Lost Bullied Its Unlikeliest Hero

Twenty years ago, Lost revolutionized television with its nonlinear storytelling, unfurling a narrative via flashbacks, flash-forwards, and even flash-sidewayses. But all of those innovations would have rung hollow if it hadn’t also given viewers some of the most memorable, complex characters in TV history.

In the fall of 2004, audiences watched with rapt attention as Dr. Jack Shephard (played by Matthew Fox), wanted fugitive Kate Austen (Evangeline Lilly), and 69 other survivors of a plane crash stumbled around a mysterious island trying to make sense of what had just happened. Over the course of six seasons, we learned about the past lives and anguish of dozens of characters—many of whom had unwittingly crossed paths with one another—and how these experiences colored their interactions.

Hugo Reyes, best known as Hurley, was easily the most virtuous member of this troubled group. Played by relative newcomer Jorge Garcia, he was compassionate, honest, and humble—almost to a fault. Hurley eventually became one of the show’s heroes and most beloved characters, but the show put him through hell to get there.

Every Lost character had an albatross: Jack struggled with a savior complex; Kate had to overcome her vigilante past. Hurley believed that he was cursed—a barrage of bad luck befell him after he won the lottery. Perhaps if Garcia had looked like the rest of the cast, the emotional punishment Hurley faced might not have been as notable. But he was Lost’s sole fat lead character—and not only did Hurley have to endure a litany of suffering; he also had to overcome writing that frequently stereotyped him because of his body. Revisiting the show 20 years after its premiere makes that both more apparent and more distressing.

[Read: ‘Shallow Hal’ and the never-ending fat joke]

Among Lost’s most degrading tropes was Hurley’s obsession with junk food. Realistically, everyone on the island should have been thrilled to discover a supply of processed food in Season 2, after they’d been marooned for weeks. Yet Hurley was the only one who obsessed over it—and later started hoarding it for himself. (In flashbacks, Hurley was typically shown eating unhealthy food, including a whole bucket of his beloved fried chicken at the fast-food franchise he bought with his lottery money.) In contrast, the other survivors were usually seen eating fruit or fish. The implication of these moments, in retrospect, was that Hurley was uniquely flawed because of his diet and his size. Fatness has long been culturally equated with a lack of discipline and self-control—a popular and harmful myth—and through Hurley’s arc, the show regularly reinforced that notion.

Art reflects the social norms of the era in which it’s made, and the early-to-mid-2000s marked the height of a moral panic about weight. Fat people were stigmatized by hit movies and shows such as Shallow Hal and The Biggest Loser (the latter of which premiered one month after Lost). A popular trend in media coverage of obesity was using zoomed-in images of fat people that showed only their bodies, a technique that researchers have found encourages fatphobic beliefs. Comedians often mined fatness for humor—and that included Hurley’s. At the 2011 Golden Globes, the host, Ricky Gervais, made a crude, insulting joke about the series finale: “From what I can make out, the fat one ate them all.” Truthfully, it wasn’t far from a line that one of Lost’s own characters might have lobbed at Hurley.

Throughout the series, Sawyer (Josh Holloway), a surly con man, made fun of the other islanders—but he never taunted anyone more than he did Hurley. Among the dozens of names Sawyer called him were Lardo, Stay Puft, Jabba, Deep-Dish, and Jumbotron. The writing made clear that the name-calling—and his many selfish actions—was Sawyer’s response to his childhood trauma; he alienated himself from everyone else, believing he could go it alone. But although the nicknames were designed to reveal Sawyer’s psychology, the sheer number of them directed at Hurley compounded other troubling choices for Hurley’s storyline.

The show, for instance, pathologized his fatness. In the Season 2 episode “Dave,” we learned that Hurley was institutionalized before ending up on the island. In a flashback, his therapist told him that he uses food as a trauma response, born out of his misplaced guilt that his weight was responsible for two people’s death: He had stepped onto an overcrowded deck that collapsed. It wasn’t actually his fault, however; nearly three times more people than recommended were already standing on the deck. His therapist assuaged Hurley’s fears about his weight’s impact, but the writing validated his shame. During his in-patient treatment, he began hallucinating an imaginary friend called Dave, who encouraged him to eat junk food and “stay fat” instead of trying to shed pounds; Hurley would later conclude that Dave was a negative influence, preventing him from changing—code for dieting. Hurley’s mental illness was thus explicitly tied to his weight, a reductive understanding of a link that research suggests is far more complex.

Lost also perpetuated the damaging trope that Hurley’s size made him unlovable. In the same episode in which the show introduced Dave, we learned that Hurley had developed feelings for Libby (Cynthia Watros), another survivor. Although she didn’t have a problem with his size—seeing him for the kind, generous person he was—Hurley felt undeserving of affection unless he made himself smaller. Sure enough, he was on a fish-and-water diet by the following episode. Even after stranding him on an island, Lost insisted that he punish himself for his fatness: Hurley performed the role of “good fatty,” using his attempts at weight loss to earn social acceptance. All of this became moot when, an episode later, Libby was shot and killed. In short order, Hurley quickly lost the one person on the island who had embraced him unconditionally, leaving him alone to wallow in his self-loathing.

[Read: The retrograde shame of ‘The Biggest Loser’]

Hurley’s suffering did lessen as the show went on, and he slowly became one of its strongest, most sympathetic leads. After enduring another tragic death at Season 3’s close, he demonstrated resilience, reacting to the loss with vulnerability rather than vengeance. Unlike many other survivors, and especially the men, he was never consumed by resentment; he even forgave Libby’s killer. Perhaps most poignant, Jack—who had been the survivors’ de facto leader (and Lost’s primary lead)—entrusted Hurley with the duty of protecting the island in the show’s final episode. The fortitude, wisdom, and humanity of Hurley’s later-season characterization helped ameliorate the writing’s earlier efforts to undermine him—although these developments didn’t undo that history.

Hurley’s selflessness and clear principles endeared him to Lost fans, as they did to his fellow survivors on the show. (Some took longer than others to warm up to him, however; although their relationship greatly improved over the seasons, Sawyer still couldn’t resist calling Hurley “Bigfoot” in the finale.) By Lost’s end, Hurley’s trajectory from loser to leader had established him as the show’s moral compass. And yet, in a vision of a “happy ending” for him shown in an earlier episode, he is “eating his feelings” and asking Libby why she likes someone who looks the way he does. It was as though his binging on food and his insecurity were essential traits.

Lost’s approach to Hurley wasn’t consistently cruel or lazy; Hurley didn’t exist solely for laughs. Fans remember him for his personal growth and ability to overcome adversity. But even those who worked on the show came to acknowledge the negligence behind Hurley’s story—albeit decades after Lost premiered. Last year, the writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach, who left the show after Season 2, critiqued Lost for portraying Hurley “as feckless, ignorant, and gluttonous—and therefore the butt of countless fat jokes.” The series ultimately elevated Hurley, but it never let viewers forget that he was a hero with an asterisk, one that’s grown only more glaring with time.