Richard Malkin

Richard Malkin
Actor	Nick Jameson
First	"Raised by Another"
Last	"?"
Episode Count	2
Age	Unknown
Birth	Unknown
Profession	Psychic Con Man
Family	Joyce Malkin - Wife Charlotte Malkin - Daughter

Richard Malkin is a self-professed psychic in Australia whom Claire visited several times while pregnant with Aaron. He is the husband of Joyce Malkin and the father of Charlotte Malkin, a young girl who made an apparently miraculous resurrection after drowning.

Before the Crash

Meeting Claire

Claire visited Richard in order to get information about her unborn child. Richard abruptly asked Claire and Rachel to leave on their first visit, after he apparently saw a disturbing vision. He told Claire during her second visit that danger surrounded her baby, and that she must raise the child herself.

Richard called Claire several times to try to convince her not to give her baby up for adoption. After 4 months, however, he changed his stance on her needing to raise the baby, and ultimately convinced Claire to get on Flight 815, to give up her child for adoption to a couple in Los Angeles, who he said were "good people." He gave Claire $6,000 cash and bought her the plane ticket himself. ("Raised by Another")

Meeting Eko

After Richard's daughter had a near-death experience, Eko, a priest, came to investigate the "miracle" for the Church. Richard told Eko that there was no miracle, just an undertaker trying to cover up his own negligence. Richard told Eko that he was a fraud as a psychic and expressed his belief that there are no miracles in this world. ("?")

Trivia

• Executive Producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse had earlier stated that they weren't interested in answering the validity of Malkin's psychic ability.
  • However, on May 21, 2009 in "Time Talks" (The New York Times) discussion, they both implied that Malkin was a hoax.
• Malkin said the same line to Claire in "Raised by Another" that Ms. Hawking said to Jack in "316": "It must be this flight."

Behind the scenes

• On the Lost Season 2 DVD Lost Connections there is a previously unseen clip when the navigation moves from Eko to Richard Malkin. Malkin tells Eko that he was paid $16,000 by a couple in Los Angeles to convince a pregnant girl to board a plane (note that this is a deleted scene and, as such, is not necessarily canon).
• The bonus feature "Lost in a Day" from the season 3 DVD boxset includes a meeting in the writers room, in which they are discussing early ideas for the plot for what would eventually end up as "The Brig". Details regarding Sawyer's confrontation with Anthony Cooper still differed vastly from what ended up being in the actual episode. One of the early ideas for this scene was that Sawyer and Cooper were to meet inside a well rather than in the Black Rock's brig, and Richard Malkin would be there as well. The idea for that scene was that no explicit reference to "Raised by Another" would ever come up, and remembering Malkin from earlier episodes was supposedly irrelevant as well. However, Sawyer was supposed to vaguely remember Malkin from somewhere, thus implying that Malkin might have been intended at one point to be revealed as the "Real Sawyer".