one of the most complex and delicious choices they made with misty is that she genuinely understands what kind of attention is valuable. they crafted this character who is so desperate for love, so hungry for attention and companionship and recognition, a woman who would doom her entire team to a life in the wilds just to hear one more nice thing said about her, and then they put her in a position to grab at fame. when the team is rescued, misty would have been barraged with offers to tell her story. media appearances, interviews, book deals. people would be able to recognize her on the streets, she would have been (at the very least) a local celebrity for the rest of her life. she smiles when she sees the flash of the cameras getting off the plane; she wants to be seen, and the offer is right there in her lap.
instead, she stays silent. she stays out of the limelight, she says as little as possible, just like they all made a pact to do. can you imagine just how difficult it was for her to say no? for her to see that people would be falling over themselves just to talk to her, that she could have used what happened to make connections, make friends, be famous and lauded, sympathized with, talked to, complimented. she could have told the world how SHE was the one who saved them, who got them through the worst moments of their lives when the plane crashed.
and the price for all of that is to admit to some cannibalism? she has no shame about what happened. she eats jerky and wears heart necklaces and remembers the wilderness with open fondness. besides, she knows how to sell herself, how to spin what happened. when she pretends with jessica, she paints the perfect portrait of a victim, the perfectly sympathetic survivor wracked with guilt for what she had to do.
all of that is right there within her grasp. so why doesn't she go public? she displays absolutely zero guilt over breaking the black box, or anything else she did in the wilderness. literally the only reason she never breaks the silence is to protect her team. her friends. to honor whatever pact they made. a pact she makes in '98, when they're still together. when she thinks their lives are all so deeply entangled and their bond is so permanent and unshakeable that it would be easy to choose this family over public attention. it makes sense that she keeps quiet in the beginning.
but the team breaks up, and as far as misty knows they all go their separate ways. still, misty stays quiet. years pass and no one calls her, no one visits. so she goes on unsuccessful dates and works a job where her co-workers seem to barely tolerate her. she gives socks to gross men who still don't call and lives alone and gets a parrot who never talks to her.
she spends her adult life living with her loneliness because the people she loves asked her to, and then forgot she existed.
25 years of this deep sense of loneliness and she never wavers. never tries to tell her story or make a grab for the fame she knows she could still get when she looks at "25th anniversary" splashed over the tabloids. in a world that has grown up around her to create social media and influencers and viral posts. every single day it would have gotten easier for misty to reach out and take even a small slice of the attention she so badly wanted her whole life.
instead, she quietly follows her actual friends. she tracks weddings she's not invited to and the birth of children she'll never meet. she registers to vote for a woman who might not even know she's still alive, and decides that it's enough. that 25-year-old memories of true connection are better than acknowledgement from a million strangers. she collects all of these little details and files them neatly, an umbilical cord of connection that she is the only one supporting. like this information will be important again, relevant again. she sustains herself for twenty-five years off of the mere possibility that maybe, somehow, someday, she will be part of her team again.
and then, like finding the flashing red light of a black box while she's all alone, the universe rewards her.
