Lost: 30 key deaths

1. Seth Norris (Greg Grunberg)

When: Season 1, Episode 1, ''Pilot — Part 1''
How: The pilot never made it past the pilot. After working with J.J. Abrams on Felicity and Alias, Greg Grunberg showed up in a cameo role on Lost as the man at the helm of doomed Oceanic Flight 815. While originally surviving the crash, Norris had the very dubious honor of being the show's first victim of the then-unseen Smoke Monster, his body found mangled in a tree. —Keith Staskiewicz

2. Ethan Rom (William Mapother)

When: Season 1, Episode 15, ''Homecoming''
How: Born on the Island, the son of two members of the Dharma Initiative grew up to be an Other. After pretending to be a passenger on Oceanic Flight 815, Ethan kidnapped Claire and nearly killed Charlie. Charlie got bloody vengeance when he shot Ethan. (The character has had a long afterlife, thanks to flashbacks, flash-sideways, and time travel: Ethan's appeared in more episodes post-death than he did when he was alive.) —Darren Franich

3. Boone Carlyle (Ian Somerhalder)

When: Season 1, Episode 20, ''Do No Harm''
How: Ironically, Boone, who'd become John Locke's sidekick, was killed in a second plane crash, when the Beechcraft plane he found stuck in a tree fell to the ground. Before his death, Boone and Locke discovered the mysterious hatch, and Boone was able to make contact with Oceanic 815's tail-end survivors via the plane's radio transmitter. —Emily Exton

4. Dr. Leslie Arnzt (Daniel Roebuck)

When: Season 1, Episode 24, ''Exodus, Part 2''
How: Though he was essentially the Lost equivalent of a redshirt, this former science teacher and hobby entomologist with a hard-to-pronounce name still got to go out with a bang. After insisting on handling the deteriorated dynamite from the Black Rock, the poor guy just went boom, raining down in bits and pieces and prompting Hurley to utter the deadpan classic line, ''You got some Arnzt on you.'' —K.S.

5. Shannon Rutherford (Maggie Grace)

When: Season 2, Episode 6, ''Abandoned''
How: Shannon joined her stepbrother Boone in the great beyond as the second regular cast member to get killed off. After seeing a vision of Walt, she ran after him into the jungle and was shot in the stomach by Ana Lucia, who thought Shannon was one of the Others. The death put an abrupt end to her romance with Sayid and created a tense island cohabitation between the castaways and the tailies. —Vlada Gelman

6. Ana Lucia Cortez (Michelle Rodriguez)

When: Season 2, Episode 20, ''Two for the Road''
How: A violent ex-cop, Ana Lucia kept her tail-section castaways safe with an iron-fisted approach to leadership that didn't mesh well with the other survivors. She finally seemed to make peace with her troubled past...right before the traitorous Michael shot her point-blank. While she was never a popular character, Ana Lucia's shockingly unexpected death gave the show one of its best, most disturbing jolts. —D.F.

7. Elizabeth "Libby" Smith (Cynthia Watros)

When: Season 2, Episode 20, ''Two for the Road''
How: Talk about wrong place, wrong time. Only wanting to retrieve some blankets for her picnic with Hurley—another romance cut short — Libby walked into the Swan station to see Michael shoot Ana Lucia. Startled by her appearance, Michael shot Libby, who tried to warn the others with her last, dying breath: ''Michael.'' Too bad they mistook it for concern. —V.G.

8. Mr. Eko (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje)

When: Season 3, Episode 5, ''The Cost of Living''
How: Killed off after just one season — actor Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje wanted off the show — Mr. Eko left a deep impression, and his story arc remains one of the most intriguing and complete sub-narratives in the show's long run. Initially, it seemed that Eko's path on the island was towards redemption: his dead brother Yemi kept prodding him towards a Locke-style belief in the Island's mystical powers. But Eko ended up refuting his brother, and declaring himself proud of his decisions, mistakes and all. Yemi revealed himself to be the Smoke Monster, turned into a big Smoky fist, and that was the end of Eko. —D.F.

9. Nikki & Paulo (Kiele Sanchez & Rodrigo Santoro)

When: Season 3, Episode 14, ''Exposé''
How: A poisonous spider paralyzed Nikki and Paulo, but that was only step one in getting rid of two of the most disliked characters in Lost's history. The effects of the poison wore off, but it was too late. The pair was buried alive with their stolen bag of diamonds by the rest of the plane crash survivors, who presumed them to be dead. Although most viewers were glad to see them go, the horrifying way they died and the survivors' dawning realization that they knew very little about Nikki and Paulo was chilling and, let's face it, a little fun. (Yes, there are two people here, but they only count as one.) —V.G.

