(Temporarily) Departing Cast Member

This is the most spoilerish spoiler I have posted since I set up the side blog, so be warned before you go any further....













Still with me? Okay. You were warned. Kristin Dos Santos of E! Online reported this week that a Lost cast member who has been around since Season 1 will not be returning in Season 5, largely due to contract problems. However, the idea is that this cast member will return in Season 6, and the story will be structured to make this absence make sense. Want more details? It gets all the more spoilery from here on...













Still here? Well, Kristin also revealed that the cast member in question is a woman, which dramatically narrows the options. Here are the five recurring women introduced in Season One, in reverse order of how likely it is in my mind that each one may be the one Kristin was talking about:

5. Kate Austin (Evangeline Lily). Kate is one of the Oceanic Six, raising Aaron, fulfilling a secret errand for Sawyer, and romantically linked (at some point in the future) to Jack. I'd say the likelihood of Kate not returning next year is next to nil.

4. Shannon Rutherford (Maggie Grace). On the flip side is Shannon, who, despite a couple of clever flashback appearances, died and apparently satisfied her character arc back in Season 2. I'd say Shannon won't be returning, but that she is not the cast member referenced in Kristin's spoiler.

3. Rose Henderson (L. Scott Caldwell). Rose was conspicuously absent all through Season 3, appearing only in the finale, and has only appeared sporadically in Season 4 (i.e. whenever the fact that the island healed her cancer services the plot). The producers have certainly made her disappear and reappear several times in the past, but is Rose an important enough character to be spoiler-worthy? I don't think so.

2. Sun Kwon (Yunjin Kim). This is where the speculation gets interesting - Sun has already had the baby, and, by next week, we'll know the circumstances of her leaving the island without Jin. She has taken over her father's company, so we already know what post-island life is like for her. To me, the biggest unresolved questions for Sun are 1) is Jin still alive, and 2) if so, how will she get back to him? Since the producers have said that the Oceanic Six's return to the island will be the focus of Season Six, I think Sun may be the odd one out, but not as likely as...

1. Claire Littleton (Emilie de Ravin). In the past weeks, Claire has morphed from main character to island mystery. Is she dead? Is she now a manifestation of the smoke monster? What does "dead" mean on the island, anyway? As with other island mysteries (the four-toed statue, Jacob, the Black Rock), Lost has a tendency to introduce them early on and not return to them for many episodes and, sometimes, multiple seasons. Now that Claire is such a mystery, and Aaron has been separated by her by virtue of being one of the Oceanic Six, I believe Claire will not reappear until the final season, when our characters reunite on the island for Lost's endgame.