Shannon Rutherford

Shannon steps off the wreckage of Oceanic 815 in designer clothes and sunglasses, unwilling to lift a finger while the other survivors scramble for water and shelter. She's beautiful, brittle, and visibly furious at the inconvenience of the crash, leaning hard on her stepbrother Boone and treating the island like someone else's problem to solve.

The show bets that its most useless-seeming character is worth watching, and Maggie Grace makes that bet pay off by playing the entitlement as armor rather than flaw — you can see the fear underneath the sunbathing. Lost loves undercutting first impressions, and Shannon's slow, prickly unspooling is one of its earliest, most rewarding examples.