10. Anthony Cooper (Kevin Tighe)

When: Season 3, Episode 15, ''The Brig''
How: Cooper was a con man who not only tricked his son (Locke) into giving him a kidney, but was also the reason Sawyer's parents were dead. Locke needed to kill Cooper to take his place with the Others, but instead he tricked Sawyer into a locked room on the Black Rock with Cooper, where he was provoked into choking the man. —A.W.

11. Roger Linus (Jon Gries)

When: Season 3, Episode 20, ''The Man Behind the Curtain''
How: After years of blaming his son for his wife's death, Roger became a victim of Ben's rage, when he gassed the Dharma inhabitants so he could join the Others. Roger's decomposed body would later be found in the VW bus by the castaways. —A.W.

12. Charlie Pace (Dominic Monaghan)

When: Season 3, Episode 22, ''Through the Looking Glass''
How: The most heroic and heartbreaking of all the deaths was Charlie's sacrifice in order to save his fellow passengers. He dove down into the Dharma Initiative Looking Glass research station, disabled the signal jammer, and made contact with Penny, Desmond's long-lost love. When the station started to flood, Charlie locked himself in the room in order to carry out Desmond's vision. In his last act of life, he warned his friends that the boat they were after was ''not Penny's boat,'' and those on it were not to be trusted. —E.E.

13. Tom Friendly (M.C. Gainey)

When: Season 3, Episode 23, ''Through the Looking Glass, Part 2''
How: One of Ben's chief Other lieutenants, the man also known as Mr. Friendly, menaced the Lostaways from the shadows for much of the first two seasons. He ended up leading an assault on the castaways' beach camp. Thanks to some clutch driving by Hurley, the attack failed. Tom surrendered, but Sawyer, remembering Tom's role in kidnapping Walt, shot him. —D.F.

14. Danielle Rousseau (Mira Furlan)

When: Season 4, Episode 8, ''Meet Kevin Johnson''
How: The crazy French lady, who'd survived for years on her own after her research mates died off and her daughter was stolen, didn't make it through the freighter folks' island invasion. She was shot as she tried to head off with her daughter, Alex. —A.W.

15. Alex Rousseau (Tania Raymonde)

When: Season 4, Episode 9, ''The Shape of Things to Come''
How: His adopted (okay, kidnapped) daughter held hostage, Ben refused to give himself up to Keamy, who called his bluff with shocking immediacy and a single bullet in her head. It was the first time we saw the master schemer at a loss, but it was also the beginning of Ben's long road to quasi-redemption. Alex's brutal death, as Ben stood utterly thunderstruck, indeed changed the rules. —K.S.

16. Michael Dawson (Harold Perrineau)

When: Season 4, Episode 13, ''There's No Place Like Home: Part 2''
How: Although he recklessly killed Ana Lucia and Libby in season 2, Michael was looking for redemption and attempted to return to the Island in season 4 via the freighter. He successfully detonated a bomb that was hidden on board and died in the explosion, sacrificing himself in lieu of Jin and Desmond. —E.E.

17. Neil "Frogurt" (Sean Whalen)

When: Season 5, Episode 1, ''Because You Left''
How: Fittingly, this middle section survivor wore a red shirt on the day of his demise. After getting worked up and arguing with others about building a fire, he died after getting a flaming arrow in the chest. —A.W.

18. Charlotte Staples Lewis (Rebecca Mader)

When: Season 5, Episode 5, ''This Place is Death''
How: When your introduction and departure episodes are titled ''Confirmed Dead'' and ''This Place is Death'' respectively, your chances of survival are likely slim. Charlotte, one of the sneakier philosopher names (C.S. Lewis, natch), met her end in the arms of the physicist who loved her, after repeated time-jumps left her brain as scrambled as the show's chronology. —K.S.

19. John Locke (Terry O'Quinn)

When: Season 5, Episode 7, ''The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham''
How: In his post-Island life, the ever-faithful Locke took up the alias Jeremy Bentham and visited several members of the Oceanic 6 to try persuade them to return to the Island. When he was holed up in his hotel room with plans to kill himself, Ben visited the distressed Locke and persuaded him not to do it...before strangling him and making it appear like a suicide. John Locke may have died at that moment, but his body would soon return to the Island, as would his form as taken by the shapeshifting Man in Black. —E.E.

20. Naomi Dorrit (Marsha Thomason)

When: Season 5, Episode 13, ''Some Like it Hoth''
How: Widmore's employee, attempting to corral the Islanders and reach her mates on the freighter, ended up with a knife in her back thanks to Locke. But even near death she stuck to her mission and sent a coded message with a reference to a never-seen sister. —A.W.

