Season One’s Abandoned Plots
Some plotlines just dangle out there, never resolved – like these from season one…
Kilo, Sawyer’s bankroller for his flashback con in 1×08, threatens to come after Sawyer if he doesn’t get his investment plus 50% by the next day. Sawyer abandons the con, walking away when he sees a boy’s going to be hurt just like he was as a kid, leaving all the money behind – but whether Kilo came after him or not is never shown or referred to in any of Sawyer’s other flashbacks.
Malkin: This child parented by anyone else, anyone other than you – danger surrounds this baby - Claire: Danger?
Malkin: Your nature, your spirit, your goodness, must be an influence in the development of this child.
Claire: Look, if Thomas and I don’t get back together I’m putting this baby up for adoption. I just wanted to find out what would give the baby the happiest life.
Malkin: There is no happy life – not for this child, not without you.
Claire is told by the psychic Malkin that her baby it is vital that she raise the baby herself – even going so far as to put her on a plane which he may know will crash on a desert island. While Claire’s baby Aaron is important to later plot developments concerning her, Charlie, Kate and the Others (who want to know how they can start having children on the island again), it’s hardly vital.
Unless, of course, he means that it’s vital to Claire’s mental health that she raise the baby herself instead of, say, having Kate do it. Because then he’d have a point.
A great deal is made out of how special Walt is, especially in the flashback episode he shares with his father1. Not only does Locke state that he thinks Walt is special and different, but so does his adopted father Brian in the flashback:
Locke: He’s been through more than most people in their entire lifetimes. Maybe you haven’t spent enough time with him to see it, but he’s different.
Brian: Sometimes when he’s around things happen. He’s different somehow.
However, the idea of Walt being special is pretty much abandoned once he is kidnapped by the Others at the end of season one2; it seems probable that the reason he was kidnapped was originally meant to be because he was seen as special, but plans changed.
It’s been said that the direction Walt’s storyline took changed once producers realized that he was growing as quickly as he was. As a result, he was seen only twice more on the island3 when he wasn’t either a hallucination or an aspect of Smokey (as he appeared to Shannon4 and Locke5 ). When he was seen off the island6 there was still some reference to Walt being special – as he told Locke he had had a dream of him being in a suit on the island surrounded by people who wanted to hurt him7, something that happens to the Man in Black disguised as Locke8, although the people who surround him don’t know who he is.
Not so much an abandoned plot line as something teased that was never elaborated on, the Tampa Job was something that Sawyer and Hibbs (played by Robert Patrick) worked on. Whatever happened on the job, Hibbs betrayed Sawyer somehow and left him telling him he’d kill him if he ever saw him again. Sadly, the Tampa Job is never expanded upon.
