Episode appearances: Season 6, Episode 5: "Lighthouse"
Season 4, Episode 10: "Something Nice Back Home"
Season 3, Episode 22: "Through the Looking Glass, Part 1"
Season 3, Episode 20: "Man Behind the Curtain"
Season 1, Episode 5: "White Rabbit"
Lost is littered with allusions to
Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. In Season 1, Episode 5, "White Rabbit," John Locke compares Jack Shepard's "hallucination" of his father to the White Rabbit from
Alice in Wonderland, saying that everything on the island might be happening for a reason. Their conversation illuminates one of the pair's core conflicts: faith versus reason. It's also the episode where Jack becomes the leader of the survivors.
In Season 3, Episode 20, "Man Behind the Curtain," a young Ben Linus follows a white rabbit through a fence, effectively leaving behind what he knows. The two-part Season 3 finale title, "Through the Looking Glass," also references Carroll's
Alice in Wonderland sequel and the underwater Dharma Initiative station that claims Charlie's life. The symbol of the Looking Glass station is a (wait for it) white rabbit. In Season 4, Episode 10, "Something Nice Back Home," we see a tender moment between Jack and Aaron, his would-be adopted son, as they read
Alice in Wonderland before bed.
Fast-forward to the Season 6, Episode 5, "Lighthouse," where in Jack's sideways reality, his teenage son David is reading
Alice in Wonderland. Jack makes reference to Alice's two kittens, Kitty and Snowdrop—another good versus evil parallel. In the episode, Jack also finds a key to his ex-wife's house hidden under a rabbit statue. In the island reality, the temple leader Dogen talks about cutting off Hurley's head, just like the Queen of Hearts. And in the lighthouse, both Hurley Reyes and Jack go through the looking glass via the lighthouse mirrors that show glimpses into other worlds.
Read about Tim Burton's new movie version of Alice in Wonderland
