16 Years Before His Yellowstone Villain, This Actor Played The Best Character In A TV Masterpiece

Neo-Western drama Yellowstone is full of compelling villains, but one of the most impressive is played by an actor who made his name in the TV masterpiece Lost. More than a decade before his role as an antagonist to the Dutton family, Josh Holloway starred as an even more captivating plane crash survivor stuck on Lost’s legendary desert island.

Holloway’s Roarke Morris suffers one of Yellowstone’s most shocking deaths in the show’s season four premiere. Meanwhile, his character in Lost survives the series finale, and manages to escape the island at the center of its plot on an Ajira Airways plane which previously crash-landed there.

Still, the actor has left his mark on both shows, neither of which would be the same without him. That being said, Josh Holloway’s Roarke lasts just one season before he becomes one of the most famous actors to be killed off in Yellowstone. Had Holloway’s tenure in Lost been as brief, he wouldn’t be the star he is today.

Roarke Is An Iconic Yellowstone Villain Played By Josh Holloway

Roarke Morris is one of Yellowstone’s best villains, a ranching rival to the Duttons who doubles up as a hedge fund investor looking to make an enormous amount of money off their land. Josh Holloway’s character warns Beth Dutton not to mess with him and his fellow Market Equities investors before going after her family with everything he’s got.

After threats of litigation and financial muscle don’t seem to deter the Duttons from trying to hold onto their land, Roarke pays the Morrows, neighboring ranchers who were previously fired from Yellowstone ranch, to attack them and sabotage their holdings. These actions have deadly consequences for both Clint and Wade Morrow, and spell the beginning of the end for Roarke.

He doesn’t help himself by also attempting to woo Beth Dutton, after multiple flirtatious encounters between them. This grave mistake motivates Beth’s partner, Dutton rancher Rip Wheeler, to kill Roarke by unleashing a venomous rattlesnake on him while he’s fly fishing. Roarke’s horrifying death is one of Yellowstone’s most iconic moments.

Holloway Also Starred As James “Sawyer” Ford In Lost

More than a decade before he was cast as Roarke Morris in Yellowstone, Josh Holloway became a household name thanks to his role as James “Sawyer” Ford in Lost. Holloway features in the show from its groundbreaking pilot episode to its finale at the end of season 6.

Sawyer is one of the few characters still alive at the end of Lost who are in the show from the very start. His departure from the island via the same route he arrived there is a neat full-circle moment, yet it doesn’t even begin to tell the story of his development as a character during the course of the series.

Across Lost’s six seasons, Sawyer undergoes a dramatic transformation, which takes him from being one of the most unlikable characters in the show to one of the most beloved. Josh Holloway enacts this transformation superbly, giving a lively, heartfelt, and often moving performance as a major underdog in the story.

Sawyer Is Lost’s Best Character Overall

In fact, Sawyer probably ranks as Lost’s best main character overall, given his extraordinary redemption arc, as well as his overwhelming contribution to the show’s plot. Josh Holloway demonstrates the full breadth of his acting range in portraying the character, first as an obnoxious and profoundly self-centered villain, and then as a figure who gradually becomes more sympathetic.

Sawyer begins the series as a bigoted con-man prone to acts of appalling selfishness and cruelty. His list of nicknames for fellow crash survivors probably wouldn’t make it past the studio if Lost were being made today, and his treatment of Kate Austen is particularly repugnant.

Even during the show’s early seasons, however, Sawyer’s wry sense of humor saves him from being wholly unlikable. What’s more, when we learn of the horrific childhood trauma he’s endured, his behavior starts to make a lot more sense.

It takes living among a small group struggling for its survival on a remote island to change Sawyer’s attitude towards other human beings. His relationship with Juliet Burke is ultimately the making of him, and her death in his arms at the start of season 6 proves to be one of Lost’s most devastating moments.

Lost Is An Unmissable TV Masterpiece

Even putting Josh Holloway’s outstanding portrayal of Sawyer to one side, Lost is a masterpiece of television. The show raised the bar for the entire medium during the noughties, and is one of the best examples of prestige TV ever made. Lost’s most unforgettable episodes take pride of place among the greatest in the history of the small screen.

From having arguably the best pilot episode of any TV drama series, to weaving sci-fi and supernatural elements into a dizzying survival epic for the ages, Lost has it all, and more than newcomers to the show could possibly imagine. This is a truly unmissable work of television, which most fans of Yellowstone are bound to enjoy.