“So much for fate”: Free Will and Narrative Closure in Lost

Amy Bauer looks at the debate between free will and determinism in Lost, as crystallized by repeated iconic events at odds with the forward movement of plot and character development. Each time the characters encounter the numbers or push the button they enact the traumatic collision between fate and free will in its literal fullness. In season 3 the ethical dimension of this becomes explicit when Desmond sees flashes of a future that include Charlie’s untimely death.  Yet when Charlie finally dies it is not because he has succumbed to fate, but because he has embraced it.  His “spiritual” rebirth into full full subjectivity suggests that only when the remaining characters accept the apparent contingency of the plane crash as destiny, will Lost resolve its founding trauma and achieve emotional, as well as narrative, closure.