The Mysteries of Lost

Aguadiablo, Yahoo! Contributor Network
Apr 14, 2008 "Share your voice on Yahoo! websites. Start Here."

The numbers are cursed according to Hugo "Hurley" Reyes. They first appear in the episode "Numbers". The flashbacks in this episode focus on Hurley using the numbers for a lottery ticket. To his amazement he wins fortune. However a series of unlucky and unfortunate events seem to follow Hugo everywhere he goes. This causes Hugo to believe that he is cursed due to wining the lottery.

There have been several appearances of the numbers separately and in a sequence both on the island and off the island. Here are a few examples;

The number 4

The number four is the first number of the sequence. Locke was in his wheelchair for four before the crash. Michael's raft was only able to support four people. Hurley claimed that Charlie shot Ethan. A final example is the number of people that was required by Michael to rescue Jack from the cave-in.

The number 8

The second number in the sequence is the number eight. Claire was eight months pregnant before boarding the plane. Sawyer and Christian Sheppard took eight whiskey shot together. Sawyer was eight years old when his father murdered his wife and then committed suicide. Shannon was eight years old when her father married Boone's mother.

The number 15

Fifteen came third in the sequence. Locke's mother was born on 15^th October. Fifteen people were asked to Bernard's S.O.S. sign on the beach. The raft was fifteen miles from the beach before they found something on the radar. The flight would have taken approximately fifteen hours.

The number 16

In the fourth position came the number sixteen. Danielle's distress signal had been on loop for sixteen years. It had been sixteen years since Sam Toomey and Leonard Simms had heard the numbers. The time of take of for Oceanic Flight 815 was 14:16. Jack informed the lady at the airport desk that he needed to bury his father in sixteen hours.

The number 23

The second to last number was twenty-three. Nathan was killed on the twenty-third day. The reward to turn in Kate was $23,000. There were twenty-three survivors from the back of the plane. Jack sat on seat number 23B.

The number 42

The last number in the sequence was forty-two. Ana-Lucia's seat was 42F. Aaron was born on the forty-second day. Desmond, as a joke, asked Libby for $42,000 to buy a boat. The number forty-two was drawn on a wall of the hatch.

The sequence

All of the numbers have been shown in a sequence in the order mentioned above. The sequence was found on the outside of the hatch. There is a countdown in the hatch that lasts for 108 minuets; the total of the numbers, the sequence has to be input into a computer to restart the countdown. When Hurley's car breaks down, on the way to the airport, the dashboard shows the sequence. There is an injection on the island, used by Desmond, labelled CR 4-8151623 42.

Before Hurley used the number to win the lottery, Sam Toomey used the numbers to win money at a fair. He also found himself with a lot of bad luck. Sam's friend Leonard Simms was committed to Santa Rosa Mental Health Institute, and repeated the numbers over and over again. This led to Hurley using the numbers in the lottery. When Hurley tell Leonard became erratic and told Hurley that he should not have used the numbers and he had opened the box.

In DHARMA Orientation video in the alternate reality game, the numbers are said to be part of Valenzetti Equation. The equation was formed by Enzo Valenzetti, which predicts the exact number of years and months there was left for humanity. Before it wipes itself out. It was suggested that the results were not good and so the DHARMA Initiative and the Hanso Foundation joined to try and alter the results so that humanity would survive longer.