Miles Straume

Miles Straume is a fictional character played by Ken Leung on the ABC television series Lost. He made his first appearance in the season four episode "Confirmed Dead" and his last in the series finale. Miles is depicted as a hotheaded and sarcastic medium as a crew member aboard the Kahana, a freighter offshore the main island. After arriving on the main island he becomes an ally of the survivors of Oceanic Airlines Flight 815 and aids their efforts to escape the island.

The writers created the role of Miles specifically for Leung after seeing him guest star on The Sopranos. Leung was the only actor to read for the part. They chose his name because it resembles "maelstrom", another word for a powerful whirlpool. Reaction to the character was positive.

Miles was born in March 1977. As a child, he lives with his mother Lara Chang (Leslie Ishii) in Encino, California. Miles resents his father for never having been around and also has disdain for other fathers who mistreat their children. During his childhood, Miles discovered that he could hear the thoughts of the deceased. He uses his ability to become a professional spiritualist.

In early December 2004, when he is twenty-seven years old, Miles is hired by Charles Widmore to go on a freighter called the Kahana to an uncharted island to retrieve a mass murderer named Ben Linus. Widmore believes that Miles will be able to communicate with those whom he had killed and gain information regarding Ben's location.

Miles is flown via helicopter from the freighter to the island on December 21 as part of a science team. The next day on the island, Miles encounters the survivors of the September 22 Oceanic Airlines Flight 815, who are believed to be dead by the world at large. Hostile and distrustful of the survivors for killing his colleague Naomi Dorrit (Marsha Thomason), Miles is taken prisoner by 815 survivor John Locke (Terry O'Quinn) and kept in a boathouse near a Barracks on the island. The next day, Miles temporarily escapes and bargains with Ben, who has also been taken prisoner: Miles will tell Widmore that Ben is dead in exchange for $3.2 million, double what Widmore was paying him. The Barracks are ransacked on December 27 by a mercenary team from the freighter, who murder six people. Miles leaves with Sawyer, Claire and Aaron for their beach camp. On the way, Miles stumbles upon the dead bodies of Karl and Danielle Rosseau. Later that night Claire disappears into the jungle and Sawyer initially blames Miles. Miles arrives on December 30, shortly before eight are rescued not far from the island, the freighter explodes and the mercenary team is killed by the Others, the island's indigenous people under Ben's leadership. Also that day, Ben moves the island through spacetime by turning a large frozen donkey wheel underground.

The group on the beach begin flashing through time, landing in fourteen different times throughout the Island's past and future in the span of about a week before the wheel is turned again; however, according to fellow freighter science team member physicist Daniel Faraday (Jeremy Davies), none of the past is changed because their suddenly appearing in various times is what had always happened. The survivors settle in 1974, by which point only Miles, Faraday, former Other Juliet Burke (Elizabeth Mitchell) and 815 passengers James "Sawyer" Ford (Josh Holloway) and Jin Kwon (Daniel Dae Kim) remain; Rose Henderson (L. Scott Caldwell), Bernard Nadler (Sam Anderson) and Vincent the dog (Pono) also survive, but they are physically separated and do not meet any of them again for three years until July 1977. Miles and his group move into the Barracks and pseudonymously join the DHARMA Initiative, an organization conducting scientific research while living there that would eventually be purged in 1992 by Ben and the Others. Despite the option to board the DHARMA submarine and "go back to the real world", the survivors from 2004 stay on the island together in the hope that they can somehow return to the time that they knew. Miles becomes a security officer and ends up becoming friends with Sawyer. He discovers that his mother and father Dr. Pierre Chang live on the island as part of DHARMA and his father is even the man in the organization's station-specific orientation films; however, Miles does not approach or befriend his father, continuing to harbor resentment for his absence from much of Miles's life.

In July 1977, both thirty-year-old security officer Miles and three-month-old infant Miles are living on the island. Four survivors, Jack, Kate, Hurley, and Sayid from Flight 815 who had been rescued nearly three years earlier on December 30, 2004, arrive on the island in 1977 after flying near the island in late 2007 and also join DHARMA, Sayid being a prisoner on suspicion of being an Other. Miles still stays distant from his father, but, after talking to Hurley during a late-night chore, witnesses a peaceful moment between his younger self and his father. Three days later, the groups from the future are exposed as liars. The next morning, Faraday comes clean to Chang that they are from the future and warns of a catastrophic "incident" that is due to occur at the building site for the Swan, DHARMA's planned island station dedicated to electromagnetism. He instructs Chang to evacuate the island of non-essential personnel, which he does, ordering his wife and baby Miles to leave him, shortly after finding out that adult Miles is his son and confronting him about it. Here, Miles realizes that he himself caused his father to order his mother and his three-month-old self to leave. Faraday theorizes that if "Jughead" – a hydrogen bomb that is buried on the island – is detonated at the Swan site by the underground electromagnetic pocket of energy, the timeline will be altered, preventing any of the group from the future from ever having come to the island in 2004, saving everyone who had died after they arrived. The plan proceeds as planned, even though Miles expresses skepticism. The antagonistic DHARMA members engage in a gunfight with Jack, believing him to be an Other, and Miles, Sawyer, Juliet, and Kate come to his aid. When the Swan site goes haywire, Chang's arm is caught in the debris and Miles rushes to his side, saving him and calling him "Dad". After he tells his father to run as far as possible from the site, the bomb is detonated and everything goes to white, leaving Miles's status uncertain.

In the first episode of Season 6, Miles is revealed to have been returned to the future along with the other survivors. When Kate, Jack, Hurley and Jin go to the temple to save Sayid, Sawyer asks Miles to remain behind to help bury the now-deceased Juliet and to use his power to find out what she was trying to tell him before she died. He reluctantly agrees, and after a few seconds, tells Sawyer "it worked."