In a ranking of every episode of Lost (excluding the finale) for the Los Angeles Times, Emily VanDerWerff ranked "Solitary" as the show's 45th best episode, and called it underrated.[14] In a similar list, IGN staff ranked the episode as Lost's 51st best, and observed that "despite [Sayid's] dark past, it was hard not to love the character even more after this episode."[15] MTV ranked the episode the 32nd best of the series.[16] Writing for Zap2it in 2008, Ryan McGee said he particularly enjoyed the episode and deemed it one of his top ten favorite episodes that had aired up to that point.