What Happened To Claire Littleton On Lost? Her Season 5 Absence, Explained

One thing that quickly becomes clear on "Lost" is that the writers don't care about all the survivors equally. There are the "main" survivors (Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Locke) who drive the plot. Right below them are the second-tier characters like Hurley, Charlie, Michael, Jin, Sun, and Sayid; these characters usually had to settle for one spotlight episode a season, but were still reasonably involved in everything going on. At the very bottom of the named character rankings were Rose and Bernard, two sweet old people who mostly hung out in the background, never getting involved in all the drama.

Where was Claire Littleton (Emilie de Ravin) in all this? In the first season, she seemed to be in that second tier alongside Charlie and Hurley. As a pregnant woman on an island that's hostile to pregnancies, she was the center of arguably the most dramatic storyline in season 1 when she was kidnapped by the Others. But just as Charlie was downgraded in importance in season 2, so was Claire. She still received one spotlight episode for each of the first three seasons, but ultimately, she was relegated to staying at the beach to take care of her baby Aaron. 

Amid her dwindling prominence on the series, Claire fans still got a fun surprise in season 3's "Par Avion," which revealed (to the audience, not the characters) that she and Jack were half-siblings. The show doesn't do much with this revelation, however, even though you'd sure think the Others would've tried to weaponize this info against Jack at some point. But before either of them can learn about their relation on the island, Jack and the rest of the Oceanic Six are rescued while Claire is left behind. 

After the season 4 finale, there was no reason for fans to think Claire wouldn't be sticking around. She was hardly the only survivor left behind: Sawyer, Jin, Juliet, Miles and Faraday were also still trapped on that island, so the assumption was that Claire would link back up with them pretty soon. 

But little did fans know that season 5 would be all about time travel. Not only did Ben turning that giant wheel in the season 4 finale cause the island to magically move locations, but it also left the island on shuffle mode, jumping through time periods with little rhyme or reason. Most of the survivors are thrown from year to year, before finally landing in the 1970s and settling down there. But for whatever reason, only some of the on-island survivors get caught up in the time jumps. Claire is unaffected by them, and no explanation for this is ever given. (I assume the Man in Black's magic was somehow involved.)

Although Claire is never seen and is rarely mentioned by the other survivors, her presence can still be felt in Kate and Jack's storylines. In her three years off the island, Kate becomes the adoptive mother of Aaron, and the kid serves as a constant reminder of the woman they'd left behind. Jack also discovers that Claire's his half-sibling off the island, which both increases his affection for Aaron and serves as yet another motivator to return to the island by any means necessary. 

The second half of season 5 sees the Oceanic Six return to the island, but most of them land in the '70s while the others land on the island in 2007. (Season 5 is convoluted.) It's here that Claire's absence becomes particularly noticeable; Sun, John, Ben, and Lapidus are all there in 2007, but no one thinks to look for Claire, who is presumably still around. This is the point where a lot of fans started to wonder if Claire had been forgotten. Was this another Walt situation, where the writers seemingly lost interest in a character and never got back around to them? 

Season 5 ends with the '70s survivors setting off a hydrogen bomb, which causes a time paradox that somehow throws them back into the modern day. Season 6 starts with the entire cast back together again in the present day, which means now's as good a time as ever for them to catch up with Claire. So, how's she been holding up? Badly. Very badly. 

Claire in season 6 is borderline feral. Her lonely years surviving off the island wilderness has turned her into someone who'd be more at home in a show like "Yellowjackets," although thankfully Claire never resorts to that show's cannibal extremes. (As far as we know, at least.) There's a bit of a tragic poetry to Claire's situation at the start of season 6; much like Danielle Rousseau long before her, Claire has had her baby taken from her for unknown reasons, and she's lost some of her sanity in the process. 

The good news is that the other survivors are understanding about her situation. Even after Claire tries to kill Kate at one point in a hysterical rage, Kate gets over it quickly. It helps that Claire has somehow discovered in the off-season that Jack is her half-sibling, so she never tries to stab Jack, at least. The other survivors understand that most people would lose their marbles a bit when trapped in Claire's situation, plus Rousseau has given them practice in how to handle someone who's gone island-mad. 