21. Daniel Faraday (Jeremy Davies)

When: Season 5, Episode 14, ''The Variable''
How: A brilliant physicist with some creative ideas about the space-time continuum, Daniel was driven to a life of research by his mother. That research left him nearly comatose with memory loss, but he was cured upon his arrival on the Island. It was his desperate plan to detonate Jughead, but he didn't live to see the explosion: in a brain-bursting twist, he was killed by his own pregnant mother. —D.F.

22. Jacob (Mark Pellegrino)

When: Season 5, Episode 16, ''The Incident, Part 2''
How: We'd come to believe that Jacob was the key to it all...possibly a deity. But then Ben and Fake Locke strode into Jacob's statue-base home and knifed him and tumbled him into the fire. We feared answers to the Big Questions would die with him there too. —A.W.

23. Juliet Burke (Elizabeth Mitchell)

When: Season 6, Episode 1, ''LA X ''
How: All she ever wanted was to get off the damn island. Once a double agent for the Others, Juliet became an essential ally to the castaways, and spent three years building a life in the Dharma '70s with Sawyer. But she went along with Jack's plan to detonate Jughead. That left her near death at the bottom of a deep hole, slamming a rock against a hydrogen bomb. Dying in Sawyer's arms later, she told him, ''It worked,'' although who knows what that means? —D.F.

24. Dogen (Hiroyuki Sanada)

When: Season 6, Episode 6, ''Sundown''
How: An Other leader and the master-protector of the Temple, Dogen tried to convince Jack that the resurrected Sayid had a ''darkness'' spreading through his body, and the only cure was death. Unfortunately, Dogen appeared to be proven right: a slightly zombified Sayid drowned Dogen in the mystical waters of the Temple. —D.F.

25. Ilana Verdansky (Zuleikha Robinson)

When: Season 6, Episode 12, ''Everybody Loves Hugo''
How: It was a bit of a redo on Arzt's death-by-explosion, yet the out-of-nowhere death of the woman who seemed to know so much more about Jacob took us all by surprise. —A.W.

26. Jin-Soo Kwon (Daniel Dae Kim)

When: Season 6, Episode 13, ''The Candidate''
How: When Charles Widmore's submarine was flooded and started to sink, Jin refused to leave his wife Sun, who was trapped behind a metal bar. After being separated since the end of season 4, the two were recently reunited after a long-awaited search. Jin would never make it off the Island, and the two died together holding hands. —E.E.

27. Sun-Hwa Kwon (Yunjin Kim)

When: Season 6, Episode 13, ''The Candidate''
How: Sun was rescued as part of the Oceanic 6 but was committed to finding her husband Jin, who was left behind. They were separated by islands and time travel, but finally were reunited in ''The Last Recruit.'' The C4 explosion on Widmore's sub left Sun trapped behind a metal bar. She begged Jin to leave the sinking sub, but he stayed and the two drowned together. —E.E.

28. Sayid Jarrah (Naveen Andrews)

When: Season 6, Episode 14, ''The Candidate''
How: Following his death and resurrection, Sayid appeared to be possessed. (He told the Man in Black, ''I feel nothing.'') The zombie-like Sayid engaged in some bad behavior, including murdering Temple protector Dogen and doing UnLocke's evil bidding. But the old Sayid wasn't completely dead: as the detonator ticked down to zero, Sayid grabbed UnLocke's backpack bomb and raced it to the far side of the submarine. His sacrifice bought his friends (at least, some of them) enough time to escape. —D.F.

29. Mother (Allison Janney)

When: Season 6, Episode 15, ''Across the Sea''
How: Of all the mysterious denizens of the Island, this unnamed woman is almost certainly the most enigmatic. Living alone in the wilderness in the far distant past, she helped a castaway deliver twin boys — and then took the boys as her own. The babies grew up to be Jacob and the Man in Black. After grooming her sons to replace her as the island's protector, Mother was murdered by MiB — although that seemed to be her plan all along. —D.F.

30. Man in Black (Titus Welliver)

When: Season 6, Episode 15, ''Across the Sea''
How: Designated the ''special'' son by his cryptic mother, all he wanted to do was get off the island and see what lay beyond. But the friction that was involved in going against his mother's wishes led to his murdering her and incurring the wrath of his brother, Jacob. Jacob sent his as-yet-unnamed brother down into the light that lay below the island, and out came the smoke monster...and MIB's lifeless body. —A.W.

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