One of the things that intrigued me the most about Lost was its simple opening title. The word ‘LOST’ is out of focus, and you hear this ominous, discordant note as it drifts closer to the viewer. The letters come into focus for just a second before they blur again. That’s the core of Lost and the mysterious island: it’s unknowable. You can come close to the truth, but it’ll always be just out of reach.

The opening shot is brilliant. We get details. A man’s eye opens wide. A glimpse of a dog. A shoe. A bamboo thicket. We’re treated to details bit by bit, and we piece them together to get the full picture. The scene with the plane wreckage – short as it is – is enough to introduce us to all of the main players. Again, all we get are details, and throughout the course of the series, more details are drip-fed to us, and we piece their stories together.

Aside from the central mystery of what the island actually is, Lost uses the stories of the Oceanic flight 815 survivors to keep us hooked. It’s not long before we start picking out our favorites.

Locke is the first obvious fan-favorite. The first glimpse into his life in Walkabout suggests he’s simply a man tired of his mundane life. The kicker comes at the end of the episode when an Australian guide refuses to let him go on a walkabout. He can’t handle it in his “condition.” From what we’ve seen of him on the island, and in his daily life during the flashbacks, he seems perfectly fine. We wonder, what condition?

“Don’t tell me what I can’t do,” Locke snarls. A mantra that we’ll hear from him many times over in the series. The camera shifts, and we finally see the truth. He’s wheelchair-bound. We see Locke screaming in desperation, insisting that he can do this, that it’s his destiny. The guide refuses, of course.

The rousing orchestral score soars when we revisit a snippet from the pilot episode. Locke waking up on the island, his toes wiggling. He can stand, he can move his legs. The music continues to soar as we see the look of amazement on his face. It’s a literal miracle.

Walkabout was, perhaps, the turning point in Lost that made me realize this show was something truly special. The fact that it occurs so near to the beginning of the series makes it that much more impactful.

Lost itself is full of these turning points. The opening of the hatch. The glimpse of the hieroglyphs before 108 minutes are up. The Others taking Walt and not Aaron. The show consistently gets taken to the ‘next level’ and doles out even more questions than it does answers. The viewer’s investment in Lost will often shift from the mystery of the island to the characters, though. Just as Locke cemented himself as my favorite character after Walkabout, the rest of them began to make a similar impact. Just like actual human beings, there are so many sides to these characters. Over the course of the first five seasons, Lost offers a more dynamic and intimate look at the cast. Jack’s alcohol addiction and Sun’s infidelity come to mind.

Even Charlie – arguably one of the worst characters on the show – manages to evoke some sort of emotion from me near the end of his story arc. Greatest Hits is one of the standout episodes in Lost for how it introduces a subtle twist to the storytelling method we’ve become so accustomed to. Every episode focuses on a particular character, with flashbacks of their past to give us a sense of who they are. By the time we get to Greatest Hits, we already know all there is to know about Charlie. This time, he’s actively looking back on his life along with us, the viewer, picking out his top five best moments in existence. His greatest hits, if you will.

It’s certainly an apt term for a musician like him. Thinking about your own life as an album or a series of musical tracks is an interesting concept. Are we one-hit wonders like Charlie’s band? We all have our bad productions, but maybe we should start thinking about our own greatest hits as well.

Lost’s flashback style of storytelling is extremely compelling, and it never wears out its welcome. By the end of season 3, we’re treated to yet another series-elevating turning point. Jack has grown a beard, and he’s a drunk. We’re wondering how he got to this point (he even considers killing himself in the episode) and how he eventually recovers to become the dependable leader we know him as. He phones someone and meets them at the airport. As the mysterious person emerges from the shadows, we see that it’s Kate. Jack says, “We have to go back.”

And then it hits you. We’re not looking at a flashback. These are flash-forwards now.

Up to this point, Lost constantly tricks viewers with this storytelling method. The flashbacks often provide some sort of twist or unexpected revelation about the characters. Then, just as we’re expecting to uncover a dark detail about Jack’s past, Lost pulls the rug out from under our feet and presents an even bigger revelation.

The little, microscopic details continue to define Lost’s appeal and its superbly written characters, whether it’s Sawyer’s letter or the toy plane Kate carries around with her. By the end of the series, it becomes increasingly apparent that we’re never going to completely understand the secrets of the island or its guardians, but that ends up not mattering much at all.

Jack transforms from a man of science into a man of faith, and he grows to believe that it’s simply their destiny to be drawn to the island and preserve it. Why not? These characters were all leading unhappy and unfulfilled lives anyway. Why wouldn’t they protect the one place where they could feel like they’d finally found some sort of purpose and redemption? As viewers, we’re simply expected to take a similar leap of faith and trust that everything these characters have been through hasn’t been for nothing.

The final sequence in the finale reveals that the flash-sideways universe (yet another brilliant twist on the past/present storytelling method in Lost) was simply a purgatory where they could all meet up once they’d died so they could move on together.

Scenes of the castaways reuniting in the church are intercut with Jack’s final moments on the island. He goes back to the bamboo thicket, we see the shoe is still caught in the tree. By now, we’ve learned that the worn out shoe belongs to Jack’s father, Christian. Before putting his father in a coffin on the way back to Los Angeles, Jack put a pair of old white tennis shoes on him. He didn’t think his father was worth a new pair of shoes. After all this time, the shoe has stayed on the tree. Except now, Jack’s finally made his peace with Christian.

The scene ends with a final shot of his eye closing.

As cliched as it might sound, perhaps it really was the journey that mattered more than the destination after all. Once the characters were reunited, no one was thinking of the island anymore. The only thing that mattered was being together again. I’d like to believe that’s what the afterlife really is. Not a state of nothingness. No pearly white gates or eternal suffering. Just a reunion with the friends and family you lost along the way.

We live together, and maybe we don’t have to die alone.