Miles Straume

Template:Infobox Lost character Miles Straume is a fictional character played by Ken Leung on the ABC television series Lost. Miles is introduced early in the fourth season as a hotheaded and sarcastic medium aboard the freighter 80 miles offshore of the island. Miles arrives on the island and is eventually taken captive by John Locke (played by Terry O'Quinn), who suspects that those on the freighter are there to harm his fellow crash survivors of Oceanic Airlines Flight 815 and expose the island to the general public. Miles is on a mission to obtain Ben Linus (Michael Emerson); instead, he tries to cut a deal with Ben to lie to Miles's employer Charles Widmore (Alan Dale) that Ben is dead.

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 has been positive.

Arc

Miles was born in April 1977. As a child, he lives with his mother Lara Chang (Leslie Ishii) in Encino, California. Miles does not know his father, only being told by his mother that he is dead and did not care about them when he was alive, forcing them to leave him when Miles is a baby. Miles resents his father for never having been around and also has disdain for other fathers who mistreat their children. At seven years old, Miles discovers that he can hear the thoughts from before their death of those who are dead. He becomes a professional spiritualist and develops his ability so that he can access specific information from the deceased and can sometimes even communicate when a corpse is not present. In early December 2004, when he is twenty-seven years old, Miles is hired for $1.6 million by Charles Widmore to go on a freighter called the Kahana to an uncharted island to retrieve a mass murderer named Ben Linus, as Widmore believes that Miles will be able to communicate with those whom he had killed and gain information regarding his location. Before he leaves, Miles is briefly abducted by Bram (Brad William Henke), who claims to know about Miles's father and the source of his superpower. Bram warns him not to go on this mission, instead trying to convince Miles to join him.

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 some of the 815 survivors for their beach camp. 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 the physicist Daniel Faraday (Jeremy Davies), none of the past is changed because them 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 under false pretenses, 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 and Miles becomes a security officer. 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 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. 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. Faraday theorizes that if the "Jughead" hydrogen bomb that is buried on the island is detonated at the Swan site by the underground electromagnetic pocket of energy, he actually can alter the timeline and prevent any of the group from the future from ever having come to the island in 2004, saving everyone who had died after they arrived. 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". The bomb is detonated and everything goes to white, leaving Miles's status uncertain.

Personality

Miles is hotheaded and initially hostile toward the survivors, after one of them kills his colleague Naomi Dorrit (Marsha Thomason). But he, too, is disrespectful of Naomi after she dies, telling Kate, "Sure I'm affected [by Naomi's death]. She was hot and I dug her accent." Upon learning that Miles has been captured by Locke, Frank informs Sayid that "that guy's nothing but a pain in my ass."

Miles sarcastically nicknames his acquaintances, prompting critics, fans and characters to compare him to the character Sawyer and give him a nickname of his own: "mini-Sawyer". Ken Leung claims that he is often approached by people who like the character and he assumes that it is because of Miles's "sardonic wit" and "devil-may-care sort of attitude." Leung surmised that "Usually when people are like that, just … kind of throwing off quick [and] quirky remarks … they're hiding something, so he's definitely hiding something." Asked if Miles is much like him, Leung responded with "I don't think I'm that similar. Um, I don't know—I guess I have moments." Leung said that "Miles doesn't know how to be social, which is great, because I don't know how to be social." He has also stated that Miles "trust[s] the dead more than the living" and is intrigued as to whom Miles grieves for. Leung stated that "He seems haunted by something, that—that's for sure … one of the first thoughts I had [was that his] communication with the dead … can't be a great thing … it's not a happy skill to have."

Both Miles and Hurley can speak to the dead—a similarity noted by Hurley; however, their manners of communication vary. While Miles is able to access a person's mind as it was before death, Hurley physically interacts with apparitions of the deceased. Executive producer/writer Edward Kitsis has commented that "they both have unique abilities, and that very question of how they differ may be explored by the end of the series."

Development

The day after the April 22, 2007 episode of The Sopranos titled "Remember When" aired, Lost's co-creator Damon Lindelof met with fellow executive producer/writer/show runner Carlton Cuse and said that "there's an actor on th[e] show [last night]—I'm not going to tell you who he is—and I wonder if he has the same impression on you that he had on me". Cuse correctly guessed Ken Leung, who had guest starred as one-time character Carter Chong, a young and angry mental patient. In mid-May, they contacted Leung's agent and were informed in July that he was available and interested in working on Lost. To limit the leak of spoilers, Lindelof and Cuse auditioned Leung with a character and scene created specifically for the audition that would not be used in the show but was "analogous to the role [that they] really want[ed]." Leung believed that he was auditioning for the role of Russell, a "brilliant mathematician" in his late thirties with immense knowledge across various scientific fields, limited social skills and broken personal relationships. Leung was the only actor who tried out for this part, as writers had written the role of Miles for him; had he not accepted the job, the character would have been completely rewritten. The name Miles Straume was simply chosen because the writers thought that "it would be cool if his name sounded like 'maelstrom' ".

Leung relocated from New York to where the show is filmed in Oahu, Hawaii, which Leung described as "so dreamy". He was initially contracted as a guest star with "potential regular status in [the] future", which came to fruition. At first, Leung struggled with the show's secrecy, not knowing much about his character's background or motivations, but he found some understanding with his character's clothing. Costume designer Roland Sanchez based Miles's wardrobe choice after that of The Rolling Stones member Keith Richards; specifically a picture in which he wore a sleeveless vest. Sanchez believed that Miles fit the haggard look and bought an Armani Exchange jacket, cropped the sleeves and added a hood.

The writers planned for the ninth or tenth episode of the fourth season to focus on Miles's backstory; however, this was pushed back to the thirteenth episode of the fifth season as a result of the Writers Guild of America strike. The revelation that Miles is Chang's son was not confirmed until Miles's flashback episode; however, this plot point had been speculated by the Internet fan community as early as Miles's first appearance on the show. Further speculation occurred following the broadcast of the fifth season premiere, in which Chang was seen tending to a baby boy. This influenced the way that it was revealed in the show, as the writers looked for a way to present the information in a way that would both be interesting to those who had not guessed it and not insulting to viewers who had been predicting it. What resulted was Miles and Hurley discussing Chang with Miles plainly saying, "That douche is my dad" before a cut to a commercial break.

Reception

After four appearances, Leung was nominated for the J. C. Penney Asian Excellence Award in the Supporting Television Actor category, but he lost to Rex Lee, who plays Lloyd on HBO's Entourage. According to Jon Lachonis of UGO, Miles and the other new characters have been well received by fans. Maureen Ryan of The Chicago Tribune said that Leung is "terrifically intense" in his portrayal. Paige Albiniak of the New York Post praised the cast addition. Diane Werts of Newsday thought that "Ken Leung and Michael Emerson may be the two current most interesting actors in this mix". Alan Sepinwall of The Star-Ledger commented that "Miles the dustbusting ghostbuster is easily my favorite [of the characters introduced in 'Confirmed Dead'] … why not throw in a medium [among the show's science fiction phemonena] … I love the sarcastic energy he brings. Sawyer and Ben can't be the only ones getting the good one-liners". After Miles' introduction in the second episode of the fourth season, Jeff Jensen of Entertainment Weekly wrote that Leung made "a strong impression" and was well cast. Chris Carabott of IGN stated that "Leung does an adequate job of getting Miles' arrogant brand of confidence across."