Lost was an incredible show; a before and after, as it became an audience success while doing things normally used in cult following shows: time traveling, time-fragmented structure, and incredible twists. Since then, audiences can expect any of those things, and understand them perfectly. It was also one of the best J.J. Abrams shows. The success of Lost also meant great opportunities for its actors, and here’s what the cast is doing now.

Matthew Fox

     Disney–ABC Domestic Television

Matthew Fox played Jack Shepherd, the leader of the group and doctor. He was as tortured as he was brave, and his ideas about science and faith changed after everything he experienced on the island. This wasn’t Fox’s first big role on TV, as he had already played Charlie Salinger on the hit series, Party of Five. After Lost, the actor announced he was done with TV and played some characters in movies: he appeared in one of the Wachowski’s best movies, Speed Racer, and he also had roles in Alex Cross as the villain, and Bone Tomahawk. This year, he came back to TV with the miniseries Last Light.

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About getting cast on the show, Fox told Empire: “I got cast ten days before we started shooting, usually I read things before I go into meetings. But there was no script. (…) JJ put me in a room and proceeded to open the door every 20 minutes, saying, “What do you think? What do you think?” I said, “You gotta let me finish!” But I was blown away, from the first page. The image of a guy waking up in a bamboo forest, wearing a suit, was incredibly intriguing.”

Evangeline Lilly

Evangeline Lilly played Kate Austen, the fearless adventurer with a troubled past. This was her breakout role, as before that, she’d only been cast in roles like School Girl, Party Guest, or Benton’s Girlfriend. Lost proved that Lilly had charisma, and the camera only had eyes for her. Since then, she’s been part of two big franchises: The Hobbit, where she played Tauriel, and the MCU, where she plays Hope Van Dyne, aka The Wasp. After the show ended, she also started writing The Squickerwonkers series of children’s books. We’ll see her next in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.

Jorge Garcia

Jorge Garcia played the lovable, fan-favorite, Hugo “Hurley” Reyes. His character felt as if he was cursed with the lottery numbers that kept appearing on the island, in what was one of the biggest mysteries. Hurley was always positive and tried to make everyone’s experience on the island better, but he also had a profound trauma about his weight, making him one of the most rounded characters in the whole series. After the show, Garcia appeared in J.J. Abrams’s next series, Alcatraz, and went back to Hawaii to be part of Hawaii 5-0. His last role has been as Floop in The Munsters reboot, and he has five different projects lined up for 2023, so we’ll have more Jorge Garcia in our lives soon.

Josh Holloway

Josh Holloway played James “Sawyer” Ford, the Han Solo to Jack’s Luke Skywalker, who started the show only looking out for himself, and ended up as one of the core group members. Holloway looked like he might be the actor with the best future after Lost, when he appeared in a small role in Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, and had his own TV series in Intelligence. He was the lead in Colony and has lined up a project that sounds perfect for his abilities, in Duster, where he’ll be a getaway driver in the 1970s Southwest. His most recent appearance on our TV was as Roarke Morris on the big hit Yellowstone.

Terry O’Quinn

Terry O’Quinn played the mysterious John Locke, who loved the island, as there, he became who he always thought he should’ve been. The actor was already a known quantity in Hollywood as he had played supporting roles in shows like Alias and The West Wing, but Lost brought him to the stratosphere (he won an Emmy for the role). After Lost, he became the lead guy on shows like 666 Park Avenue and Gang Related. In the last few years, he’s been appearing in all kinds of series, normally as a figure of authority, from Hawaii Five-O to The Blacklist: Redemption, or Perpetual Grace, LTD. His latest role has been as Byron LaCroix in FBI: Most Wanted.

Yunjin Kim

Yunjin Kim played Sun-Hwa Kwon, one half of a married couple with problems when the show starts, and who fall in love again on the strange, dangerous island, creating one of the two best love stories in the whole show (Penny and Desmond being the other). Since Lost ended, Kim has been alternating roles between American and Korean TV. She played one of the leads on Mistresses, Ms. Ma in the Korean show Miseu Ma and Boksooui Yeoshin, and this year, she’s had one of the lead roles in Money Heist: Korea - Joint Economic Area, playing Seon Woojin.

Daniel Dae Kim

Daniel Dae Kim played Jin-Soo Kwon, the other half of the Korean married couple who rediscover their love on the island. After the show ended, Kim stayed in Hawaii for seven more years, shooting Hawaii Five-O. He left that series after the discrepancies in salaries between the two lead stars and their Asian counterparts were made public, so both Kim and Grace Park left. Since then, he’s been in all kinds of movies and shows, from Hellboy to Always Be My Maybe, New Amsterdam to Dramaworld. After appearing in The Hot Zone in 2021, his most recent roles have been voice acting: The Prophecy and Pantheon. His next performance will be in a live-action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender as Fire Lord Ozai.

Naveen Andrews was a former Iraqi soldier Sayid Jarrah on Lost. A deadly weapon; a smart man; a human interrogation machine. Andrews was already a known quantity, as he had already romanced Juliette Binoche in The English Patient. Since the show ended, Andrews has had a steady flow of work, being part of Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, Sense8, and Instinct (with Alan Cumming). In 2022, you might’ve seen him in the addictive show The Dropout, where he played Elizabeth Holmes’ lover, Sunny Balwani; or in The Cleaning Lady as Robert Kamdar.

Michael Emerson

Michael Emerson appeared on Lost halfway through the show as the mysterious Ben Linus. The role was originally only for three episodes, but Emerson made it so fun and intriguing, that they kept expanding it until his character was one of the most important in the show’s mythology. After the show, Emerson played Harold Finch on five seasons of Person of Interest. When that show ended, he appeared on any series that needed his ambiguous, dangerous presence, be it Arrow, or The Name of the Rose TV series. He’s now one of the leads in Evil, where he plays Satan’s right-hand man, Leland Townsend.

About working on the show, Emerson told Vulture: “My whole gig at Lost was kind of operating in the dark. I got comfortable with that. So the finale, because we didn’t get a complete script, it was a lot of guessing — a lot of wondering how things got put together, what they would mean, what they would look like.”

Henry Ian Cusick

Henry Ian Cusick was Desmond Hume from Lost’s second season until the end, being part of the mystery of the hatch. He also had an epic love story with Penny. Since the show’s ending, Cusick has been a steady presence on our TV, as he worked on Scandal, The 100, and MacGyver. Right now, he’s part of the cast of the third season of David E. Kelley’s Big Sky, and has six projects in production for next year.