Katherine Beckett

### played by Stana Katic

Kate Beckett grew up a nice, middle-class girl in Manhattan, heading for university, and probably marriage and a "normal" life. (In 4x18 she tells Castle that she was planning to be the first female Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.) Then her mother was murdered and the police failed to solve the crime. Unable to reconcile herself to that, Beckett abandoned whatever plans she'd had and joined the NYPD.

Now a homicide detective, Beckett works out of the 12th precinct in Manhattan. Driven and dedicated, she's extremely good at her job and has risen far enough to have two other detectives, Esposito and Ryan, under her charge. She's good friends with one of the female MEs, Lanie Parish, and has had at least one serious relationship, with Federal Agent Will Sorenson. That lasted six months and ended when he was transferred to Boston and Kate chose not to follow. She's also an avid reader, and a dang fine poker player.

Her partnership with Castle begins when a routine call looks startlingly familiar to Beckett, who's a fan of his books. Her work on the case so impresses Castle, who's been following along as a consultant, that he decides to model the main character in his new detective series after her. As a friend of the mayor, Castle is able to wrangle himself an ongoing ride-along with Beckett and her squad.

Over the course of the first four seasons, Beckett goes from enduring Castle's presence to valuing his opinion. She has at least two stints with steady boyfriends but eventually has to confront her feelings for Castle, who becomes more than a partner over time.

Despite Beckett's best efforts, her mother's murder remains unsolved until season 5, when Beckett discovers who is behind it. Finally, in season 6, enough evidence is found to arrest the man responsible for killing Johanna Beckett.

At the beginning of season 6, Beckett has a new job in Washington, DC, as a federal agent, and she and Castle are engaged. Her job status changes over the course of the season, but her relationship with Castle only grows stronger. On their wedding day, though, Castle disappears, and Beckett has to keep the faith while searching for any sign of him.

As of season 7, Castle returns with no memory of where he's been, but he and Beckett decide to try to put that behind them and eventually have a modest wedding ceremony in the Hamptons.

In season 8, Beckett has been promoted to Captain of the 12th, but on her first day as Captain she gets a phone call that means life or death, related to her time with the AG's office. She decides to separate from Castle to keep him out of her investigation, but of course he finds out what she's up to and confronts her about it, leading to the beginnings of reconciliation.

