On the island:
Since arriving on the island, Kate has been involved with
most of the major developments that occur to the survivors,
from the recovery of the transceiver, to the discovery of
the repeating transmission, the polar bear, the cave-in,
and the decision to move to the caves. This is due in no
small part to her friendship with Sayid, Charlie, and Hurley,
as well as her apparent feelings for both Jack and Sawyer,
although her relationship to Jack suffers because of her
continued manipulation and equivocation. Kate agrees to
kiss Sawyer only because that is his declared price if he
is to tell where Shannon's inhalers are located. After they
kiss, though, he tells her that he actually does not have
the medicine. During a game of "I Never" in Outlaws,
Kate reveals to Sawyer that she was married previously,
though she says the marriage didn't last very long. She
also reveals that she has killed a man, although she may
have been referring to Tom, as she also tells Jack that
the toy airplane "belonged to the man I killed"
- although Tom was not the only man she killed, her father
Wayne being the first.
Before the crash:
She grew up in Iowa, the daughter of a soldier and a diner
waitress. As we learn in flashbacks in What Kate Did, her
parents divorce and Kate's mother marries a man named Wayne,
an alcoholic who physically abuses Kate's mother (Diane)
and may or may not have abused Kate.
When Kate is making a scrapbook as a present for her father,
she discovers that the man she thinks is her real father
was still in Korea when she was conceived, and she then
realizes that Wayne is her biological father. Kate takes
out an insurance policy and blows up the house with Wayne
in it, meaning to benefit her mother. She explains all this
to her mother and then flees, but is captured at a bus station
by US Marshal Edward Mars, who claims that Kate's mother
went to the authorities with what Kate had told her. She
later escapes from him, while being driven to the indictment
hearing for Wayne's murder, after a large black horse appears
in front of the Marshal's car, causing him to swerve off
the road. While the Marshal is still stunned from the deployment
of the air bag, Kate is able to take his keys. After a brief
tussle in the car, Kate knocks him out of the car and drives
off.
On board Flight 815, she is in handcuffs, sitting next
to the Marshal. Just prior to the crash, she asks the Marshal
a favor, which she later claims was to make sure the farmer
received the reward for turning her in. As the plane begins
to break apart, the Marshal is injured. Kate steals the
keys to her handcuffs, but makes sure to apply the marshal's
oxygen mask before putting on her own. |
