R.I.P. Charlie Pace. LOST star Dominic Monaghan talks openly about leaving the show, who he will miss the most, and what he plans on doing now that he can actually leave Hawaii. (Watch with Kristin)

Say it isn’t so. Charlie is definitely dead. For real?
For real, yeah.

There’s no chance he’s alive, coming back next season?
Well, it would be news to me if that were the case. My feeling had always been with a character like Charlie—who I always hoped, at least, was a strong, sympathetic character—that once he went, he went. You know, I don’t want to do that thing to the audience of “I didn’t really leave.”

Did you have a sense it was coming, that you would be written off?
Yeah. I definitely did. If you head down that road of consistently being told that you’re going to die, I just thought, well, what’s going to be the payoff for the writers here? And I would speak with my castmates, and I would say, “You know I must be, I must be leaving.” It makes sense in the writers’ room to write Charlie dying, as opposed to the more boring, less dynamic way of saying he cheated death, or he worked out a way to do it, or he’s not going to die for another couple of seasons.

They brought back Ian Somerhalder and Maggie Grace for flashbacks. Would you come back if they were to write something in like that?
I don’t know. I mean I might if it was kind of an Obi-Wan thing. [Laughs.] 

That’d be kind of cool. Obi-Charlie.
Yeah. I keep saying that to Damon. I mean we’re both such huge Star Wars fans. You know, if I come back in a significant form as a kind of guide for someone, then that might be something that I would entertain.

How did you feel about your lack of screen time this season, particularly in the first six episodes?
I wanted to drive the story. I felt that I had done enough and contributed enough to be in that position, and if that wasn’t the case then I was more than happy to go and leave more space for other people.

How was it shooting the last two episodes? 
It was stressful, just because I was doing 20-hour days at two different locations—and then I’d come home, and I’d pack boxes for, like, two or three hours. So, I was tired and kind of running on vapors, but I think that really dictated what was going on with Charlie at that point. Our director, Jack Bender, shot a really cool sequence where the water comes through, and Jack said he wanted to shoot a little moment of Charlie realizing, “Oh, this is it. This is the moment. It’s not going to happen in 10 minutes. It’s not going to happen in an hour. It’s going to happen now.” In those moments, I tried to let it all get on top of me, you know? When I watched that, it was really interesting. I could see, in that moment, that kind of realization, that kind of heaviness, that, “Oh, this is actually happening right now.”

And you got to be a hero.
Damon had said to me he doesn’t want to undermine what’s happening here with Charlie: What Charlie does gets them rescued, what Charlie does put into motion a series of events where helicopters come to the island and pick these guys up. He is involved in one of the more significant things that happen on the island, and I think that’s what Charlie has always wanted to achieve. He’s been in so much pain on the island and just in his life: an addict, a failed rock star, a weird relationship with his brother, his dad, and his mom. Things didn’t really work out with Claire the way he wanted. His relationship with Locke, and all these kind of things. Charlie’s just always wanted to have a purpose, and do something, you know? To have achieved that is an amazing thing—to have sacrificed himself for the rest of the people on the island—that’s a great way to go out.

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