My Favorite ‘Lost’ Ship Is Still the Best After All These Years

Lost as a show has gained a lot of attention recently. With its move to Netflix, fans are revisiting the classic 2004 series about a group of plane crash survivors stranded on a mysterious island, so it is time I remind everyone what its best ship always was!

Back when the show was airing, there were many “ship wars” among fans that saw them picking their favorite couples and talking about them online, often fighting with fans of other ships—or, at least, that’s what we did back then. My beloved ship ended up being the “endgame” for the series, meaning the ship that worked out in the end, and I will forever be smug about it.

I am talking about Jack Shephard and Kate Austen, of course. Jack (Matthew Fox) was a doctor with a bunch of tattoos and issues with his father, and Kate (Evangeline Lilly) was a fugitive who finally escaped the police when the plane crashed. What could possibly go wrong?

Affectionately coined “Jate” (which had me yelling “Jate is fate” more often than not), the couple just really worked for me. While many loved Sawyer (Josh Holloway) and Kate for his rough and tumble cowboy antics, I just think that there was something special about what Jack and Kate had together. That’s why, as we all venture back into the world of Lost now that it is streaming, I want us to remember why they’re the best couple on the show. (Sorry to Claire and Charlie or Penny and Desmond. You guys were close.)

Jack and Kate went back and forth on the show. They shared a sweet kiss together and clearly had an attraction to each other, but then Jack saw Kate and Sawyer having sex when they were kidnapped by the Others. Still, their love meant a lot to me.

Remember when they saw each other in the afterlife?!

The finale of Lost often brings out the worst in people. They don’t realize that the show ended with our favorite characters seeing each other again in the afterlife and finding peace. Instead, they think they were in purgatory the entire time.

One of the couples who sit together and look happy when they are reunited is Jack and Kate. They had their ups and downs. When they escaped the island, they were happy together for a while and reaised Claire’s son Aaron as their own, but it didn’t end well. Still, they cared for each other, and I had hope they could figure it out.

For the most part, they do. They still love each other, and when we do get a few stolen kisses, it makes me so incredibly happy to see. There was nothing quite like a Jack and Kate kiss for me when I was first watching the series.

So as we all embark on our Lost rewatches (or maybe even your first time viewing), let us remember the important things. Jate is fate, we have to go back, and you can’t tell John Locke what he can and cannot do.