Desmond Hume wasn't on the plane. Desmond was not in any season one episodes and there are many later episodes he is not in as well. Yet I would have to say that Desmond is my favorite Lost character. Not only because he's an interesting character but also because so many of my favorite Lost episodes feature him.
In all, Desmond Hume was in 71 of the 121 Lost episodes which is fewer than Jack Shephard, Sayid Jarrah, “Hurley,” “Sawyer,” Jin Kwon, Sun Kwon, Kate Austin, John Locke (who is probably my second favorite character), Claire Littleton, Ben Linus, and Charlie Pace.
But Desmond had the best catchphrase on the show which “See you in another life, brotha.” This phrase works on many levels on the show (one must watch through “The End” to really understand all of them.)
He also introduces the concept of time travel to the show and I really enjoyed this aspect (being a bit of a sci-fi geek.)
But it's not just that he says cool things (with a cool accent) and that he jumps about in time before anyone else. He's also just a really good dude who does a lot of cool things for people throughout the show.
And on top of that, his courtship with Penny was certainly the best of the romantic subplots on the show. Of all of the romantic relationships on Lost, this one felt the most “real” and had the most satisfying conclusion. Plus I think Penny is a really cool character in her own right. I found her to be a much more well rounded character than most of the other women on the show.
I'd like to close this article up by mentioning that the Desmond Hume character was named after David Hume who was an 18th century philosopher. A more obvious philosopher reference is the John Locke character who was named after John Locke who was a 17th century philosopher. There are a lot of interesting references like this in the show. It's really a show for the thinking man (or woman) and Desmond is the thinking man's character!
