Kate Saunders

Kate is a bartender whose never had a real sense of direction in life. She's been uncertain of what to do since she turned 21 and was cursed, as she phrases, to accept her birthrate as one of the reincarnated Norse goddesses. Specifically, Lofn, the goddess of forbidden love.

Now, the show made Michele's mother Lofn (and gave her this weird power of influence where everyone wanted to do fancy dress whenever she was around, which...I didn't understand at all, in terms of correlating with Lofn's domain) so I flipped back and forth for a long time about making her someone new or not. Ultimately, I decided to keep her as Lofn and just change Michele's mother to someone else, but I never got around to it. 

After punching Colin (Loki, god of mischief and fire) for feeling her up and prositioning her at her job, which subsequently led to her being fired, Kate meets Axl. He'd happened to be there and witnessed the whole altercation and, given his godly-radar as Odin, thought he could convince her to join his team against the other goddesses and Loki. Kate, however, is thoroughly unimpressed by his status as Allfather and blows him off. A few days pass when Axl, Olaf (Baldr, the reborn and oracle), Michele (Sjofn, minor goddess of love), Ingrid (Snotra, oracle and goddess of prudence and wisdom) and Stacey (Fulla, handmaiden to Frigg) all turn up at her apartment to try and convince her to join their respective teams: the girls' pitch being that goddess ought to stick together and find Frigg on their own and ultimately be free of the gods' rule, while the men want her on their side to help them find Frigg so they can all get to Asgard. 

Olaf, charming as he is, tries to convince the lone goddess to join him and Axl to meet the rest of their family at his grandson, Mike's (Ullr, god of the hunt and games), bar. Kate initially has zero interest but Colin had planted a creature on Michele, which then jumps to Kate and infects her. It makes her revert to an almost child-like state, with zero inhibitions or sense of self-preservation. The mere mention of the bar excites her and Kate ditches the goddesses to go day drinking. After nearly jumping off the roof trying to fulfill her childhood dream of flying, Kate is cured by Olaf and Ingrid in a temporary truce and she's left with no memory of the incident.

Eventually, Kate ends up work at Mike's bar with him -- as she's out of a job and he needs a bartender -- and ingratiates herself into the Johnsons family with little to no trouble. Mike is her boss and eventual lover, Ty (Hodr, god of winter) and Olaf are her best friends (although she's much closer to Ty), Axl becomes her pain the butt little brother, and Anders (Bragi, god of poetry) is really the only one she doesn't get along with but they manage to tolerate each other for the sake of their mission: find Frigg, get to Asgard, save the world for an impending disaster that'll kill millions if Axl dies before he finds Frigg. 

Axl is actually the one that give Kate some direction and convinces her to go back to college, as he's also a student, and try for a degree in psychology since she's so great at reading people and helping them. Like mostly everyone else, Kate has a god power; she's a great advice giver in matters of the heart and can sense the potential between lovers, seeing their auras. The drawback is that she cannot experience feelings of love herself, which is why she and Ty get along so well. As Hodr, he's perpetually cold and can't feel warmth so they bond over the crappy hand they were given in the god department.

Just prior to season 3, Kate makes the decision to leave to see if there are other gods living amongst them, since they'd come across the family of Maori gods. The brothers begin to worry because she used to contact them frequently but, lately, its sporadic and she doesn't sound like herself. Their concerns are worsened when she returns with Nik, the reincarnation of Váli (son of Odin) and that she is apparently in love with him. She's different when she's with him and her personality has done a complete 180; she's become flaky, inconsistent, unreliable and much more daring, verging on dangerous thrill seeking, and seems to have developed an alcohol problem. 

Things come to a head between Nik and Ty and, unlike the mythology, Ty isn't killed but instead kills Váli in a terrible accident. The idea was that Nik had some kind of influence that allowed Kate to feel love and other emotions she hadn't felt in over ten years, since she'd been infused with Lofn. He was like a drug to her and losing him made her instantaneously lose all the emotions she'd regained, seriously fractures her relationship with Ty and the other Johnsons.

(I'd never quite figured out how to resolve it tbh. I did know that they were all going to have a happy ending, it was just a matter of getting there.)