Jack Shephard

Jack Shephard
First appearance	"Pilot (Part 1)"
Centric episode(s)	"Pilot (Part 1)" "White Rabbit" "All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues" "Do No Harm" "Exodus: Part 1" "Man of Science, Man of Faith" "The Hunting Party" "A Tale of Two Cities" "Stranger in a Strange Land" "Through the Looking Glass (Parts 1 & 2)" "Something Nice Back Home" "There's No Place Like Home (Parts 1, 2 & 3)" "316" "The Incident, Part 2" "LA X, Part 1 & 2" "Lighthouse" "The Candidate" "What They Died For" "The End"
Last appearance	"The End"
Information
Name	Jack Shephard
Former residence	Los Angeles, California, United States
(Former) profession	Spinal surgeon Protector of the Island

Dr. Jack Shephard is a fictional character and protagonist of the ABC television series Lost played by Matthew Fox. Lost is a show which follows the journey of the survivors of Oceanic Airlines flight 815 on a mysterious island and their attempts to survive and escape, slowly uncovering more of the much broader island history they are apart of. The character was originally conceived by creator J. J. Abrams, though the direction of his storylines over six years owes more to co-creator Damon Lindelof and fellow showrunner Carlton Cuse. Actor Matthew Fox would have some influence on the character along the way; for example, Fox's own tattoos were incorporated into the character's backstory. Although at an early stage in the show's development, the character of Jack was originally intended to die in the pilot, the writers soon changed tract and Jack became the show's main character from its pilot episode onwards.

The de facto leader of the crash survivors, in the show's first four seasons Jack is very much a man of science; he serves as the antithesis of man of faith John Locke (Terry O'Quinn). However, his experiences off the island in season five mould Jack into a believer, to the point of becoming John Locke's spiritual successor in the final season. His leadership role culminates in him taking briefly over as protector of the island from its immortal guardian, Jacob (Mark Pellegrino) and being the one to engage the series' villain, the Man in Black (O'Qinn) in a climactic battle to the death. Jack's storylines have incorporated love interests: fellow survivor and convicted murderer Kate Austen (Evangeline Lilly) and Juliet Burke (Elizabeth Mitchell), one of the mysterious Others who are the series' visible antagonists for the majority of its run. Other key relationships in the show involve Claire Littleton (Emilie de Ravin), whom he discovers to be his half-sister later in the series, and Sawyer (Josh Holloway), his rival both in leadership of the survivors and for the affections of Kate and Juliet.

Arc

Prior to the crash

Jack was born into a successful family, with aspirations of following in his surgeon father's footsteps. He attends Columbia University and graduates medical school a year earlier than any of his classmates. Despite Jack's gifts as a physician, he is haunted by his broken relationship with his father, an alcoholic who had previously told Jack that he did not have what it takes to be a hero, as he would be unable to cope with failure. Early in his career as a spinal surgeon at St. Sebastian Hospital, Jack operates on a young girl and accidentally severs a nerve sac in her spine. Following a brief panic, his father urges him to count to five, allowing Jack to regain his focus and repair the damage. While embarrassed that his father had undermined him during his first solo procedure, Jack comes to regard this as a pivotal moment as someone in a leadership position. He learns that fear is real, but he can allow it to affect him only for a short period of time before he regains control of a situation.

In 2001, Jack operates on Sarah (Julie Bowen), who had been involved in a car accident. Speaking to Sarah before the operation, he vows that he will "fix her". Actually certain that Sarah will become a paraplegic, Jack is astounded that Sarah can move her toes. The two marry in early 2003, but their marriage deteriorates and Sarah has an affair in December 2003.

In July 2004, he relieves his father during an operation because Christian is drunk; but he had already caused irreparable damage and the woman dies. Jack exposes his father as a chronic alcoholic and ends Christian's career. In September 2004, Jack's mother Margo (Veronica Hamel) orders him to find and return Christian, who has exiled himself to Australia. Later, Jack finds out his father has died and goes to Sydney to identify his body and make arrangements to have it flown back to Los Angeles for a rushed funeral. Jack boards Oceanic 815 bound for Los Angeles on September 22, 2004, with his father's casket in the cargo hold.

