THE CHARACTER SUMMATION OF SHANNON

The 6th main character in the LOST writer's guide was Shannon. She was described as follows:

While we may perceive her to be little more than a rich bitch, Shannon is considerably more "complicated. " After too many drunken nights and wrecked sports cars, her wealthy (and incredibly distant) mother finally cancelled Shannon's credit cards. Resourceful in her own way, Shannon solved her problem by seducing a wealthy man three times her age and convinced him to take her to his home on Australia's Gold Coast - a relationship which ended in disaster (as they all do with Shannon) and the arrival of over protective Boone to bring her back to captivity. 

Smart, manipulative, and extremely capable of being ruthless in order to get what she wants, Shannon will be a constant catalyst for conflict in her new surroundings,.. until she begins to fall for the one man on the island even less inclined to play nice than she is- Sawyer.

If Boone was to be a major character, it would make some sense that Shannon, his sister, would be an important person to help the audience realize what was happening to Boone. If they had a close relationship, the sibling bonds could be the only thing that kept them from being tossed out into the jungle to live and die on their own. Such as transformation from the idle rich to having to scrape for survival in a hostile jungle could have been compelling drama.

But the Shannon character was going to have more meat on her plot bones. Instead of the meek, spoiled, do-nothing wall flower we saw on the show, Shannon was supposed to be more aggressive, engaging and manipulative which fits more into her "gold digger" personality than what was shown in the series.

The writers altered the Shannon back story to have her wealth cut off when her father dies, and that the only family she has his half-brother Boone, who is growing tired of bailing her out of bad relationships. The last one in Australia was not with an older man (that plot point appears to have been revived in the bad Nikki-Paulo arc). The writers also down played any alcoholic tendencies of Shannon to make her more a basic, one-dimensional lazy but entitled character cut-out.

The concept of Shannon being attracted to Sawyer actually makes some sense. Sawyer's character was supposed to corral resources from the wreckage to become an important and powerful force in the new island power structure. Shannon would have wanted to side toward someone who would be able to take care of her and give her material things. Sawyer would fit that bill, since Boone was not going to be a protective puppy brother but a moody, unfocused and dangerous mad man.

If the Shannon character was to play out as originally proposed, the group dynamic would have been the center of the series. But for some unexplained reason, TPTB went off to make character back stories and one on one issues more important than group interactions and alliances in the main camp. If the original proposition held true, it would have been like party politics on the beach. Sawyer would have welded power over resources like medicine, food, etc., while Jack and Kate would have had the skills to apply resources to cure the sick and injured or provide a source of food for the group. In the leadership battle for control, Sawyer-Shannon-Boone triangle could have just as much influence as a Jack-Kate alliance, especially if Shannon was allowed to be a slutty manipulator who could emotionally tie up people like Charlie, who was smitten with her during the pilot episode.

But as the real series played out, Shannon turned into a secondary character like Boone. She was used like Boone to create a startling death scene, and to put more emotional pressure on a main character to react to the event. In Shannon's case, it was Sayid's anger toward Ana Lucia and the other survivors that split the group. In Boone's case, it was the hard realization for Jack that he could not save everyone.