Charlie Pace

Name: Charlie Pace

Occupation: Rockstar, member of Driveshaft¹

First Appearance: 1×01 – Pilot, Part One

Flashbacks: 1×02 – Pilot, Part Two(Shared, one flashback)
1×07 – The Moth

Click for Timeline

Pre-Island

Having a crisis of faith caused by his growing unease with his lifestyle as part of the band Drive Shaft, Charlie resolved to leave the band but was persuaded to stick with it by his brother Liam because they had just landed a recording contract. Charlie made Liam promise that if he ever wanted to quit, he’d back him².

When the band started to get big, Liam fell into the rock star life style and started drinking and taking heroin and started singing the lead on the band’s biggest hit ‘You All Everybody’, pushing Charlie into the background. As Liam’s drug use started to get out of control, Charlie wanted to break the band up but Liam attacked him verbally, telling him that he was Drive Shaft and nobody even knew who Charlie was. This final straw pushed Charlie into drug use himself and at some point later, the two brothers were stumbling around Dresden looking for a fix when Liam missed the birth of his daughter Megan³.

Over a year later, Charlie and Liam weren’t talking and Charlie, now a junkie living in London, ended up conning women so he could steal from them in association with a man named Tommy. Charlie ended up trying to go straight for one of the women he was conning, Lucy Heatherton, and he even took a job with her father’s copier-selling company. However, the need for drugs led him to steal from her and he passed out on his first day at work with a valuable item from her father’s house in his pocket. When he told her he needed to show her he could take care of her, she told him that he’d never be able to take care of anyone and slammed the door in his face⁴.

Liam eventually got clean when Drive Shaft ended and settled down with Karen and Megan in suburban Sydney. When Charlie turned up trying to recruit him for a reunion tour, Liam turned him down but offered him a place to stay while he got clean. Charlie rejected his offer, accusing Liam of turning him into a junkie when all he cared about was music. He left angrily and didn’t see Liam again before boarding Oceanic 815⁵.

On the Island

On board Oceanic 815, Charlie suffered from some heroin withdrawal and took a hit in the forward restroom just before the plane hit severe turbulence as he was about to flush his remaining stash. He managed to claw his way back a few rows and strap himself in before the plane crashed.⁶

Following the crash of Oceanic 815, Charlie wandered through the wreckage, dazed, and narrowly missed being crushed by a falling piece of debris. Later on, he helped Sayid build a fire as the sun set, and then wrote the word FATE on bandages on his fingers.⁷

The next day, Charlie accompanied Kate and Jack to the cockpit, trying to impress Kate by telling her that he was a member of Driveshaft – a band she thinks broke up and Jack hasn’t heard of. ⁸

At the crashed cockpit, he couldn’t help but notice that Jack seems more interested in Kate’s well being than his and vanished briefly into the toilet to collect his stash. Moments later the plane was attacked by the Island’s monster, and the pilot killed, his body being deposited forty feet up in a tree.⁹

Back at the beach, Charlie took a hit of heroin and, still high, joined a hike with Shannon, Kate, Boone, Sayid and Sawyer because he was trying to impress Shannon. During the hike, he continued flirting with Shannon before they were attacked by a polar bear which was shot by Sawyer, who Kate then disarmed. Later, he listened as the transceiver picked up a repeating mayday signal in French; the signal had been repeating for over sixteen years. “Guys,” Charlie wondered, “where are we?”¹⁰

The group agreed to keep the French transmission a secret when they returned to the beach the next day, and Charlie later befriended Claire.¹¹

A few days later, Charlie enlisted Hurley to catch a fish to impress Shannon and the pair tried spear-fishing, eventually catching one. When he presented it to Shannon, he realized that she had used him to prove a point to Boone. Later that night as the fuselage burned, Charlie took another hit of heroin.¹²

When the camp’s water supply was stolen the following day, Charlie looked after Claire and bonded with her. Later, he attacked Boone aggressively when he found out that it was him who’d taken the water for safekeeping, seemingly very defensive of Claire¹³.