On the island

On the island, Jack plays a key role in the survival of his fellow forty-seven survivors in the immediate aftermath of the crash, instructing others to help those with injuries and using his medical background to personally assist the wounded. The survivors almost immediately look to Jack as their leader; however, he is reluctant to embrace the position and repeats his father's rationale that he does not "have what it takes." Exhausted through his tending of the wounded, attempts to rescue drowning survivors and deprived of sleep, Jack begins to chase what he believes are hallucinations of his father in the jungle. He drops his skepticism of the situation when he finds his father's coffin in some caves, but it is empty. Still struggling to cope with demands of him by the castaways, he meets fellow survivor John Locke in the jungle, who provides some guidance for Jack's leadership. Jack returns to the beach camp and gives a speech on how they are going to live on the island and informs them of the caves; one part of his speech—"live together, die alone"—becomes a mantra of him and the survivors. Through his medical tending and visibility within the camp, Jack quickly develops many personal relationships with the castaways, most notably finding a potential romantic interest in Kate Austen, a right hand man in Hurley Reyes (Jorge Garcia) and a mutual respect for former military torturer Sayid Jarrah (Naveen Andrews) in the early days after the crash.

Jack becomes increasingly tense when the castaways are threatened by an indigenous island people whom they refer to as "the Others". An Other, Ethan Rom (William Mapother), infiltrates the survivors, kills one of them and kidnaps the pregnant Claire Littleton (Emilie de Ravin) and Charlie Pace (Dominic Monaghan), who are eventually recovered. Two weeks later, Danielle Rousseau (Mira Furlan), a woman terrorized by the Others in her sixteen years stranded on the island, arrives at the beach camp to inform the survivors that "the Others are coming" and that they must take cover if they hope to survive.

Jack's leadership begins to be undermined by the adventurous and enigmatic Locke, whose jungle explorations and lies regarding them result in the death of Boone Carlyle (Ian Somerhalder), despite Jack's fervent efforts to save him, which start Jack on another run of sleepless nights. Having disappeared after dropping a critically injured Boone to Jack, Locke returns at the funeral and Jack publicly attacks him physically. The next day, Locke leads Jack to a metal hatch in the ground that he and Boone had excavated, but were unable to break into. Obsessed with finding a way to open the hatch and seeing a dual purpose in the hatch as a potential safe haven from the Others' imminent attack, Locke suggests that they use some of Rousseau's dynamite to open the hatch. Rousseau leads Jack, Locke and a party through the jungle and a section that she has dubbed the "Dark Territory" to an old slave ship called the Black Rock that contains dynamite and is oddly shipwrecked miles from the island coast. On their way back, Jack encounters the island's often heard but rarely seen monster, which is a long column of black smoke.

In season 4, Jack gets on board the helicopter with a group for the freighter. Upon arriving at the freighter, they are informed that the freighter is rigged with explosives that are set to blow in a few minutes. Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sayid, Sun Kwon, Desmond, Frank and Claire Littleton's (Emilie de Ravin) baby Aaron watch in horror from above when the freighter explodes, killing all but one on it, including Michael and three Oceanic 815 survivors who had ferried there in the meantime. Minutes later, en route back to the island, the island literally disappears before their eyes. The chopper crashes in the water soon afterward due to a fuel leak and the passengers take refuge on an inflatable raft. When Penny Widmore's (Sonya Walger) rescue ship arrives, Jack orders everyone to lie about the crash, just as Locke told him to do. They spend a week on the ship before then Jack, Kate, Hurley, Sayid, Sun and Aaron head off towards another island inhabited by villagers on January 7, 2005, after one hundred and eight days away from home.

Back on the mainland

The six survivors hold a press conference six days after their return and lie that Aaron is Kate's son and that the six of them were the only survivors of the crash of Oceanic 815 and did not encounter any supernatural phenomena on the island. The group comes to be known as the "Oceanic Six" and are regarded as heroes by the world at large, becoming celebrities after they are paid multi-million dollar settlements by Oceanic Airlines; however, they are plagued by survivor guilt. Jack returns to work at St. Sebastian Hospital.

