Season 6, Episode 3:

What Kate Does

On the heels of last week's cliffhanger, Lennon enters Dogen's private chamber and informs him that "he's alive". At the Spring, Hurley is ecstatic that Sayid is alive, Jack and Miles are very wary, Kate is confused and Sawyer is angry that an "Iraqi torturer who shoots kids" gets another chance at life. He's also busy plotting an escape from the Temple, asking Kate how many Others with guns she's seen.

Outside LAX, Kate gets in a taxi and forces the driver at gunpoint to go, accidentally kidnapping Claire in the process. They have to stop at the next pedestrian crossing to avoid running over Arzt, and Kate catches a glimpse of Jack on the sidewalk. Claire tries to get away but Kate forces her back into the taxi and tells the driver to get out of LAX as quickly as possible. While stopped at the next intersection, the driver makes a run for it. Kate takes Claire's purse and then tells her to get out as well before she driving away.

Jack and Jin help Sayid walk out to the Temple courtyard. Sayid asks where they are and Hurley fills him in on their situation. Miles notes that Hurley seems to have become the group's leader. Jack examines Sayid's bullet wound, which has almost completely closed up. Dogen, Lennon and the Others arrive and "ask" Sayid to come with them and answer some questions. Jack has questions of his own, but Lennon refuses to answer any until after they've talked to Sayid. When Jack stands his ground, the Others try to subdue the group but are interrupted by Sawyer, who's found a pistol and demands that he be allowed to leave. Dogen tells him that he has to stay, but Sawyer leaves anyway. The Others forcibly take Sayid inside while Lennon asks Jack where Sawyer will go, saying it's very important they bring him back. Kate volunteers to track him and bring him back, and Jin volunteers to accompany her.

Kate goes to a car repair lot and pays the local mechanic $200 to help her break off the handcuffs. He's very cool about her claim that she's a murderer. Kate grabs Claire's suitcase, still in the trunk of the taxi, and looks for some clothes, only to realise it's full of baby clothes and toys.

Kate, Jin and two of the Others head out into the jungle. In Dogen's chamber, Sayid is strapped to a table. Dogen and Lennon blow ash across Sayid's torso, electrocutes him with a hand-crank generator and burns him with a hot poker, all without asking any questions. Afterwards, Lennon tells Sayid that it was all a "test", to "be sure" of something, and that he passed, before two Others take him back to the Spring.

Regretting her actions earlier, Kate drives the cab back to where she left Claire and volunteers to drive her to wherever she was going. Reluctantly, Claire accepts.

Kate, Jin and the two Others—named Aldo and Justin—march through the jungle. Kate asks why they have to stay in the Temple; Aldo says it to protect them from the Monster. Jin asks about the Ajira plane, but Aldo refuses to answer and stops Justin from doing so as well. In fact, Aldo is incredibly standoffish in general, even getting upset when Kate spots the difference between a dummy trail and a real one. Justin stops her from walking into a booby trap. Jin guesses that it's one of Rousseau's, but Justin tells them she's been dead for years and gets shushed by Aldo before he can say anymore. When provoked by Kate, Aldo admits he was the Other that Kate, Sawyer and Alex knocked out to free Karl during their Hyrda Island escape. While he's distracted, Kate knocks Aldo out and pushes Justin into the booby trap, putting him down too. At the Temple, Sayid is brought to the Spring and tells the others what happened. Angry, Jack marches into Dogen's chamber and demands to know what's going on. Dogen and Lennon claim that Sayid has contracted "the Sickness" and give Jack a pill, supposedly a cure, for him to give to Sayid. They claim that Sayid's "torture" was their way of diagnosing him. Dogen plays on Jack's guilt over the people who died under his leadership, and tells him that if Sayid doesn't take the pill, the Sickness will spread. At the Spring, Hurley and Miles ask Sayid what he "remembers" about being dead. Jack returns and explains what the Others told him. Sayid says that he trusts Jack and will take the pill if he tells him to. In the jungle, Kate is planning to catch up with Sawyer, but Jin is only interested in finding Sun.

Kate drives Claire to her destination: the home of the couple who are adopting her baby. Claire asks Kate to come in with her, scared to do it alone. They knock on the door and the woman who answers, Mrs. Baskum, explains that her husband left her, and because of that she doesn't want the baby anymore. Distraught, Claire starts having contractions on the doorstep.

