A love is ‘Lost’ as show labors on

After waiting three weeks for the payoff, Wednesday night brought at least a handful of answers on "Lost," and a smidgen of closure to a show that revels in loose ends.

Shannon, we hardly knew ye. And maybe we really didn't need to.

The bratty blonde met her demise Wednesday night while chasing Walt (or was it an apparition of Walt?) through the jungle as Sayid followed her.

Even if you hadn't heard the rampant rumors about Shannon's imminent death — and it was hard not to, given the sheer volume of spoilers bouncing around the Internet — it wasn't until the last second viewers were able to see who pulled the trigger: Ana-Lucia, perhaps the only one on the island with a worse attitude than Shannon.

At least the "Lost" writers softened Shannon's edges with a few touching flashbacks before she went to that great rescue ship in the sky.  We saw her as a hopeful young ballet teacher, and her moment of glee on receiving a Martha Graham Dance Company fellowship ... only to have that dream crushed by a heartless stepmother who kept Shannon from receiving a cent of her father's fortune. (Point taken on Shannon's motives, but really: an evil stepmother?)

Though we saw Shannon was close to her father, the details of his death remain fuzzy, and now she's not around to clarify them. Astute viewers remember that Adam Rutherford was not only her dad but the man Jack let die so he could save his future fiancée, Sarah. Shannon's death leaves unanswered whether she knew Dr. Jack made that fateful choice.

Obviously, it wasn't possible for Shannon to die without us seeing how abandoned she felt by the men in her life, perhaps as an explanation why she was portrayed as a selfish seductress.

As the episode opened, Sayid presented her with a tent of her own. Yet no sooner had the two bedded down together than Walt appeared to Shannon, speaking backwards again. And Sayid wouldn't believe her: "It was a dream, Shannon."

He changed his tune after seeing Walt himself in the episode's final moments — only to watch Shannon chase the prescient young boy into the woods and wind up tangling with the business end of Ana-Lucia's gun.

Not much responsibility
Shannon's sudden show of humanity was all the more shocking because her role as a castaway never amounted to much.

Walt gets credit for Shannon's biggest responsibility on the place she came to call Craphole Island when he asked her to take care of his dog, Vincent. Her repeated visions of Walt speaking gibberish (more precisely, speaking backwards) hinted that she might have had a larger role to play in unraveling the island's mysteries.

Otherwise, her character was stunted.  She reluctantly was coaxed into translation duty, helping Sayid to not-quite-decipher Rousseau's maps. That blossomed into a friendship, and ultimately a romance — a situation helped by Boone's rather timely death.

The "Lost" writers' attempts to give Shannon that heart of gold were never fully realized.  As we saw last season, she had a raw deal with her Australian boyfriend — and presumably every other man with whom she got involved.  Even Boone, who had always been there to rescue Shannon, carried his own troublesome torch for his stepsister. It didn't exactly help things when the two slept together before boarding that fateful flight.

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