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Lost Trivia
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Lost Danielle Rousseau Biography
Danielle Rousseau is a fictional
character on the ABC drama television series Lost, which chronicles the
lives of over forty people after their plane crashes on a remote island
somewhere in the South Pacific. Croatian actress Mira Furlan plays the
scientist who shipwrecks on the Island sixteen years prior to the crash
of Oceanic Flight 815. The American actress Melissa Farman portrays the
character in the fifth season of the show. Rousseau is a recurring
on-island character who has appeared in nineteen episodes in seasons
one through four, as well as one episode where her voice alone is
heard.
The character, who is commonly known as "The
French Woman" among the survivors on the island, is introduced early in
the first season. Sixteen years prior to the plane crash, Rousseau was
a member of a French research vessel, whose ship ran aground on the
island. Two months after being stranded, Rousseau gave birth to her
daughter Alex (Tania Raymonde); however, Alex was taken by the Island's
original inhabitants, a group which Rousseau called the "Others".
Rousseau's primary objective is to reunite with her daughter, which is
achieved in the season three finale "Through the Looking Glass". The
reunion is short-lived; Rousseau is shot and killed by a band of
mercenaries in the middle of the fourth season.
The writers wrote Rousseau out of the series upon request by Furlan,
who did not wish to travel to
Hawaii
to film her scenes. The producers planned for Rousseau to get her own
flashback episode in season four; however, this was delayed due to the
2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike. The writers stated that
Rousseau would be in the fifth season, and her story would be told, but
to say that it would be told through a flashback would be
"disingenuous". In the fifth season of Lost, a younger version of
Rousseau is shown. Critical reaction to the character has been
generally positive; however, many have expressed disappointment in the
execution of Rousseau's death scene.
Prior to the crash
Sixteen years before Oceanic 815 crashes on the Island, Rousseau was a
heavily pregnant member of a six-man crew aboard a French research
vessel three days out of Tahiti. The crew picked up a radio signal
emanating from the South Pacific, which was a repeating set of six
numbers: 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42. While attempting to find the source
of the signal, the ship ran aground on rocks surrounding the Island.
Before reaching the shore, Rousseau and her team spotted a time-travelling
Jin in the water. Two months after their arrival, Rousseau began to
believe that the Island natives, which she called the Others, carried a
disease that the rest of her crew had contracted. She believed that
this disease could not be allowed to reach the rest of the world, so
she killed her colleagues, including her husband Robert.[5] Rousseau
hiked to the radio tower and changed the message from the numbers to a
repeating distress call. Three days later, Rousseau gave birth to a
daughter, Alexandra.[6] One week after Alex's birth, the Others came
and took her from Rousseau. After this, Rousseau began setting traps in
the jungle with the hope of catching one of the people responsible for
Alex's kidnapping.
The Season 5 Episode This Place is Death seems to have shown a few
amendments to Danielle's experience on the island prior to the crash.
The episode now suggests that it was the Smoke Monster, acting as
Guardian to a set of what appeared to be ancient ruins of a temple of
some kind (perhaps The Temple) that infected Danielle's crew. Danielle
accuses the father of her child, Robert, of 'being changed' inside the
temple. Robert denies this, claiming the Monster was the Security
System of the Temple, prior to being shot to death by Danielle after
attempting to shoot her. Whether there was additional contact between
Danielle and her surviving crew members and the Others or the Smoke
Monster has yet to be revealed.
After the crash
Rousseau makes her first appearance in the season one episode
"Solitary", where she captures Sayid (Naveen Andrews), one of the plane
crash survivors. Rousseau tortures him until he eventually convinces
her that he is not one of the Others. She allows Sayid to return to his
camp, and cautions him to keep a close eye on the other survivors. Over
two weeks later, she comes across a delirious Claire (Emilie de Ravin),
who had been left in the jungle after being kidnapped by the Others.
Noticing that Claire's shouting is alerting the Others to her presence,
Rousseau knocks her unconscious and carries her back to the other
survivors.Rousseau makes her next appearance in "Numbers", where she
shoots at Charlie (Dominic Monaghan) and Hurley (Jorge Garcia),
suspecting them of being Others. In the season one finale, set 43 days
after the plane crash, Rousseau arrives on the beach and warns everyone
that the Others are coming. After Claire gives birth to her son Aaron,
Rousseau steals him and intends to swap him for her own child. When the
Others do not come, Rousseau reluctantly returns him to Sayid. In
season two, set two weeks later, Rousseau informs Sayid that she has
caught one of the Others, who later turns out to be Ben Linus (Michael
Emerson). Later, Rousseau joins Claire and Kate Austen (Evangeline
Lilly) who are searching for medicine for Claire's baby, in one of the
Others' work stations. Disappointed that she has not found any trace of
Alex, she begins to leave them when Claire tells her that she believes
Alex helped her escape when the Others captured her.
Midway through season three, Kate persuades Rousseau to help some of
the survivors find the Others' home, by informing her that Alex helped
her escape from the Others. When they arrive, Rousseau abandons the
group and watches from the bushes as Alex walks past. A few days later,
Rousseau leads the survivors to the radio tower in order for them to
contact a nearby freighter. En route, they encounter Ben and Alex; Ben
explains to Alex who Rousseau is and the mother and daughter are
reunited.[6] Season four begins with the survivors dividing into two
groups, with those who believe the people from the freighter to be
dangerous, including Rousseau and Alex, joining Locke (Terry O'Quinn).
After learning of the freighter crew's intentions to kill everyone on
the Island, Ben directs Rousseau, along with Alex and her boyfriend
Karl (Blake Bashoff), to head to the Temple where the rest of the
Others are located. On their way, Rousseau and Karl are shot by unseen
attackers, and both are killed. The buried bodies of both are
discovered by Miles (Ken Leung), Sawyer (Josh Holloway), and Claire
after they leave Locke and travel back to the beach.
Development
Rousseau is named after French-Swiss
philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Although Rousseau is French, actress
Mira Furlan is Croatian, which led to speculation that Rousseau is not
really from France. In one of the official Lost podcasts, producer
Carlton Cuse joked, "any French woman who speaks with a Serbian accent
and has been living in the woods for sixteen years eating bugs ... has
got some issues, and those issues need to be overcome before she can
actually go and embrace Alex". Furlan understood Rousseau's decision to
not meet her daughter, believing that no one can ever be prepared for
that moment. Furlan met Raymonde for the first time just minutes before
shooting their reunion scene in the season three finale. The actors
believed the scene to be a "huge moment" for their characters, which
Furlan described as a "basic human moment". Furlan was glad to have
"such a beautiful partner", and noted their physical resemblance.
Furlan asked for her character to be written out of the series because
she did not want to travel to Hawaii to film her scenes. The producers
decided for Rousseau to be shot, with the possibility of her returning
in season five. Co-show runners and executive producers Damon Lindelof
and Cuse originally intended for Rousseau to get her own flashback
episode in season four, however as a result of the Writer's Strike,
this did not come to pass. When asked whether Rousseau would have a
flashback in season five, Lindelof said that Rousseau's story would
"definitively" be revealed, but that "to use the word flashback would
be disingenuous". Cuse revealed that they were trying to steer away
from the word flashback and were "embracing a whole new word". He
explained that "there will still ... be flashbacks and flash-forwards
on the show, but we're going to do something different this year. We're
going to mix it up." Instead of using flashbacks and flashforwards like
in previous seasons, stories of the fifth season will play out both on
and off the island stories in different points in time. The writers are
scheduling an appearance by Furlan for the fifth season.
