Ilana Verdansky is a fictional character on the ABC television series Lost played by Zuleikha Robinson.
Ilana is introduced in the sixth episode of the fifth season of Lost as an officer boarding Ajira Airways Flight 316, with Sayid in her custody.
[2] Ilana travels to Los Angeles, where she apprehends candidate Sayid Jarrah (Naveen Andrews),[3] and forcibly escorts him onto Ajira Airways Flight 316.
[8] After gathering Jacob's ashes and burying Locke's body, Ilana leads her fellow Flight 316 survivors Ben Linus (Michael Emerson), Sun-Hwa Kwon (Yunjin Kim) and Frank Lapidus (Jeff Fahey) to the island temple.
[11] The group are joined at their camp by Richard, and candidates Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox) and Hugo "Hurley" Reyes (Jorge Garcia).
Desmond Hume (Henry Ian Cusick) catches up with Claire Littleton (Emilie de Ravin) again and advises her to consult the lawyer he was about to meet before committing to the adoption agency.
[14] The series finale, "The End", revealed that the "alternate timeline" was in fact a form of purgatory for the characters, after their respective deaths, waiting to move on.
"[17] On the character's introduction, fellow executive producers Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz explained how the negative audience reaction to Nikki and Paulo, introduced in Lost's third season, influenced the way in which they slowly integrated Ilana into the story.
Robinson stated that a season six episode would reveal Ilana's surname to be similar to Radzinsky, it was later confirmed to be Verdansky in "The Last Recruit".
"[20] Robinson later confirmed that Ilana had originally been intended to be Jacob's daughter, however this was later dropped as it was deemed that there was not enough screen time to develop the storyline further in the final season.