### Beckett BC (Before Castle)

* Beckett's birthday is November 17th and she was 19 when her mother died, according to producer Terri Miller. Johanna Beckett was murdered on January 9th, 1999 (3x13), so Kate was born in 1979 and had turned nineteen about seven weeks before. This indeed makes her 29 in S1, as she's described in the pilot script, since that takes place in March and she tells Castle her mother was murdered ten years ago (1x05). As of episode 4x01 she is 31, which confirms that she was 29 in S1.
* She was raised in Manhattan, which means her family had some money (1x01), although she’s clearly not from Castle’s world (1x07). In 3x13, Simmons calls Beckett's mother a 'rich b\*\*ch' from uptown, but that may just have been his opinion. Beckett went to city schools (1x03, 2x22) and worked through high school (2x03, 3x04), so by Manhattan standards they don't seem to have been more than comfortably well-off.
* Her dad still calls her Katie (2x13, 3x24). He tells Castle that she was scared of the dark when she was little, but she wouldn’t let him give her a night light; it was like a point of honour for her to stare it down (3x24). According to Beckett, Johanna’s favourite phrase was “I told you so” (2x03, 2x13) but she also believed that the truth could never hurt you (2x13). Sadly, the truth seems to have gotten Johanna killed (2x13) and her daughter shot (3x24).
* When she was six, Beckett stuffed a Lego up her nose (3x09). She wore braces in grade school (3x10) and was either a girl scout, or buys the cookies when they’re sold in February every year (2x02). When she was 9 and had to have her tonsils out, her mom stayed home with her and they watched Temptation Lane. Now when she sees it, it gives her warm fuzzy feelings (3x18). She was also a catalogue model for a summer when she was 17 because she thought it would be easier than waitressing (2x03).
* Her grandfather was an amateur magician and she visited Drake's Magic Shop with him almost every Sunday afternoon when she was about thirteen years old. Beckett knows several magic tricks, including how to pick pockets and pull a bouquet of flowers out of her sleeve (3x12). She also knows how to pick a lock (2x22), but most cops do.
* She went to public school (1x03) and graduated from Stuyvesant High School (2x22), a NYC magnet school for students gifted in science. In 2x22 we meet her former best friend, Madison (Maddy) Queller, who calls her "Becks" and refers to her as 'the biggest scofflaw' at the school. They met in French class in 9th Grade and seem to have spent a lot of time watching reruns of Saved by the Bell (2x22). In senior year they fell out over a boy in their English class, Brent Edwards, and don't seem to have spoken to each other since.
* 'Becks' admits to being quite the wild child in high school -- she won’t tell Castle the details, but at one point her father threatened to send her to a nunnery (3x03). According to Maddy, she dated everything from grunge guitarists to medical students to European exchange students rumoured to be royalty (2x22). The grunge rocker 'smelled like wet flannel and clove cigarettes' but she still dated him for seven months to piss off her father because he had tried to interfere with the relationship (3x04). She worked all through high school to buy herself a '94 Harley Softail, which she still has (3x03), along with a tattoo she got in her goth phase at about 18 (3x10), and possibly a navel ring (3x12). And according to Lanie, she can still drink just about anyone under the table (2x24).
* Kate was accepted to Stanford (4x03) where she was pre-law (4x18), but according to Terri Miller she transferred to NYU after her mother died (twitter). She was 19, so her mother’s murder occurred in her sophomore year - NYC children must be 5 by December 31st for kindergarten, so Beckett entered school still 4 years old, and was 17 when she entered college.
* Her mother died on January 9th, 1999 (3x13), which was a Saturday. This could have been her last weekend home for Christmas break, BUT Stanford starts winter term the first Monday after New Year, which was the 5th in 1999. This means Beckett should have been back in California when her mother died, not in NYC as the story she told in 1x05. According to that, the family was having dinner at a restaurant but her mother never showed, and the police were waiting for them when they got home. So...to go with Terri, you'll have to handwave some other reason for Beckett to have remained in New York after the semester started.
* Likewise, with her mother's death coming at the start of winter term, Beckett could not have transferred that year. Most likely she never went back to California and transferred to NYU in the autumn, either graduating a semester late or making up the credits in summer school.
* At NYU Kate took a semester of economics (3x09). She also studied Russian, and did a summer semester in Kiev between junior and senior years (making up those missing credits, perhaps?) When she's bored, she still sometimes goes to cafes in Little Odessa (the Russian district) and pretends to be from Moscow (2x01). She also seems to speak at least a little Spanish (1x08). She may or may not speak French, but she studied it in high school (2x22).
* While in college, Kate supposedly posed naked for an art class - or, at least that's what she told Castle (4x05).
* Freshman year, Kate had a roommate, Debbie Winaker, who was a pageant competitor and so their room always smelled like hairspray, perfume, and cigarettes. (3x23).
* The detective on her mother's case was named Raglan (1x05). At the time, it was considered random gang violence (1x05) and as of Season 1, the case was ten years cold (1x10).
* Her father became an alcoholic after her mother’s death (1x05), but has been sober five years as of Season 1. Beckett wears his watch for 'the life she saved' and her mother's ring on a chain for the 'life she lost' (1x05). She seems to stop wearing the ring around the time she starts dating Tom Demming (2x21-24), but in 2x23, the chain can briefly be seen along with the other necklace when she goes to interrogate Wilder's cousin. We don't see it again till it re-appears on the murder board in her new apartment (3x13). The watch gets broken when her apartment blows up, but Castle has it repaired (2x18). This brief interval is the only time she's seen without it, except when dressed up for going out (1x07, 2x14).
* Her first apartment after leaving school was up three flights of stairs, on an airshaft above a restaurant that served chicken wings (1x06).
* When Kate was at Stanford, she was in Pre-Law. It was her intention to become a lawyer before the Supreme Court and eventually the first female Chief Justice (4x18). Unfortunately, her mother's murder side-tracked her career path.
* Kate's Christmas tradition is to work the Christmas Eve shift so that she can be on the watch for those who are out there celebrating. The last Christmas she spent with her family was the holiday before her mother was killed, and she feels as though they haven't had Christmas since. Eventually she decides it's time for a new tradition, gets Karpowski to cover the Christmas Eve shift, and goes over to Castle's (where he was about to leave to join her). (5x09)
* Kate has an aunt Teresa (who has said unfavorable things about Castle on Facebook, 6x13), and a cousin named Sophia (who will be subletting Kate's apartment once Kate moves in with Castle for good, 7x09).

