Back to the Island: Why Kate Austen Matters to Lost

 

Occasionally – not frequently but sometimes -  the authors of Back To The Island engage in some retroactive moralizing about the characters. Most of it is valid but some of its missing context and it’s clear when they discuss Kate.

St. James argues that Lost was primarily written, directed and produced by men: a sad reality of television not only of that period but true far too often today. She argues that this is the reason that so much of Kate’s character is defined by her relationships with men. This statement is both accurate and misleading.

Much of this involves the context of television of that era, particularly network dramas. As I’ve written in other articles while the revolution did touch all forms of television by and large much of the focus of the great series that started it were focused primarily on white male antiheroes. This was true as much with broadcast as cable as House and 24 make clear. And even on dramas that were primarily female led – Grey’s Anatomy and Brothers & Sisters were among the most critical successes – much of the female characters were defined primarily by their relationship with men, usually who they slept with. I don’t date the rise of female led dramas where their relationships to men were secondary until the mid-2000s when such brilliant dramas as Saving Grace on TNT and Damages on FX led to independent female leads where their relationship with men were secondary if there at all. Network drama didn’t begin to catch up until the end of the 2000s when The Good Wife became a critical and ratings success on CBS.

During that era the few strong female leads – the Sydney Bristows and Buffy Summers  - were few and far between and were rarely allowed access on network television, which also had little use for women in executive positions. So that part of St. James statement is misleading.

It doesn’t change the fact that so much of Kate Austen’s character was not only defined by men but that Lost did so in perhaps the weakest ways possible compared to the majority of the male characters. This was demonstrated most clearly in her flashbacks which by and large were a mixed bag. When they discussed her complicated family dynamic (I’ll get to that later) they sung and were brutally painful. But when they told us of Kate’s life as a fugitive it frequently displayed Kate in all of the worst archetypes. They tried her as femme fatale (Whatever the Case May Be), had her meet her old teenage love (Born to Run) or tried to build her as a housewife (I Do) and none of those tropes fit Kate well at all. So much of them tried to show her as the kind of criminal that was worthy of the Marshal chasing her across the globe while showing that she wasn’t as bad as she appeared, and it was a mix the show absolutely failed at. No doubt they were trying to follow the trend of the flashback which showed the unhappy lives the castaways had before getting on the plane but with the exception of Jack, Kate’s flashbacks kept hitting the same note with her. It never became as tiresome as with Jack because Evangeline Lilly managed to get a handle on her character better than Matthew Fox did but it was repetitive.

There was also the fact of the love triangle between her, Jack and Sawyer and frankly, Kate always came across looking the worse of the three legs of it. I’ve little doubt the writers were trying to show Kate’s relationship with the basically good Jack and the bad Sawyer was meant to reflect the duality of Kate’s nature: how she wasn’t sure which one she should be with. But I was never a fan of it during the first two seasons. In my opinion it became much stronger when Juliet was introduced in Season 3 – to the point it was one of the better side plots of Lost for the rest of the series – but it still didn’t change the fact that Kate was far too often given the short straw. I was never as frustrated by the Hydra island arc that opened Season 3 as so many fans of the show were at the time – and still are – but it could never overcome the fact that the only reason Kate and Sawyer were there was to keep Jack, the one the Others really needed, in check. You could hear the creaks with so much of what was going on in the polar bear cages as the plot.

And that’s a shame because Kate worked better a role the show neglected far too often: that of the female confidant. I do agree that there weren’t nearly enough female-centric episodes on Lost and I believe that was a blundered opportunity. Because Kate was exceptional in a key role: the female friend.

The bond between Kate and Claire was established early in the show’s run and it was one of the few constants throughout the entire series. I’ll talk about some of the problems with other female characters down the road but the scenes between Lilly and Emilie De Ravin as Claire were always favorites of mine. One of the highpoints of the entire series comes during Do No Harm when Claire finally gives birth and Kate is the only one who can find her. With Jack dealing with the crisis of Boone’s mortal wounds Kate is left in the position of having to deliver Claire’s child on her own. Lilly and De Ravin are pitch perfect in these scenes: De Ravin showing both pain and incredible terror; Lilly clearly terrified but trying to be brave in front of her friend.

