Evangeline Lilly suffered a traumatic brain injury following a fall in Hawaii, the “Lost” star revealed on social media.
“It’s late on January 1, the first day of 2026, and I’m entering into this new year, the year of the horse with some bad news about my concussion,” she began in a video posted Friday. “A lot of you asked how I’m doing. A lot of you have inquired about the brain scans that you heard I got.”
Lilly fainted on the beach in May 2025 and hit her head on a boulder during the incident. She has since been seeking medical care to address the resulting traumatic brain injury (TBI).
“The results came back from the scans, and almost every area in my brain is functioning at a decreased capacity,” she also said. “So I do have brain damage from the TBI, and possibly other factors going on.”
Lilly added that she’s now focused on recovery.
“Now my job is to get to the bottom of that with the doctors and then embark on the hard work of fixing it, which I don’t look forward to, because I feel like hard work is all I do. But that’s okay.”
She managed to find a silver lining: the incident forced her to slow down.
“My cognitive decline since I smashed my face open has helped me to slow down and helped me to have a more restful finish to my 2025,” she also said. “I think this was the calmest, most restful Christmas holiday I have had maybe since I had children, so 14 years ago. So that’s a good thing.”
Lilly shared the news of the accident on Substack in May 2025.
“I fainted at the beach. And fell face first into a boulder,” she wrote. “At the hospital, the nurses and doctor went straight into action, more determined to find the cause of my blackout than to stitch up the hole punctured into my face by the rock. I smiled wryly at them. ‘You won’t find anything.’ I said with a woozy voice.”
She also noted that she has experienced bouts of fainting since she was a child.
“The doctors checked me for epilepsy when I was young and then settled on the idea of hypoglycemia (without doing any testing). For a good chunk of my life, I went with that – hypoglycemia. It added up – my metabolism is through the roof and I metabolize sugars, particularly, with socking efficiency.”
She added, “I have come to believe that this ‘checking out’ is a result of my little soul reaching her limit of what she feels she can cope with in this life, and she ‘leaves the building’, so to speak. Or ‘leaves the meat suit’ might be a better way of putting it.”