The most important development with season 6 Claire is her relationship with the devilish Man in Black, who impersonates her father Christian and later John Locke. So much of their history is implied, but from what little we see of them, we can tell he was not exactly a great influence. By the time we reach the series finale, Claire is a total mess, nearly refusing rescue because she thinks she's too far gone to be a good mother to Aaron. (Thankfully, Kate convinces her otherwise.) Claire may have been left behind — literally and on a meta level — but at least in the end she gets to go home. 

Looking through old interviews and reviews at the time, it's clear that Claire was an afterthought not just for the show, but for the fans and critics watching it. So if you were a rare Claire fan watching back in 2009/2010, you were likely disappointed by how little focus she was getting. Her sibling reveal with Jack didn't amount to much, nor did her relationship with Kate turn into anything special. 

Perhaps most disappointing of all is that Charlie's sacrifice in the season 3 finale, which he did so under the impression that he was getting Claire rescued, never panned out. If Charlie had known the result of him dying in that station was that Claire would be stuck alone on the island for three full years, I'm not sure he'd have gone through with it. 

The bright side is that season 6 didn't just have the on-island storyline to further Claire's journey, it also had the flash-sideways, which shows a version of the afterlife where all the island characters get to meet up and find closure. There, Claire gets to have her baby in regular society, and she's reunited with Charlie. Charlie and Claire's on-island storylines are some of the most depressing things that have happened on the series, so it's cathartic to see these two given the sweetest scene of the whole finale: 

Emilie de Ravin sure seemed to enjoy Claire's season 6 arc, mainly because it gave the character something interesting to do again. "There's definitely been a lot going on with her," she said in a People interview at the time. "I'm coming back as sort of a whole new character, so that's really fun for me." 

The actress appreciated how season 6 explored the Man in Black's influence on Claire, which expanded on the season 4 plot point of Claire mysteriously abandoning her baby and wandering off alone into the woods. "It explains why she left her child under a tree," de Ravin said. "I was relieved to find out she just wasn't a terrible mother. She always seemed so sweet."

And although de Ravin didn't seem quite as thrilled about being thrown back into a pregnancy storyline for the flash-sideways, she at least found the bright side in the change of setting: "Oh, yes, the lovely bump is back ... At least this time I don't have to wear it on the beach in 100-degree weather sweating my ass off." 

There also wasn't much ill will between de Ravin and the "Lost" showrunners over her season 5 absence. She was very busy at the time appearing in projects like "Remember Me," "The Chameleon," and "Public Enemies." In the end, Claire's absence turned out a lot like Bran's absence in season 5 of "Game of Thrones." Sometimes a show just has too much going on, and needs to be comfortable with putting a pin on a storyline or two so they can get back to it later. As much as we would've liked to see Claire in season 5, even just for a quick check-up, it makes sense that such a fast-paced season would want to avoid too many detours from the main Dharma plot. 

Although most fans enjoy Claire's final moments on the show (on and off island), the general consensus is that she was wasted by the writers. They didn't do her quite as dirty as the once-hyped Walt or Charles Widmore, but they could've done a lot more. Some fans attribute the lack of Claire focus to their (questionable) belief that de Ravin isn't a good actress. Other fans believe Claire's simply a victim of the latter seasons' shorter episode counts, which struggled to distribute screentime to the cast as evenly as the longer early seasons. Someone always ends up getting the short stick in an ensemble series working under time restrictions, and that someone here was Claire. 

Perhaps the most prevailing criticism regarding Claire is that the writers simply didn't know how to handle a young mother character. They didn't seem to have the will or capacity to write her with the level of depth and agency that the other female characters enjoyed. Sun, Juliet, Kate, and even Shannon got to grow and change for the better throughout their time on the series, but Claire spent her first four seasons as more of a plot device for the other characters to deal with. 

She was there to further along the mystery of the Others, to further along Charlie's character development as a recovering addict, and to give Kate and Jack extra motivation to return to the island. But outside of a few fun moments scattered throughout the series, Claire's personal journey was never the top priority. In a show that was famous for its vast array of diverse, complicated characters, the depth for Claire Littleton was never quite there.