- Name: Katherine “Kate” Austen
- Lived in: Iowa
- Profession: Unknown
- Played by: Evangeline Lilly
On the Island
While Kate might look sweet and innocent, she is a fugitive from the law with a dark past. As a castaway, she is a force to be reckoned with—possessing brains, beauty, and a knack for climbing trees, tracking, handling a gun, and handling the guys she is around. She is the middle of a sort of love triangle between Jack & Sawyer.
Background
Kate is originally from Iowa. She is the daughter of Diane Jensen, and partly raised by stepfather Sam Austen, who is a soldier in the army. She later killed his mother’s lover (possibly her biological father) for being abusive, and left her mother with the insurance money, but it was an act that Diane never forgave her for, even in the final stages of cancer.
She has been on the run from the law since, and inadvertently involved her childhood sweetheart, Tom, who ended up getting killed by police fire. The crimes she committed since then were all to help her cover her tracks or retrieve a toy plane that once belonged to Tom, her only reminder of the man she loved. She went to Australia to hide out as a ranch hand, but was turned in by the one-armed farmer who had almost become a father figure to her.
Reason for being on the Flight
She was being escorted by Federal Marshal Edward Mars back into U.S. custody.
Connections
- Sawyer: He came into the diner where her mother worked, shortly after Kate left, and met her mother briefly.
- Sayid: His story was on the TV when Kate went to the recruitment office to look for her father; her father was involved in his capture & “recruitment†in Iraq (her father took out a childhood photo of her).