Kate arrives at the DHARMA Barracks and finds Sawyer in his old house, prying up the floorboards to get at an old shoebox he hid there years ago.

Kate brings Claire to the hospital, where Dr. Ethan Goodspeed tells her that she's ready to have the baby immediately. Claire decides to wait, thinking she's not ready, and moments later the baby starts flatlining.

As soon as she says "Aaron", the baby stabilizes and Ethan declares that everything is going to be fine.

Kate follows Sawyer out to the DHARMA wharf and tells him that she came back to the Island to find Claire and bring her back to Aaron. She apologises for getting on the submarine with him and Juliet in the first place, causing them to return to the Island. Sawyer is sorry he stopped Juliet from leaving when they first arrived in 1974, and blames himself for her death. He shows Kate the item he'd been keeping hidden in the shoebox under the floorboards: a diamond engagement ring he'd planned on giving to Juliet. In tears, he stands and tosses the ring into the ocean, then tells Kate to leave. At the Temple, in Dogen's chamber, Jack asks why Dogen uses an interpreter.

Jack tells Dogen he didn't give Sayid the pill because he doesn't know what's in it and because he doesn't trust the Others—he doesn't even trust himself to make the right decision. Instead, Jack takes the pill himself, and Dogen violently forces him to cough it up. Caught, Dogen admits the pill is poison.

The police visit Claire in hospital and ask about Kate, who is hiding in the next room. Claire covers for her and the police leave. When asked, Kate implies that she's innocent of the crime she's accused of, though doesn't say what crime that is. Claire offers Kate a credit card as thanks for her help.

At the DHARMA Barracks, Sawyer goes back to his house, and Kate fills up her canteen before heading back into the jungle. At the temple, Dogen and Lennon pour Jack a cup of tea in Dogen's chamber. Jack asks why the Others would want to kill Sayid.

In the jungle, Jin is drinking from a stream when Aldo and Justin sneak up and capture him. They are debating whether or not to kill him—Justin says he's "one of them," and Aldo retorts that "he may be one of them"—when Jin makes a run for it, only to be caught in a bear trap. Aldo is about to kill him when he gets shot in the chest himself, and Justin is also wounded. Jin looks around for the shooter and sees her standing on the ridge above him, dirty and wild-looking: Claire.

Tropes in this episode include:

• Batman Gambit: Jack forces Dogen to admit that the pill he wants him to give Sayid is poison by attempting to swallow it himself, which Dogen prevents him from doing with the Heimlich Maneuver.
• The Bus Came Back: Claire returns after sitting out all of Season 5.
• Call-Back: Ethan gives Claire a pre-natal injection in the Flash-sideways, which is shot similarly to when he did this on the Island in "Maternity Leave".
• Conscience Makes You Go Back: In the Flash Sideways, after abandoning Claire at the side of the road and taking her luggage, Kate decides to track her down and give it back once she gets her handcuffs off and seeing the baby items in Claire's bag. She even gives her a lift to where she was going before Kate hijacked her taxi.
• Continuity Nod: When Kate digs through Claire's bag in the Flash Sideways she finds a toy Orca, the same toy Aaron was seen holding in the main timeline in "Something Nice Back Home".
• Cross-Referenced Titles: With Season 2's "What Kate Did", another Kate centric episode.
• Foreshadowing: Miles snarks that Hurley has assumed leadership of the survivors. In the finale, Hurley becomes the Island's new protector.
• For Want Of A Nail: If Kate's statement that she's innocent is true, this would be another significant difference between the Flash-sideways and the original timeline.
• It's All My Fault: Kate tries to tell Sawyer that if she hadn't gotten on the sub, then he and Juliet would have left the island. Sawyer replies that it's his fault she died, because he convinced her to stay when they first arrived in the 1970s because he didn't want to be alone.
• The Slow Path: Sawyer left the engagement ring he got for Juliet under a floorboard in their house at the Barracks in 1977. It's still there 30 years later, and he retrieves it.
• Took a Level in Badass: It's revealed that Claire has been living wild in the jungle during the three year Time Skip, and has essentially become the new Danielle Rousseau.
• Wham Line: When Jack asks Dogen how he knows Sayid has been infected with "the Sickness", he says that it happened to Claire too.
• You Should Have Died Instead: Implied. Sawyer, still devastated by Juliet's death, is angry that Sayid, "an Iraqi torturer who shoots kids", has been brought Back from the Dead.