Shannon Rutherford is a fictional character played by Maggie Grace on the ABC drama television series Lost, which chronicled the lives of the survivors of a plane crash in the South Pacific. Shannon was introduced in the pilot episode as the stepsister of fellow crash survivor Boone Carlyle (Ian Somerhalder). She was a series regular until her funeral in "What Kate Did". For most of her time on the Island, she was unhelpful and spent much of her time sunbathing. She formed a relationship with another survivor from the plane crash, Sayid Jarrah (Naveen Andrews). Shannon was accidentally shot and killed by Ana Lucia Cortez, who mistakes her for an Other.
During the casting process, she was compared to Paris Hilton. Naveen Andrews, who played the character Sayid on the show, had the idea of encouraging the writers to write a romantic relationship between his character and Shannon into the story. Critics found her to be a largely unsympathetic character until only shortly before her death. Nonetheless, Grace received a Teen Choice Award nomination for her role as Shannon.
Appearances
Prior to the crash
When Shannon is eight, her father marries Sabrina Carlyle (Lindsay Frost), and she spends much of her adolescence with her stepbrother Boone. She studies ballet and, as she gets older, teaches dance classes to young girls. When she is eighteen, Shannon's father dies in a car crash. He did not have a will prepared, so all of his money and property goes to his wife. Sabrina refuses to help Shannon financially, despite Shannon winning a prestigious yet non-paying internship to the Martha Graham Dance Company in New York. Unable to come up with the money herself, Shannon moves to France for a short time to work as an au pair. Shannon later forms a plan to con her stepbrother, Boone Carlyle, into giving her some of the inheritance she rightly deserved. Playing on her knowledge of Boone's love for her, she makes it appear her boyfriend Brian abuses her. Boone pays Brian to leave her, and Shannon plans to secretly take half the money. During one con in Sydney, her "abusive boyfriend" ruins Shannon's ruse after Boone cuts him a check. Boone storms off to his hotel room and plans to return to the States. When Shannon's boyfriend takes off with all of the money, Shannon goes to Boone's hotel room in Sydney, drunk, and Boone allows her to seduce him. After they have sex, Shannon tells Boone things will go back to the way they had been before. He expresses anger because, as always, they both know she is in control of their situation and relationship. The following morning at the Sydney airport, Sayid Jarrah approaches Shannon, asking her to watch his bag for him. She deftly obliges, but soon leaves it unattended. Before the doomed Flight 815 takes off, Shannon rummages through her hand luggage for her asthma inhaler, which Boone casually hands to her. Six hours into the flight, only moments before the crash, Shannon and Boone are momentarily seen as Charlie Pace stumbles through their row.
After the crash
Upon landing on the Island, she decides to join Sayid on a hike to transmit a distress signal, after she and Boone have an argument about her selfishness. When they discover a French looped signal already being transmitted, Shannon's knowledge of the language is used to translate it. Later, Shannon has an asthma attack, but her inhalers are nowhere to be found. Sun (Yunjin Kim) cures her, by using eucalyptus plants to help her breathing. Because of her selfish and manipulative behavior, Boone brands Shannon useless. Sayid enlists her to help translate the maps belonging to the French woman who made the radio transmission, Danielle Rousseau (Mira Furlan). Shannon and Sayid soon form a romantic relationship. After returning from a romantic night along the beach with Sayid, she learns Boone has died after falling from a great height. At his funeral, Shannon does not speak, but allows Sayid to talk instead. Shannon holds Locke (Terry O'Quinn) responsible for Boone's death, and asks Sayid to take action. When he refuses, she steals the key to the gun case from Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox) and holds Locke at gunpoint in the jungle. When Rousseau arrives on the beach one morning to warn the camp of the Others' imminent arrival, Shannon prepares to migrate to the caves with the rest of the group. Before leaving on the raft the survivors have built, Walt Lloyd (Malcolm David Kelley) gives Shannon guardianship of his dog, Vincent, as a means to help her recover from her loss.
