JULIET BURKE

'Dr. Juliet Burke' (née 'Carlson') is one of the main characters of the hit ABC drama ''Lost''. She is played by Elizabeth Mitchell. Her character was introduced in the third season premiere. She is named after the titular character from the play ''Romeo and Juliet''.^[1]

Contents

Fictional character biography

Prior to her arrival on the island

On the island, prior to the crash

Following the crash

Season 3

Literary refererences

References

Fictional character biography

Prior to her arrival on the island

Before coming to the island, Dr. Juliet Burke resided in Miami near her sister Rachel's apartment. Juliet was working for her ex-husband Edmund Burke (a name the creators acquired from the famous eighteenth-century philosopher) as a fertility scientist at Miami Central University; there, Edmund bullied an acquiescent Juliet and flaunted his sexual conquests. Despite her docile nature, Juliet, alluding to her ends justify the means philosophy, was performing unauthorized experiments on her sister, Rachel. Rachel's reproductive system had been ravaged by chemotherapy, rendering her sterile. Juliet was attempting to restore her fertility.
In 2001 she was approached and offered a job with Mittelos Bioscience. Alleging her ex-husband (Edmund) would never allow her to leave, Juliet jokingly asserted that she would not be able to accept the job offer unless he were hit by a bus. When Juliet returned home, her sister revealed to her that she was pregnant, prompting Juliet to locate and inform Edmund. After receiving the news, Edmund stepped off the sidewalk and onto the street, only to be hit by a bus. Edmund died from the injuries, and the representative from the company who had interviewed her earlier, Richard Alpert, showed up at the morgue with Ethan Rom. They expressed their condolences and again asked her to join their company. Juliet accepted. Soon after this, Rachel's cancer went into remission.
When Juliet arrives for her new career at Mittelos, she is surprised at the amount of secrecy involved in it. She does not even know the location of where she will work. Juliet is put into a van and driven to an airfield, where Richard Alpert gives her orange juice that he admits is filled with tranquilizer. When she protests, Richard says that her expertise as a fertility specialist - especially her miraculous treatment of her sister - is the reason she is being recruited. He promises that there are things on the island that she could only dream about. Juliet drinks the orange juice and quickly falls unconscious.

On the island, prior to the crash

Juliet awakes aboard the Others' submarine, her arms, waist, and barefeet strapped down. She is freed by Ethan and then disembarks on the island and meets Ben. For the next three years, she treats pregnant mothers per Ben's orders, but with uniformly fatal results. Meanwhile, she enters into a relationship with Goodwin. She is discouraged by the lack of results, but is forced to remain on the island "until her work is done." Juliet wants to return to her sister Rachel, but Ben reveals that her cancer has returned - she'll be dead before Juliet arrives. However, he promises that if Juliet stays, he will cure Rachel's cancer. She accepts this, but becomes suspicious of Ben when she discovers his spinal tumor on an X-ray. She confronts him, upset that he lied about no one on the island getting cancer. She tearfully asks to go home to her dying sister - whom she believes was never going to be cured - but Ben refuses to let her go.
After this, Juliet does not have the same reverence for Ben as the rest of the Others. On the day of the crash, a distraught Juliet attempts to pull herself together and prepare to host the Others' book club meeting in her home, which Ben did not attend. During the discussion of ''Carrie'' (Juliet's favorite book), Oceanic Flight 815 crashes; she and the other Others witness the breakup of the plane in the air above them and watch the pieces fall toward different parts of the island.

Following the crash

After dispatching Ethan and Goodwin to investigate the crash, Ben takes Juliet with him to see Mikhail, who opens a live satellite connection to North America, where her seemingly healthy sister is shown playing with her now two-year-old son. Juliet breaks down crying and begs Ben to let her return home, but again Ben refuses.
In a flashback from "Exposé," along the timeline of "The Hunting Party," Juliet and Ben enter the , where they watch Jack from one of the monitors. Juliet questions Ben's motives for the planned kidnapping of Jack, to which he reveals his methods of persuasion. They leave shortly after, leaving behind a radio, picked up by Paulo.

Season 3

Juliet is assigned to interrogate Jack in the underwater section of the station. At first, Jack refuses to cooperate, almost flooding the room, but Juliet manages to break through to him. She mostly brings him his food, but when she is called in to operate on Colleen, she soon seeks Jack's help. She unfortunately dies, and Juliet attends the funeral, where Ben asks her why she showed Jack his x-rays. When she is told to convince Jack to operate on Ben, she plays Jack a video of her holding up cue-cards, telling Jack to "accidentally" kill Ben during surgery. When Jack carries out her plan, she begins calling his bluff. Once her true methods are exposed, however, Ben bargains with her to help Kate and Sawyer to escape in exchange for her freedom. She finds them held at gunpoint by Pickett, and evidently kills him on the spot. She is then tried for her crime, but is spared execution by Jack; instead, she is marked on her lower back before returning back to the barracks.
Since returning, and after the capture of Kate and Sayid, Ben instructs her to infiltrate the survivors' camp in order to gain information on Kate, as well as other potentially pregnant women. He also informs her that, upon her arrival, she would have a task on her hands that would earn her the survivors' trust. She is then handcuffed to Kate and placed in the jungle, where she pretends to have been gassed and abandoned with her. However, after being chased by the "Monster", Juliet unlocks the handcuffs, and shuts out the "Monster" using the sonar panel fence. The two return to camp, where Juliet frees Sayid. She migrates with the survivors soon after, under the protection of Jack. However, en route to retrieving medication for Claire, she narrowly avoids an interrogation from Sayid and Sawyer, and manages to help Claire. Juliet also takes Sun to the station upon learning of her pregnancy, and uses the equipment to perform a scan on her fetus; she confirms that she conceived on the island, and informs her that she has until her second trimester, in roughly two months.
Later, Kate informs Jack and Juliet of Naomi's arrival, prompting them to leave abruptly. They find Rousseau in the jungle and form a plan. When they return, they discover that Sawyer has played Juliet's dictophone to the camp, revealing the notes she made on Sun's pregnancy. She then reveals that the Others intend on invading the camp and abducting the pregnant women. Juliet and Jack lead the camp into the jungle to demonstrate their plan to defeat the Others. However, when Karl arrives to warn them of their immediate arrival, Juliet discloses information on the station, used for blocking outgoing signals, before heading off to the radio tower with the majority of the camp. After witnessing Sayid's plan backfire, Juliet and Sawyer return to the beach. After Hurley runs over one of the surviving Others with the van, Juliet corners Tom while Sawyer shoots him in cold blood.

Literary refererences

★ The actress who plays Juliet, Elizabeth Mitchell, was in a movie called ''Frequency'' in 2000 where she played a nurse who was being stalked by a killer named "Jack Shepard".

References

1. The Shadowy Others Take Charge on 'Lost' ''USAToday.com''. Retrieved on August 10, 2007