High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Katherine Anne "Kate" Austen is a fictional character on the ABC television series Lost, played by Canadian actress Evangeline Lilly. She is the de facto female lead. In the original plot, in which Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox) dies when the group finds the cockpit, Kate was to emerge as the leader for the survivors, motivating them to build shelter and begin considering life as permanent residents of the island. In the original description for Kate, she was a slightly older woman separated from her husband, who went to the bathroom in the tail-section of the plane. However, that idea ended up being used for Rose Henderson (L. Scott Caldwell) and her husband Bernard Nadler (Sam Anderson). She is involved in a love triangle with Jack and Sawyer (Josh Holloway) and is seen as very protective of Claire (Emilie de Ravin) and her baby Aaron.