When Claire tells Kate that the ‘baby knows I didn’t want it”, she nearly bursts into tears. Kate tells her that she knows she’s afraid but “this baby is all of us”. The scene is one of the most powerful in all of Lost (the show went back to it more than once during the series run) and the final moments where Kate hands Aaron to her mother, tears of joy and smiles on both of their faces, will always register with me.

It’s also worth noting that Kate and Sun (Yunjun Kim) bonded very quickly. Kate was one of the first survivors to know not only that Sun spoke English but about the truth about her relationship with Jin. The friendship between the two was one of the deepest of the first half of the series and each of them entrusted the other with secrets. Kate helped Sun find her wedding ring when she lost it; when Sun thought she was pregnant Kate sat with her (and told her she’d taken a test herself) and when Sun was suspicious of Jack’s questions about her pregnancy she went to Kate first. Kate was capable of manipulations even of Sun but while they were on the island the two of them clearly cared for each other. (It was a different story when both of them left – but I’ll save that for another article.)

It may have been a hoary cliché that so many people trusted Kate during the first season (until it ended no one knew she was the marshal’s prisoner) but that’s the thing: Kate was fundamentally honest. She didn’t reveal much of her backstory (of course no one did during the show) but she was always more willing to share information about the island than Jack or Locke (the major leaders) and she was a horrible liar – when she did, she couldn’t look you in the face. One of the bigger questions about Kate was why she spent so much time and effort helping lead the efforts for rescue when the only thing waiting for her in civilization was a pair of handcuffs was a question the show never really explained to anyone’s satisfaction.

Stafford’s interpretation was that there was something in Kate that only wanted to run away and that it had been instilled in her at a young age. And that’s brings us to the reason why Kate was so important.

One of the oldest cliches about Lost, established by Stafford in her first volume of Finding Lost, was how everyone on the island had horrible parent issues. Everybody on the plane had a horrible father and those who didn’t had bad relationships with their mothers. But Kate’s family dynamic was the most complicated of any character. St. James says that Kate was the only character to have both  a bad father and a bad mother and like her comment about Lost’s writing it’s both accurate and misleading.

It is true that Kate did have by far the worst mother on Lost (well, at least of the survivors of Oceanic 815). It wasn’t just that Diane Janssen was married to Wayne a man who regularly beat her, forced her daughter to live in the house with this drunk, and he may very well have molested her into the bargain but after Kate killed the man she thought was her stepfather in an act to see Diane up for life, Diane still took the side of Wayne and reported her to the Marshals. Furthermore when Kate returned to learn why (Left Behind) Diane called Kate the selfish one for killing the man she loved. To be sure Kate had done when she learned that Wayne was her real father but it doesn’t make Diane’s sympathy for this devil any more horrific. And this was a grudge, I should add that Diane pretty much held until her dying day.

But unlike so many other characters on Lost Kate had actually someone in her life who did love her very much. Kate spent her childhood thinking that Sam, Diane’s first husband, was her birth father. Sam knew the truth – that Wayne and Diane had been having an affair and that he couldn’t have been her real father – but he never treated Kate that way and loved her like she was his own daughter. When Diane divorced Sam when Kate was five to marry Wayne, Sam kept quiet about it because he that if Kate learned the truth about it she’d kill him – which is how it played out. Diane was the main parent in Kate’s life but Sam was always a presence, taking her on camping and hunting trips and was always devoted to her.

This was arguably the most complicated family dynamic of any character on Lost, certainly until at least Season 4. (That’s a different article.) But knowing this story was essential when you consider Kate’s arc in the second half of the show.

SEVENTEEN YEAR OLD SPOILER WARNINGS

During Season 4, for reasons that the writers never really made clear, Claire became separated from Aaron. While this was going on the castaways were trying to leave the island, eventually resulting the Oceanic 6. One of those six was Aaron and Kate, still reeling from all of the horrible circumstances that led to them getting rescued decided that part of their story should be that Aaron was Kate’s child and that she’d been pregnant when she had been on the plane originally. It was a logical decision; at the time everyone thought Claire had no next of kin and they didn’t want Aaron to be raised in foster care.

During her time on the island for all her devotion to Claire, Kate had never felt comfortable even holding Aaron. The idea of Kate, who had run from every attachment in her life, being a loving parent seemed a ridiculous idea. But as the writers brilliantly demonstrated Kate was clearly a great mother. Stafford argued convincingly that Kate’s relationship with Aaron was far more rewarding then either her relationship with Jack and Sawyer ever was.