In July 2005, Jack delivers a eulogy at his father's funeral, albeit one without a corpse. Carole Littleton (Susan Duerden) approaches Jack in private and explains that her daughter Claire is Jack's half-sister and was on board Oceanic 815 with him. This causes Jack to feel uncomfortable around Aaron and he keeps his distance from Kate, in spite of his love for her. In 2007, Jack gets over his hesitation and moves in with Kate and Aaron (William Blanchette). In the week after becoming engaged to Kate, Jack feels his life start to unravel, as he is increasingly stressed by his medical practice, receives a cryptic warning regarding Aaron from Hurley Reyes upon visiting him at a mental institution, begins to hallucinate his dead father in the hospital and realizes that Kate is lying to him about what she is doing during the day. Jack gets a prescription for the drug clonazepam and gets drunk one night while waiting for Kate to come home, at which point he confronts her, demanding to know what she has been doing, despite her insistence that he let it go. She finally admits that she is doing favors for James "Sawyer" Ford, who is still on the island. During this argument, Jack blurts out that Aaron is not even related to Kate, which Aaron overhears; this marks the end of their engagement and Jack moves back into his apartment.

Off the island, John Locke tries to convince Jack to return to the island by telling him that horrible things had happened since he left that it is Jack's fault for leaving. Locke adds that he has seen Jack's father. Outraged, Jack tells Locke to leave the Oceanic Six alone and to get over his obsession with protecting the island. Very soon after this encounter, Jack shifts and decides that Locke was right. He grows a beard and becomes an Oxycodone drug-addicted, depressed alcoholic. In the next month, Jack takes a roundtrip flight every Friday using his Oceanic golden pass to Sydney, Tokyo or Singapore hoping to crash on the island, so that he can save his old friends. Reading in a newspaper that Locke had died under the alias of "Jeremy Bentham", Jack goes to commit suicide by jumping off of a bridge, but he gets distracted by a car crash and goes to save the victims from the burning wreck. The next night, Jack breaks into the funeral parlor that is holding Locke's body, where he meets Ben; they agree to team up and recruit the Oceanic Six to return to the island.

Return to the island

Having returned to the island, in the sixth season Jack leads the rest of the survivors enter a confrontation with the Man in Black. After Jacob explains his reasons for bringing the survivors to the island and that the MIB must be stopped from escaping the island and putting the light at the source of the island out, Jack volunteers and becomes the new protector of the island.

In the series finale, Jack and the Man in Black engage in a fight in which the Man In Black mortally wounds Jack. Just when he is about to kill Jack, Kate shoots the Man in Black. He thinks Jack is too late, but Jack proves to be right and kicks him off the cliff, killing him. Realizing that he is going to die putting the light back on, he appoints Hurley the new protector of the island. Having returned to the island's Source, Jack rescues Desmond and puts the pedestal back on the source, restoring the island to normal. Having been teleported by the source, Jack walks through the bamboo field and collapses in the spot where he first awoke on the island and dies.

Afterlife

In the alternate timeline, Jack was married to Juliet, and had a son with her, David. Aboard flight 815, Jack sits next to Desmond - who was not in the original flight - and saves Charlie by removing a heroin bag from his throat. Upon arriving at Los Angeles, Oceanic informs Jack that his father's coffin was lost. In the lost luggage office, he talks to Locke, and offers him a business card and a free surgical consult since he considered possible to reverse Locke's paralysis.

During the series finale, Jack has two brief instances where he remembers his island life - after fixing Locke's problem and talking to Kate during a concert. His memory fully comes back when Jack touches his father's coffin - and when Christian appears behind him, Jack realizes that in the flash-sideways world, he is dead. Christian tells Jack that this reality is actually a form of purgatory which the main characters from the island created, so that they could meet each other, and that the lessons from the island impacted their lives in the flash-sideways world. Jack is shocked to know that all the survivors are dead, and realizes that he is too, but Christian tells him that time is irrelevant here; some died before him and some died long after him, and it's time for them to "move on". Inside the church, Jack is reunited with the other survivors. Jack joins his soul-mate, Kate, and they sit with the others. As Christian opens the doors to the church, the survivors smile happily as a bright light engulfs everyone in the church.

