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| Charlotte Staples Lewis - promotional photo |
Next Tuesday, February 2, the ABC Series LOST returns for its sixth and final season. There is a definite connection between the ABC show LOST and The Chronicles of Narnia.
In February of 2008, LOST introduced a new character named Charlotte Staples Lewis. The name is obviously derived from Clive Staples (C.S.) Lewis, the author of The Chronicles of Narnia series of seven children’s books.
C.S. Lewis was called “Jack” by his friends, and it has been speculated that the character Jack in LOST somewhat represents C.S. Lewis’s journey from Atheism (man of science) to Christianity (man of faith).
The first episode of Season 4 (”Confirmed Dead”) was aired on February 7, 2008, and was rebroadcast the following week in an “enhanced” version with clues and tidbits added to the bottom of the screen. In this episode, we received confirmation that LOST’s C.S. Lewis is indeed related to both the author and his books. The bottom of the screen reads:
This is Charlotte Staples Lewis… she is an anthropologist. Her name is inspired by C.S. Lewis… author of The Chronicles of Narnia… a story of an unlikely passage… to a most unusual place.
Charlotte is then seen in a flashback in a desert in Tunisia. She has learned about an archaeological dig there, and identifies some bones as that of a polar bear.
We’ve seen polar bears on the island… now here’s evidence of the furry creatures… in another unlikely location.
Charlotte does some digging through the sand near the bones and finds a leather strap.
A DHARMA logo from the Hydra Station… the discovery is very important to Charlotte.
Although there are no polar bears in the Narnia books, the Walden/Disney movie based on The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe does show the White Witch being pulled by polar bears in a chariot during the battle scenes. Could that scene have been an influence for the TV series?
The reference to C. S. Lewis was quickly picked up by the media after this episode appeared. Jeff Jensen of Entertainment Weekly was reminded of a scene from one of the books. When Charlotte first arrives, she is seen splashing around in the water. In Prince Caspian, the Pevensie children play in the ocean when they are returned to Narnia.
In the LOST episode “This Place is Death,” Charlotte reveals that she had indeed lived on the island as a little girl, and had been warned not to return. Her mother had taken her off the island, and had convinced her over the years that the island was just a child’s game—it was just make-believe. The sounds like Susan’s attitude toward Narnia as she grew older. But her discovery of polar bear remains with a DHARMA collar in the desert had rekindled her belief in the island.
Charlotte dies from the adverse effects of time travel, but the references to Narnia are not finished. In the sixth episode of Season 5, “316,” we are introduced to a DHARMA Station, not on the island, but in Los Angeles. It is called the Lamppost, an obvious reference to the Lamppost (near the entrance to the Wardrobe) in the Narnia books. The Lamppost is used to “find” the island.
The title of the episode, “316,” is the flight number they must take to get back to the island, but it is also an apparent reference to John 3:16 in the Bible: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Jack is compared to Thomas, whose fame is that he doubted the resurrection. Jack must become a “man of faith” instead of the “man of science” he has been (in contrast to Locke) since the beginning of the show.
But where will the series now go now that we have seen that Locke’s “resurrection” was apparently a ruse perpetuated by Jacob’s nemesis? And will there be more references to Narnia in Season 6?
For more information about LOST and the Narnia connections, see Preview to the Last Season on HollywoodJesus.com, and check out the provided links.
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