During the three years the Oceanic 6 were off the island all of them dealt with the trauma of what happened to them very badly. With Sun the reason was the most clear: she believed Jin was dead and was being forced to lie that he’d died on impact. Sayid would find happiness with Nadia, the woman he’d spent his life searching for, but when she was taken from him it broke him in a way he never recovered from. Hurley who was fundamentally the most honest began to think he was going crazy and the trauma caused him to return to an institution. And Jack managed to hold it together the longest, even building a romantic relationship with Kate but eventually his guilt caused him to become addicted to drugs and he destroyed that relationship as well. (I won’t go much further into detail as all of these characters will probably be subject of their own articles down the line.) Only Kate came away from those three years basically intact and that was because of Aaron. Indeed the major reason she and Jack broke up was because she had to put his safety ahead of her own desires.

It was clear before Season 4 was half-over that the Oceanic 6 were going to have to go back to the island and Stafford speculated on how much convincing would be needed for each character at the end of Finding Lost: Season 4. Because of Kate’s relationship to Aaron she predicted she would need the most convincing and this turned out to be accurate: of the five adult characters at the end of Season 4 Kate by far had the biggest reason not to go back. And this remained very clear throughout the first half of Season 5. When Kate agreed to go back in ‘316’  she made it very clear to Jack he could never ask why and it wasn’t until she got her own flashback that season that we finally understood  - and it was the most selfless and heartbreaking reason possible.

Kate has learnt that Claire’s mother is alive and during her flashback we learn that she realizes something very painful: she is fulfilled by Aaron but she isn’t his real mother. So she makes the most painful choice imaginable: she decides to leave Aaron with his real grandmother to return to the island to bring his real mother back to him. It’s worth noting that the four adults are all manipulated into going back in some form; Kate alone makes the decision of her own free will.

Kate took a lot of abuse leading up the Season 5 finale and Jack’s plan to blow up the island. In the misogynist minds of the fanbase Jack was doing this to get over losing Kate and Kate’s presence had destroyed Sawyer and Juliet’s happy life in Dharmaville. All of this conveniently ignores both Jack and Sawyer’s own actions during the back half of Season 5 as well as the fact that Kate hadn’t come back for Claire and Sawyer’s relationship was collateral damage. (That ignores the fact that Sawyer had settled in Dharma to wait for them anyway… you know, it’s too complicated to go into right now.)

And its worth remembering as well that Kate spent the last season determined to find Claire and actually went against Sawyer when he made the unilateral decision to leave her behind when they were trying to leave the island yet again. (Not going to explain here.) Kate’s decision to go back for her was one of Evangeline Lilly’s great moments in the series and did much to redeem her in the eyes of those who’d lost faith in her the last season and a half.

This brings me to the reason why Kate is so important to the series as a whole. In the penultimate episode of the show Jacob is talking to the last of the survivors to tell them why he brought them to the island in the first place. By this point we’ve seen a lot of names written down and we know that Kate’s was crossed off. It has been implied that the only way you get crossed off is to die but Kate is still very much alive.

So Kate asks why her name was crossed off. And Jacob’s answer is beautiful. “Because you became a mother.” To be clear he has just finished explaining that he’s brought all of them here because he needs one of them to protect the island and by this point is assumed this job is the most important one in the world. And according to Jacob, being a mother trumps that.

Now I won’t go into the full reason why Jacob is convinced a mother is the most important job (though if you’ve watched Lost you know that he has a very specific reason in family history) but that makes it very clear why Kate is so important to the show. Because Lost has made it clear how important having good parents is and Kate is the representative of that when it comes to being one, your past doesn’t matter. I won’t pretend it was handled clumsily in several ways (it negated Claire’s importance in the back half of the series and it made Aaron’s importance to the series insignificant to the final season)  but in a show where love was so critical to much of its center, Kate demonstrated the best aspects of it when it came to parental love.

That’s why I reject firmly the idea that the most important female character was also one of its biggest ciphers. Kate Austen’s story in its entirety is as important to Lost as so many of his male characters are, just in a different way. You could argue that so much of her character was symbolic but that was true of so many of the male characters as well and the show far too often did fewer favors to them. Kate was in many ways the heart and conscience of the series. It was a dirty job – but sometimes the best man for a job is a woman. In Lost’s case that was certainly true.