10 TV Shows That Completely Wasted Great Characters
6. Lost - Mr Eko
Lost’s unique structure and slowly unveiled central mystery
meant the show could often afford to slowly reveal the backstory of characters,
with plenty of minor figures introduced early and relegated to the background only
for their eventual significance to become clear later in the series. The show
used single episodes to spotlight specific characters, so the general understanding
amongst the fandom was that the more time a character’s motivation and previous
life were afforded onscreen, the more vital they would prove to the overall
narrative.
This theory was thrown off the island after the unheralded demise of Mr. Eko, though, an enigmatic fan favourite who viewers had assumed would prove pivotal to the show’s mystery. Yes, what little we understood of Mr. Eko seemed likely to shed some eventual light on the island’s origins and it appeared the character might have been behind some of the strangeness involved in the crash—only for him to be offed by the smoke monster and prove that no, there’s no grand overarching scheme tying all of this together.
Come to think of it maybe we deserve Mr. Eko some thanks, given he was the first death to warn us Lost was going nowhere fast.