Lost: The Best Cliffhangers, Ranked | ScreenRant
Cliffhangers make fans eager to watch the next episode and stick with a show for the long haul. Lost was a show who knew how to do cliffhangers right. The show's episodes often ended with juicy cliffhangers that presented a new piece of information, but fans needed to keep watching in order to see how this piece fit into the larger puzzle.
The season finales often had the show's most mind-blowing and game-changing cliffhangers, but there were plenty of regular episodes throughout the seasons that were also able to achieve this.
11 Ethan Wasn't On The Plane
After talking with all of the survivors and checking through the Oceanic Flight 815 manifest, Hurley realized that Ethan was an imposter and was never on the plane. This revelation was made even more alarming as Ethan kidnapped Charlie and the pregnant Claire.
Ending the episode "Raised by Another" in this way showed that there were already people on the Island before the crash. The polar bears, whispers, and the "monster" in the jungle were only the tip of the iceberg when it came to the mysterious forces at play on the Island. Fans cared deeply for Charlie and Claire and needed to know what Ethan wanted from them.
10 "You Guys Got Any Milk?"
Under the guise of "Henry Gale," the captive Ben Linus kept Jack, Locke, and the other Oceanic 815 survivors on their toes, leaving them unsure of his true intentions or identity. Just when it seemed like he might actually be innocent and telling the truth, Ben launched into a sinister monologue about the trap he would be drawing Charlie, Sayid, and Ana Lucia into if he was one of the Others. He paused after these alarming words and then asked Jack and Locke, "You guys got any milk?"
This cliffhanger left everyone guessing about Ben and whether he was telling the truth, manipulating the situation for his own gain, or just messing around with his captors. More than ever, fans needed to know the true story behind this enigmatic character.
9 Desmond's Boat
As the episode "Three Minutes" came to a close, emotions were running high with the funeral for Ana Lucia and Libby. As the characters grieved and tried to find closure, a new mystery presented itself as Sun noticed a sailboat approaching the beach.
With so much focus on Michael's betrayal and the tragic deaths of Ana Lucia and Libby, the emergence of this sailboat seemed jarring, but it presented many new and fascinating possibilities. In the next episode, fans would find out that the boat belonged to Desmond, but in "Three Minutes" it was one of the most unlikely and intriguing ways to end the episode.
8 Naomi Saying Oceanic 815 Was Found With No Survivors
Naomi parachuting onto the Island naturally led to many questions. These questions only got more complicated at the end of the season 3 episode "D.O.C." when Naomi told Hurley that Oceanic Flight 815 had already been found with no survivors on board.
Hurley and many other passengers were still alive and stranded on the Island at this point. What Naomi was saying couldn't be true and yet she seemed to believe it. If Naomi and the rest of the world believed all the passengers to be dead, it remained unclear why Naomi parachuted onto the Island in the first place, leaving fans desperate to reconcile these many questions.
7 Ana Lucia Accidentally Killing Shannon
The second season revealed that there were numerous survivors from the tail section of Oceanic Flight 815. They crashed on a different part of the Island and struggled to survive under challenging circumstances. Accompanied by Michael, Jin, and an injured Sawyer, the tail section survivors journeyed across the Island to join the larger group of surviving passengers.
Upon hearing whispers in the jungle, the tail section survivor Ana Lucia panicked and fired her gun. The gunshots killed Shannon and left everyone shocked and devastated. It was a tragic accident that would make the union between the two survivor groups much more complicated.
6 Michael's Betrayal
Michael betrayed his friends in order to get his son Walt back. Michael shot and killed Ana Lucia and Libby. He then shot himself in the arm and freed Ben Linus, making it look like Ben was the one responsible for these murders and the escape.
Fans knew Michael would go to exhaustive lengths to reunite with and save Walt, but this betrayal transcended all expectations. Fans needed to see the repercussions that would follow the traitorous Michael, a freed Ben and the brutal deaths of Ana Lucia and Libby.
5 Anthony Cooper On The Island
For its first three seasons, every episode of Lost alternated between a flashback story and a present storyline, both of which were intertwined. While the flashbacks clearly influenced the present storyline, there was always a clear distance and separation between the two stories.
That distance and separation ended when the Others were revealed to have Locke's father Anthony Cooper in their custody. When "The Man from Tallahassee" ended with Locke seeing this traumatic figure from his past now on the Island, it opened up many new questions while also making the flashback and present storylines more intertwined than ever before.
4 John Locke In The Coffin
Ever since the flash-forwards began in the season 3 finale, fans knew there was a coffin and that the body inside was somehow meaningful to Jack. The season 4 finale finally showed that the body inside the coffin belonged to Locke.
Locke was one of the main characters from the beginning and it seemed like he had so much more story left to tell. It was shocking to see the character's corpse and to know that he was already deceased in many of the flash-forwards that fans had already seen. The audience needed to know how he died, why and how he left the Island, why his death devastated Jack so deeply, and so much more. Fans had to wait until the next season to get these answers.
3 Blowing Open The Hatch
The hatch was one of the most tantalizing mysteries introduced in the show's first season. It wasn't until the season 1 finale that the hatch was finally blown open.
The first season ended with Locke and Jack staring down into the hatch, leaving fans unsure of what was inside. This was a strong cliffhanger as fans still had no idea what was inside the hatch, but having it blown open promised that the answer would be revealed in the next season as Locke, Jack, and the other survivors would inevitably enter the hatch and find the truth for themselves.
2 "We Have To Go Back!"
The season 3 finale "Through the Looking Glass" seemed to be using Jack-centric flashbacks, but in the final moments of the episode, it became clear that the flashbacks were actually flash-forwards. The very structure of the show changed as fans saw Jack and Kate meeting outside an airport, with Jack insisting that they had to go back to the Island.
The structural change was exciting, but it was unclear what it meant. How far into the future were the flash-forwards taking place? Did anyone else make it off of the Island other than Jack and Kate? After desperately trying to get off the Island for so long, why was Jack now desperate to return? It was impressive to end with a cliffhanger that generated these burning questions while also restructuring the format of the show's episodes.
1 Juliet Detonating The Bomb
Lost's best cliffhanger came in the finale for the fifth season as Juliet chose to detonate the hydrogen bomb on the Island. Some characters believed that detonating the bomb would undo the Oceanic Flight 815 crash and all the events that followed and return them to the present timeline where they belonged. Other characters believed the bomb would kill everyone on the Island.
When Juliet detonated it, the screen turned white and the season ended, leaving fans unsure of what it meant for their favorite characters and the Island.