### Work, Work, Work

* Beckett's training officer was a much older man named Mike Royce, whom she hero-worshipped until he reappeared and betrayed her trust (3x03). He had some pretty interesting stories about flashing suspects to tell, so Beckett still seems to have been a bit wild at the start of her career. Royce was murdered trying to protect a client (3x22).

* As a rookie, Beckett was still trying to solve her mother’s murder (1x10), which Royce knew and didn’t discourage (3x03). Montgomery first met Beckett during this time -- he caught her looking at her mother's case in the evidence room by flashlight, even though she wasn’t allowed there (3x24). He thought right then with that tenacity she'd make a good homicide cop, but it’s unclear if he had a hand in her promotion. After three years, she went into therapy, and after a year of that managed to let it go (1x10). Even after Castle gave the file to an ME friend and he told her it was a hit, not random gang violence, she was able to ignore the information (1x10, 2x01). Then she accidentally found the hit man and had to shoot him to protect Castle before she learned anything more (2x13). Beckett started re-investigating her mother's death during the summer (post S2) that Castle was in the Hamptons with Gina (3x13) but didn’t get much further than building a murder board hidden in her window. Killing the hit man, Coonan, set off a chain of events starting with the original detective, Raglan, being murdered in the middle of telling her the whole story (3x13), and ending with Roy Montgomery’s death and Beckett herself being shot (3x24). See Johanna’s Murder Board for details.

* According to Victoria Gates, Beckett is the youngest woman in the NYPD to make detective, beating Gates's record by six weeks (4x01).

* She seems to have earned her detective badge in Vice - she arrested the scam artist we meet in 3x14 several times back then, and seems to have a rather intimate knowledge of the S&M world (2x16), underground poker (2x01), and clubs even weirder than burlesque (3x01).

* The prior detective on the Melanie Cavanaugh case was before Beckett's time (1x05), so she'd been in Homicide for less than five years by S1. In S3 we’re told she wasn't there when the Triple Killer first struck four years before (3x06), so she arrived sometime after Autumn 2006, or about two years before S1. (This means she was probably dating Will Sorenson in that first year.)

* Beckett now works Homicide at the 12th Precinct (1x06), although the facade of the building clearly says it's the 9th, until a new exterior appears mid-S3 (3x13). Ryan, the newest team member, calls Beckett 'boss' in 1x06 (not in a facetious manner), and both he and Esposito seem to be directly under her supervision, so she may have made Detective 2 by the start of the show.

* Beckett has a sparring partner at the precinct (2x04), as does Nikki Heat in *Heat Wave*, and is pretty damn good at it (2x21).

* Her badge number changes throughout the series. In 2x15, her badge shows the number 0334, but later, when she is on the phone, she says that it is 41319. In 2x16, her badge says 0334. In 3x16, when she and Castle are running from the storage container, she says on the phone that her badge number is 0334. In 3x24, the badge on her hat says 41319.

* Her call sign is 1L40, spoken as one-Lincoln-forty (3x13).

* She tells Castle she sleeps with a gun (2x16), but in 1x05 we see she puts her service revolver in a memory box with her father’s watch and her mother’s ring necklace at the end of the day. It’s not known if the box survived the bombing of her original apartment.

* Her original Captain, Roy Montgomery, often said she was the best he’d ever trained (2x13, 3x24). He also frequently mentioned her empathy for the families of victims (1x07, 2x08). At the end of S3, Montgomery is revealed to have known all along who ordered the hit on Beckett’s mother, but he refuses to tell her the name, and deliberately gives his life to keep her safe -- or so he believes (3x24).

