Desmond Hume was not on the plane. Desmond was not in any episode of the first season and there are many later episodes that he is not in either. However, I have to say that Desmond is my favorite Lost character. Not only because he’s an interesting character, but also because so many of my favorite Lost episodes feature him.
In total, Desmond Hume was in 71 of the 121 episodes of Lost, which is fewer than Jack Shephard, Sayid Jarrah, “Hurley”, “Sawyer”, Jin Kwon, Sun Kwon, Kate Austin, John Locke (who is probably my second favorite character), Claire Littleton, Ben Linus and Charlie Pace.
But Desmond had the best catchphrase on the show: “See you in another life, bro.” This phrase works on many levels of the program (you have to watch “The End” to understand them all).
It also introduces the concept of time travel on the show and I really enjoyed this aspect (being a bit of a sci-fi fan).
But it’s not just that he says cool things (with a cool accent) and jumps back in time before anyone else. He’s also a really good guy who does a lot of cool things for people throughout the show.
And on top of that, his courtship with Penny was hands down the best of the show’s romantic subplots. Of all the romantic relationships on Lost, this one felt the most “real” and had the most satisfying conclusion. Also, I think Penny is a cool character in her own right. I found that she was a much more complete character than most of the other women on the show.
I would like to close this article by mentioning that the character of Desmond Hume was named after David Hume, an 18th century philosopher. A more obvious philosopher reference is the character of John Locke, who was named after John Locke, who was a 17th century philosopher. There are many interesting references like this on the show. It’s really a thinking man (or woman) show and Desmond is the thinking man character!