences in this show, fans are speculating wildly about the identity of the little baby. Since he appears to be Asian, obvious choices include ghost whisperer Miles Straume, though more adventurous rumormongers claim it is Jin. Still, we can’t get over those baby-blue eyes, which seem to suggest a character we haven’t met before.
Locke entered this world with the odds stacked against him, but he’s overcome them time and again. Born three months premature, little Locke survived despite numerous illnesses; the hospital nurses referred to him as a “miracle.” Since then he’s had a pretty rough life (he lost a kidney to a con-man father who later pushed him out of an eight-story building), but finally found his calling on the Island. And now that he has supposedly died for the sake of others, it doesn’t seem too strange to wonder if this Christ-like character will be resurrected once back on the Island.
The former leader of the Others wasn’t always so devious, but it was the circumstances of his birth that may have sealed his fate. After his wife died in childbirth, Ben’s father became bitter and distant toward his son, leaving the boy feeling lonely and disenchanted. Apparently, that was enough for Ben to participate in a mass murder of the DHARMA Initiative, which included dear old dad. So is he just a bundle of mommy and daddy issues, stemming from a disastrous birth? Think of Ben telling Jack that his mother taught him to read, and decide for yourself.
Okay, so they’re not babies, but Charlie and his Drive Shaft bandmates in diapers are pretty hilarious. This is also a healthy reminder that babies can sometimes be funny, and not just associated with death, disease, and divorce.
Lost Babies: A Comprehensive Guide to the Cuties