### She's got (ooh!) personality

* Beckett is a fan of Castle's work and has all his books in hardback with bookplates that say ‘From the library of Katherine Beckett’ (1x01). She also once stood in line for an hour to get Castle’s autograph (1x09). All of the above she finds terribly embarrassing (1x01, 1x09).

* She reads the New York Review of Books (1x07) and apparently reads plays (1x10). But she's also seen Showgirls (2x03), so it's just as likely she knows her Mamet because she attends the theatre. On the lighter side, she knows Batman (1x05), but she also reads contemporary graphic novels by artists like Frank Miller (2x06) and seems to be a big enough fan of the genre to know when he switched publishers.

* Her apartment (number 203) was a loft conversion in the East Village (according to designer Alfred Sole), until a serial killer blew it up (2x17). Her bookshelves there showed an interest in ancient art, anthropology and history (DVD commentary). She was still looking for a place to live in 3x07, but by 3x13, she has a new loft and it looks like she's been there awhile. Her insurance must have been spectacular - the magnificent painting in the living room is "Matasaburo of the Wind" by Alex Gross. Her home computer is a Mac, with the ability to scan photographic negatives and convert them into regular digital photos (3x13). She also keeps a murder board for her mother’s case hidden behind the shutters of the window behind her desk. The exterior shots for Beckett's new apartment were done from the intersection of Franklin & Hudson (facing east) and flipped horizontally. Which would mean she's somehow now able to afford living in the middle of Tribeca. Maybe all those fics about Castle buying an apartment and secretly arranging for her to 'find' an amazingly cheap sublet should be reconsidered :)

* Beckett has been known to sleep on the break room couch when she's working on a case, though it's not certain if Castle knows this because he's been told, or because he's caught her at it (2x10). Her tenacity (3x24) isn’t always a good thing, though. She describes herself as ‘drowning’ (3x03) and like an alcoholic about her mother’s case (1x10), which she tried to solve for her first three years on the force. She eventually went through a year of therapy (1x10) and was able to leave it alone even after Castle took her mother’s file and gave it to an ME friend to examine (1x10). She went back into therapy after being shot and agreed to leave it alone 'for now' (4x01) and as of 4x09 is still seeing Dr. Burke.
* Beckett has a definite sweet tooth. She and Will both liked donuts with multicoloured sprinkles (1x10). Castle has brought her a bearclaw at least once (1x09), she keeps gummi bears in her desk drawer (1x08) something like M&Ms in a little dish (2x04) and loved her basket of muffins (3x19). Her friend Maddy brings her oatmeal raisin cookies in "Food to Die For". But she takes her coffee as a tall skinny latte with two pumps of sugar free vanilla (1x09). Go figure.
* Chinese is her favourite food (2x21). She also likes sushi (2x13). We see her making breakfast for the Castles in (2x18), but she generally prefers to order in (2x17).
* At work, Beckett ‘plays her cards close to the vest’ (according to Esposito in 3x16) and doesn’t talk much about her private life, but she does talk about Castle to her father (3x24)./>
* A few weeks before Johanna's death she and Kate went ice skating at Rockefeller Center. Kate says she wasn't very good at it (3x13), but she must have continued because Will Sorenson teases her about the neon skates she wore when they were dating (1x09). Other talents include ballroom dancing (1x07) and the guitar (3x14), though she doesn’t seem particularly good at those either.
* Apparently she does something "interesting" with ice cubes (3x12) and has a tattoo (3x10) and a navel ring (3x12); however, all of the above may have been said just to get a rise out of Castle. She *can* tie a cherry stem with her tongue, though (3x10). Oh, and would apparently make a REALLY good dominatrix (2x16).
* She's a huge baseball fan and has been going to games with her dad since she was three (2x15).
* Beckett doesn’t believe in mediums, magic, unicorns, or double rainbows (!) and stopped believing in Santa at the age of three, when she figured out they had no chimney (3x02).
* She has a ridiculous number of coats, a wide array of scarves, and a massive assortment of insanely high heels. Not sure about the coats or the scarves, but she wears the heels because she really likes the stature (3x11). A lot of the jackets and scarves live in a massive closet by her front door (3x14).
* Beckett is good at poker (1x08), but she has a couple of tells: her face goes blank when she’s lying (3x22), and she pushes her hair behind her ears when she doesn’t know how to answer (3x11). She also unconsciously twirls it when she really likes a guy and thinks he can’t see (2x14).
* Beckett does yoga (4x02) and pullups on a bar in her apartment (3x13), and uses the gym at the precinct to box and wrestle (2x21).
* She knows Morse code (4x07).
* She's possibly a fan of the show *M\*A\*S\*H\**, because she knows that Trapper John was a character from the show (4x07). She doesn't like reality TV shows because she thinks they're a waste of time and she's not a fan of things that present fiction as truth (4x13). But she did used to watch the soap opera *Temptation Lane* with her mother when she was home sick from school as a child (3x18) and may be a secret fangirl, since she's familiar with the term 'shippers'. She was an avid fan of a sci-fi TV show called *Nebula 9*, about which Castle ribs her until she explains why she's not ashamed of it. (5x06)
* Apparently Beckett can 'slam Amaretto and freestyle rap', which are activities she allegedly partook in at Ryan's wedding (WriteRCastle twitter). She's also a fan of vodka (1x07).
* She has a '94 Harley Softail which she worked all through high school to pay for (3x03). She sometimes uses it to get to work (4x10). She also likes her muscle cars, and is able to open a car trunk from the inside (4x15).

