7 LOST Mysteries That Are Still Unsolved

Lost was the quintessential “mystery box” series — written to keep viewers hooked with endless questions and nesting puzzles, without concerning itself too much with giving satisfying answers. The show had a controversial ending, though it has stayed in the popular zeitgeist and has even garnered some favorable retrospective reviews in recent years. However, regardless of how you see the ending, the show leaves many big questions unsolved, which is unsatisfying no matter how the finale strikes you. Even if fan theories are there to fill in the gaps, it’s not the same as seeing the answer on screen. Read on for seven of Lost‘s biggest unsolved mysteries, but fair warning: there are spoilers ahead!

Bear in mind that many of Lost’s mysteries got vague or incomplete explanations — many of the strange sightings on The Island were the shapeshifting Man in Black, for example. These may not be satisfying answers, but they’re not unsolved mysteries either. The ones below include dropped plots that still don’t have definitive solutions to this day. If you want to binge the show looking for answers yourself, Lost is streaming now on Netflix and Hulu.

Mr. Widmore’s Rules

Charles Widmore is introduced as a mysterious antagonist in Season 2, but he always seems to be at odds with Benjamin Linus, leaving the survivors of Oceanic 815 relatively unscathed. We learn a decent amount about Widmore and Ben’s feud, but one mysterious line in Season 4, Episode 9 stands out. When Widmore’s mercenaries attack Ben and threaten to kill his daughter, Ben says that Widmore has “changed the rules.” We never learn what rules these two power players were bound by, and how they were enforced.

Christian Shephard’s Body

Jack Shephard is on Oceanic flight 815 to transport his father’s remains back home from Australia, but they both wind up on The Island instead. Jack found his father’s casket in the plane’s wreckage, but there was no body inside. We see Christina Shephard plenty in the episodes that follow, but we never find out what happened to his physical corpse, or why.

In hindsight, it seems safe to say that every time Jack saw Christian on the island it was an illusion presented to him by the Man in Black, or the smoke monster. This being can take on any shape, and it doesn’t need a body to do so. That leaves us wondering where Christian’s real body went, but at this point, we’ll probably never know.

Pregnancy on The Island

The Island heals some people and harms others, but it seems to have a particular effect on pregnant women. This is a major plot point — it’s the entire reason Juliet is there in the first place — and considering how much it’s built up, we should have gotten a more concrete solution to this mystery in the end. We learn that the issues with pregnancy seem to be related to the electromagnetic incident of 1977, but even that isn’t totally confirmed.

Walt’s Psychic Abilities

The character Walt is under-explained and under-utilized in general, but in particular, his psychic abilities are a frustratingly unanswered mystery. We see Walt apparently mind-control a bird, and at later it seems he has access to knowledge he shouldn’t have. However, every time fans asked for more answers about this character, the writers brushed them aside.

4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42

Of course, the mysterious numerical sequence featured in Lost had to make the list. It’s another element that was built up as though it would become significant, but never fleshed out. The numbers won Hurley the lottery, and they were embossed on the outside of the hatch. However, why they’re significant and what exactly they do is impossible to say.

Ben’s Friend Annie

A less obvious dropped plotline came in Season 3, Episode 20 during a flashback to Ben’s childhood with the Dharma Initiative. There, we saw that young Ben had a friend in Annie, while all the adults in his life seemed to be ignoring him. Annie gave Ben a carved doll for his birthday, saying she hoped he would always remember her. We then saw that the adult Ben still had this doll, but we saw no sign of an adult Annie. We never heard about Annie again, and to make matters worse the showrunners even said that Annie would become significant in a DVD commentary track. That story must have gotten lost in the shuffle.

The Four-toed Statue

Finally, perhaps the most frustrating unanswered mystery is the megalithic statue of a foot with only four toes positioned on one of The Island’s shores. if nothing else, the scale of this mystery demands an answer, and at times it seemed like we’d get one. We even get a glimpse of the full-size statue in a flashback sequence, but we get no explanation of why it was built and why it has only four toes.

Lost is streaming now on Netflix and Hulu. Although the series ended years ago, there’s still a thriving community online trying to pick apart its mysteries.