The next day, Charlie headed to the caves with Kate, Locke and Jack to fetch water. The group found two dessicated corpses – christened ‘Adam and Eve’ there, and Jack realized they must have lived there. He and Locke stayed behind to search the debris, and Locke admitted to being a Drive Shaft fan, which cheered Charlie up considerably. Later, Locke convinced him to hand over his drugs so he could face withdrawal on his own terms – and in return, located Charlie’s guitar which had miraculously survived the crash¹⁴.

Charlie started to suffer withdrawal the next day, and asked Locke for his drugs back. Locke refused but said if he asked three times, he’d give him them – and that in doing so he was giving him a choice. Charlie later got into a fight with Jack, and narrowly escaped being trapped in a cave-in with him. When he was later dismissed by Sawyer, he asked Locke for his drugs again and was again refused¹⁵.

Charlie volunteered to go through a narrow tunnel to save Jack, but they were then trapped together when the tunnel collapsed. As air began to run out, Jack told him he would have helped with his withdrawal. Charlie found a second way out, saving them both, and was lauded as a hero by the group. Later, he asked Locke for his drugs a third and final time, and when Locke handed them to him, he threw them into the fire, his choice made¹⁶.

Recovering from his withdrawal, Charlie spent most of the next day with Claire, trying to convince her to move to the caves. She eventually agreed when Charlie won her round by presenting her with an empty jar full of non-existent peanut butter¹⁷.

A few days later, Charlie competed in the island’s golf tournament against Jack but fluffed his last shot. His friendship with Hurley was strengthened as the two of them horsed around on the golf course¹⁸.

Charlie continued to grow closer to Claire, even defending her to Jack when he believed she was hallucinating being attacked. In spite of this, Claire was reluctant to open up to Charlie but she eventually grew to trust him after he talked her through some false labor pains and she recognized that he cared for her. On the way back to camp, they were confronted by Ethan¹⁹.

Charlie was later found hanged and apparently dead – although Jack was eventually able to revive him. Back at the caves, with no sign of Claire, he told Jack that he didn’t remember anything, and that ‘they’ only wanted Claire – suggesting that Ethan had assistance²⁰.

He withdrew into himself for several days after the attack, with Rose finally being the one to bring him out of it. She told him nobody blamed him for what had happened, but he felt like it was his fault, confessed that he needed help dealing with it – and she started praying with him²¹.

A few days later, Charlie realized that Claire’s diary had gone and he and Kate got it back from Sawyer. He later read the diary and found references to the black rock in Claire’s dreams; he also found out that she liked him and he made her feel safe²².

On Claire’s return to camp with amnesia, Charlie took it on himself to make her feel at ease. He was later attacked by Ethan, who demanded that they give Claire back to him or he’d kill everyone, one day at a time and he’d kill Charlie last. He made good on the threat the first night, killing Scott. The next day, Charlie was excluded from the group that trapped Ethan by using Claire as bait – but he followed anyway and shot Ethan in cold blood with the gun Jack had dropped. Claire later thanked him and told him she was beginning to remember some things – like imaginary peanut butter²³.

Charlie started to keep Claire at a distance emotionally, and Hurley became concerned that he was suffering from post traumatic stress after killing Ethan and asked Sayid to speak to him. Sayid told him that killing Ethan would stay with him the rest of his life but he needed to remember he wasn’t alone, and Charlie reunited with Claire, spending more time together²⁴.

Timeline

1. 1×01 [↩]
2. 1×07 [↩]
3. 1×07 [↩]
4. 1×15 [↩]
5. 1×07 [↩]
6. 1×02 [↩]
7. 1×01 [↩]
8. 1×01 [↩]
9. 1×01 [↩]
10. 1×02 [↩]
11. 1×03 [↩]
12. 1×04 [↩]
13. 1×05 [↩]
14. 1×06 [↩]
15. 1×07 [↩]
16. 1×07 [↩]
17. 1×08 [↩]
18. 1×09 [↩]
19. 1×10 [↩]
20. 1×11 [↩]
21. 1×12 [↩]
22. 1×14 [↩]
23. 1×15 [↩]
24. 1×16 [↩]

Tags: Characters, Charlie