Personality

Throughout the series, it has been stated numerous times that Jack is a natural leader. These things have been demonstrated many times by his ability to think quickly and analyze crisis situations. Jack intentionally represses many of his emotions of fear and anxiety, usually in order to remain strong for the other crash survivors, as he is the one they turn to during crises. Initially, he rejects claims of many of his fellow survivors, such as Rose Nadler and John Locke, who believe they are on the Island for a reason and that the Island has mystic properties. He does this to not give his fellow survivors false hope. On the Island, Jack also seems to repress his deep love for Kate Austen, which he has only twice ever fully admitted to, and even then only once in a very emotional tone of voice. However, after escaping from The Island, Jack and Kate admit their love, move in together, and raise a child. Jack's habit of repression sometimes does flare out, usually in his propensity to become violent when he is enraged. He is also prone to become highly obsessive and willing to do anything to help the survivors, even if it's to his detriment. Jack is deep down a very caring person and has sacrificed himself for his crash-mates several times. After being rescued, he sinks into alcoholism and drug abuse out of severe depression. He blamed himself for leaving almost all the fellow survivors behind while he was safely rescued. This leads to his delusions that his father is still alive and a suicide attempt, which indicate that Jack has not been completely able to cope with what happened on the island. Digital Spy's Ben Rawson-Jones marked a "difference in the characterization of Jack [who] has become known as the trustworthy, honest type since Oceanic Flight 815 crashed, so his blatant lies about the island under oath were definitely dramatic."^[1]

After being rescued, seeing visions of his father, and being visited by John Locke, Jack's outlook underwent a fundamental change. He began to believe in fate and destiny. When Juliet asked Jack why he had returned to the island, Jack told her "because I was supposed to." Jack's faith leads him to sacrifice himself to prevent the island's destruction. He believed that saving the island was what he was "meant to do." In many episodes, Jack is portrayed as having a Messiah Complex.

Development

In the original outline of Lost, Jack was going to be killed halfway through the first episode. Lost creator J. J. Abrams was interested in Michael Keaton for the role, as Abrams wanted to work with him. However scripts were never even sent to him, as the character was made into a regular, and Keaton wasn’t interested in a series. The producers felt that if the audience became attached to the character during the first episode, and then he was killed, they might resent the show. His death was meant to shock the audience so they would never know what would happen next. The role ended up going to Matthew Fox, who was “very excited” about it, as it was the genre and tone he was looking for.^[2]

Tattoos

For story purposes, the tattoos on Jack's arm read: "He walks among us, but he is not one of us."^[3] However, Matthew Fox already had the tattoos when he started on Lost. The producers considered putting make-up over them but, instead, decided to keep them and just fit them in with the plot.^[4]

According to Assistant Professor Xinping Zhu of Northeastern University, the tattoo is made up of four Chinese characters from a poem written by Mao Zedong in 1925, and the Lebanese Phalangist symbol. Fox's tattoo translates to "Eagles high up, cleaving the space".^[5]

In an interview, Fox said that, for him, getting a tattoo is a "pretty intense experience" and something he would not do in the "spur of the moment". He thought it was a "really cool idea" for Jack to have tattoos.^[6] Since Fox used tattoos to represent memories or meaningful events in his life, the writers took a similar approach when dealing with Jack's tattoos.^[7]

Reception

Critical as well as viewer opinion has been positive for Matthew Fox's Jack Shephard. BuddyTV praised Matthew Fox's lead role performance in "Through the Looking Glass" as "Emmy worthy"^[8] The San Diego Union-Tribune's Karla Peterson praised Fox's work in "Something Nice Back Home",^[9] The Palm Beach Post's Kevin Thompson "thought [that] Matthew [Fox] did a nice job conveying a wide range of emotions—scared, haunted, frustration, jealousy, just to name a few" in the same episode.^[10]

Matthew Fox won a Satellite Award for Best Actor in a Dramatic Television Series for his role as Jack in 2004. He was nominated for a Golden Globe in 2006 for Best Actor in a television series - Drama and a Television Critics Association award in 2005 for Individual Achievement in Drama.^[11] He has also won two Saturn awards, including Best Actor on Television in 2005^[12] and Best Actor in a Television Program in 2007.^[13] In 2010, Fox had received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series.

References