On the island:
Since coming to the island, Hurley quickly bonds with Jack
and Charlie, and manages to sustain fairly strong relationships
with everyone else, probably due to his apparent friendliness
and straightforwardness. However, he opens up to very few
people on the island. He reveals his secret — he is
worth millions of dollars — only to Charlie and Jack,
although Charlie treats it as a joke, and Jack gives little
reaction. While Hurley appears to be happy-go-lucky and
often provides comic relief, he may have had a troubled
past, which he has alluded to on occasion; his past with
the mental institution is also still unknown. He is very
active on the island, creating a golf course to ease people's
tensions; taking the census that reveals that Ethan was
not on the flight; heading into the jungle to find Rousseau;
and ultimately recovering a battery for Sayid to use for
the raft's radar.
Hurley accompanies Danielle, Jack, Locke, Kate, and Arzt
into the jungle in the season finale of Season 1. With Arzt's
demise, Hurley again assumes the blame for everyone's misfortune.
After returning to the hatch, Hurley discovers that the
serial number on the hatch matches the numbers he played
in the lottery, and he unsuccessfully tries to keep Locke
from blowing the hatch open. Once Desmond abandons the underground
bunker to the castaways, Hurley is assigned the job of inventory
in the supply closet. His previous experience with sudden
privilege makes him fearful of what the food distribution
task will mean to his standing with the others. He is prepared
to blow up the bunker's pantry with the unused pack of dynamite
from the Black Rock, but Rose talks him out of it. He decides
instead to hand the food out freely to whomever asks for
it, pointing out to Jack there is no feasible way to ration
it.
Hurley thinks he has a chance for a romantic relationship
with Libby in the episode "The Hunting Party".
Hurley becomes closer to Libby while doing laundry with
her in "Fire + Water," but has the feeling that
he knows her from somewhere else. Libby claims it is because
Hurley stepped on her foot when he rushed onto Flight 815
in "Exodus: Part 3".
In "One of Them", we find out that Hurley has
a secret stash of food from the hatch. Sawyer catches him
with the food and makes him find the tree frog that is bothering
him. He tells Sawyer that he is aware that he is fat, that
he has always been fat. He also says to him that even though
he has stolen food, everyone else still loves him.
Hurley and Libby were going to have a picnic on the beach
but Hurley forgot the blankets, so Libby went back for them.
Libby was shot by Michael who was trying to free Henry Gale.
She died shortly thereafter, and Hurley was struck with
grief. Hurley was then part of the group taken to the other
side of the island to find Walt, and when everyone was captured
by the "others", Hurley was the only one released
to go back.
Before the crash:
Hurley is a Latino from the Los Angeles area. Before the
crash he was confined to a psychiatric ward for believing
he had an imaginary friend named "Dave" who would
try to convince him to keep eating. When Dave tried to get
Hurley to escape, Hurley let him go and continued to stay
at the hospital himself. It was during this time at the
hospital that Hurley met Leonard, another patient who continually
spoke the numbers "4 8 15 16 23 42".
After Hurley left the ward, he becomes extremely wealthy,
winning a $114-million lottery using numbers revealed to
him by Leonard. The day after the winning draw, Hurley quits
his job and spends the day with his friend Johnny (DJ Qualls);
he hopes their carefree ways will continue despite his sudden
wealth, but Johnny is clearly shaken by the revelation.
Afterwards, people around Hurley are afflicted by misfortunes:
his grandfather suddenly dies during an interview with news
crews; lightning strikes the priest at the funeral; his
brother loses his wife to another woman; his mother breaks
her ankle while getting out of the car to see the new home
Hurley has bought for her; the house then catches fire;
he is falsely arrested after being mistaken for a drug dealer;
and his previous place of employment (Mr. Cluck's Chicken
Shack) is smashed by a meteorite.
Hurley, however, continues to experience incredibly good
luck and his acquisitions continue to accumulate: overinsurance
on a sneaker company he owns pays off when a fire consumes
the factory and causes several deaths; his false arrest
results in a hefty settlement; and he acquires ownership
of a box company in Tustin, California. By the time of the
crash, his net worth is $156 million. Despite this, Hurley
eventually comes to believe that the lottery numbers he
used — 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42 — were cursed.
When Hurley returns to the hospital to discover the origin
of "the numbers," the patient he acquired them
from, Leonard, reveals that he heard them when working with
a naval officer named Sam Toomey. The two of them had heard
the numbers when monitoring radio signals from the Pacific
Ocean. Hurley tracks down Toomey to his home in the outback
of Australia, only to find out from his wife that he had
also thought the numbers were cursed, and killed himself
to finally escape them. Hurley is on Flight 815 while returning
from this visit, despite many incidents that almost cause
him to miss the flight, because he does not want to miss
his mother's birthday. Hurley now believes that the airplane
crash was his fault. |
