Danielle Rousseau

Danielle Rousseau is a fictional character on the television series Lost played by Mira Furlan.

Biography

Danielle Rousseau is a French woman who for approximately 16 years has inhabited the island were Oceanic Flight 815 crashed. She put out the distress signal that Sayid found. She traps Sayid thinking that he is one of the Others, and holds him prisoner. When he insists that he does not know anything about her missing daughter, Alex, she tortures him with electrical shocks. While holding Sayid prisoner, she tells him how she came to the island. Danielle was on a science expedition, which included several people including her husband Robert. Her science team was armed with rifles. When her team got infected she killed her whole team, in order to make sure that when they got rescued others did not get infected. She estimates the island is at least three days away from Tahiti.

Sayid and Danielle hear a noise outside of her camp. While she is out hunting it, Sayid steals her maps and notes about the island, grabs her other rifle, and escapes back to the other survivors. Before letting Sayid go, she tells him that her companions started to become sick, so she killed them one by one. She then gave birth to a daughter, Alex, and shortly afterwards a plume of black smoke appeared and the Others kidnapped Alex. After seeing that the papers Sayid stole contain the numbers, Hurley searches for Danielle. She tells him that the numbers were being broadcast on the radio, and she knows nothing about them.

She takes some of the others to an old ship called the Black Rock, while trying to get dynamite to blow the hatch, in an area she called the "Dark Territory". They come up against the Monster, but Danielle describes it as a security system that was there to protect the island. Earlier she had told them that the transmitter carrying the "Numbers Broadcast" that her team picked up and followed to the island, was near the Black Rock.

After another plume appears in the distance, Danielle warns the survivors that the Others are coming. While everyone prepares for the Others' arrival, she kidnaps Claire's baby, Aaron. Sayid and Charlie pursue her and find her with the baby near the source of the black smoke, planning to exchange Aaron for her own child, Alex; however, she did not find the Others there. Sayid and Charlie, who believes Danielle lit the fire for the plume of black smoke herself, return Aaron to Claire. Sayid, however, noticed there were no tracks beside the fire. Some weeks later, Danielle finds Sayid and takes him to a trap she set. A man, Henry Gale, is inside, whom she claims is an Other. When Henry tries to escape, Danielle wounds him with an arrow.

Danielle arrives at camp one night to warn Claire that Aaron is sick. The next day she helps Kate and Claire search for a Dharma station. Claire remembers that after she escaped from the station when she was pregnant, Danielle helped her get back to her camp.