Feeling Lost? Here's Our Guide to Claire Littleton

Our favorite castaways thus far have been on the island a few months, but for Lost fans, it's been more than 260 days since Jack's super-freaky flash-forward. As the Jan. 31 season premiere draws closer, TVGuide.com is offering daily profiles of the key players in ABC's island-based odyssey.

Claire, By the "Numbers": The only child of a harried single mother in Sydney, Australia, Claire (played by Emile de Ravin) grows up as rebellious and unruly girl working dead end jobs at a tattoo parlor and, later, at a fried fish restaurant.  She and her mother get into a major car accident while in the middle of a heated argument; while Claire survives with only superficial injuries, her mom sustains heavy brain damage and is left in a vegetative state.  Claire continues to drift through life with little family and no real sense of direction until she discovers she's pregnant by her boyfriend Thomas, who convinces her to keep the baby.  Sadly, Thomas later abandons her, and Claire considers giving the baby up for adoption. She consults a psychic for advice, but he ominously tells her that she must raise the baby herself or her unborn child will be in grave danger.  Claire ignores his warning and continues with her plans for adoption, and in response the psychic recommends a loving couple in Los Angeles who are desperate for a child.  When Oceanic 815 crashes before it can reach its final destination, Claire comes to the realization that the psychic foresaw the plane crash and forced her onboard to ensure that she would not be separated from her baby.

Things Got Interesting When....: It turns out that Claire's pregnancy has larger implications for the mysterious Others, as well.  One of the alarming side effects of life on the island is that women are unable to give birth without dying in the process. Claire is kidnapped by Ethan so that the Others can experiment on her and see if someone who has conceived and spent most of her pregnancy off the island can successfully bring a child to term.  While the rest of the castaways are able to track down and eventually kill Ethan, the irony is that these medical treatments probably saved Claire's life and allowed her to give birth to her son, Aaron.

'Tis Better to Have Loved and Gotten Lost?: Claire had an on-again, off-again relationship with former rock star Charlie Pace.  Charlie did his best to comfort Claire and act as a surrogate father to Aaron, but when his heroin addiction or religious obsessions got the better of him he became self-absorbed and even delusional.  At one point Claire was horrified when Charlie took Aaron without her knowledge in order to baptize him. The two eventually reconciled before Charlie sacrificed himself to get everyone else rescued. Before he died, Charlie made it clear that he considers Claire his true love by committing to paper the top five best moments of his life, with his No. 1 choice being their first conversation together.

Six Degrees of Serialization: Claire has one of the deepest connections to another plane crash survivor, even if neither of them knows it: she's actually the illegitimate daughter of Christian Shepard, and thus Jack's half-sister.

Her Season 3 Story: Since the third season focused on the growing conflict between the plane crash survivors and the Others, Claire played more of a supporting role this time around.  However she does get a chance to shine when she comes up with an ingenious plan to capture a migratory sea bird and attach a message from all of the survivors before it flies off.  It's proof that Claire is more resourceful than many of the other castaways give her credit for, and that she hasn't lost hope that they'll all be rescued one day.

How Claire Has Us Puzzled: How will she react when she finds out about Charlie's death? And what disaster would have befallen Aaron if she had given him up for adoption?

Our Wild Prediction: Upon returning to the real world, Claire becomes a minor celebrity as the quasi-girlfriend of Charlie Pace, and decides to pay the bills by giving interviews about her relationship with the now deceased rock star.

Read other Lost character profiles for Desmond Hume, Benjamin Linus, Sun Kwon and Michael Dawson. Catch up with Lost clips in our Online Video Guide.

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