* === Love, love, love ===
* Beckett's immediate answer to 'how do you know if you're in love' (all the songs make sense) suggests she has been...and that possibly Castle hasn't (3x04). She dates a lot, or at least did, but characterises herself as ‘one and done’ when it comes to marriage (1x02). She's been a bridesmaid six times (2x12), but has never been engaged herself (2x22).

* According to Maddy, Beckett didn't have a 'type' in high school (though she seems to go for tall, lean and law-enforcing now). She dated everything from grunge guitarists, to medical students, to European exchange students rumoured to be royalty (2x22). The grunge rocker 'smelled like wet flannel and clove cigarettes' but she still dated him for seven months to piss off her father because he had tried to interfere with the relationship (3x04). In their senior year, Maddy was helping Beckett stalk a boy in their English class, Brent Edwards. They had a permanent falling out when Maddy stole Brent, and didn't speak until they met again in 2x22.

* In addition to the boys mentioned by Maddy, we know Beckett dated an FBI agent named Will Sorenson for six months (1x09), at some undetermined point a year or two BC. They met working the kidnapping of a six year old boy, which turned out to be murder. They broke up because he took a promotion and transferred to the Boston field office and Beckett didn’t want to chuck her career to go with him (1x09).

* She dated a fireman Lanie set her up with, but completely ignored him to work a case with Castle (2x14).
* In 2x20 she meets Tom Demming, a Robbery detective who used to work with Esposito. They start dating in 2x21, and are ‘together’ by 2x24, planning a weekend at the Jersey shore. Instead, Beckett breaks up with Demming, intending to accept Castle's invitation to the Hamptons until Castle's ex-wife Gina shows up.
* After being betrayed by Mike Royce, her former training officer, Beckett keeps him on phone long enough to perform a trace by admitting that she was in love with him. She shrugs it off as a ruse after hanging up, but as she walks away her face tells a different story as she tries not to cry (3x03).

* In 3x04 we meet Josh Davidson, a cardiac surgeon with a motorcycle, whom Beckett's been dating since the summer. He's working in Africa in 3x13, but is home by 3x15, as they plan to have a Valentine's dinner if both have a couple of hours off. He turned down a stint in Haiti with Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) because Beckett was upset about his leaving again so soon (3x17). Josh doesn't know about the murder board in her apartment (3x13), but he does know that her mother was murdered (4x01). Sometime int he three months between Castle visiting Beckett at the hospital and the book signing, she broke up with Josh (4x01).
* She heard and remembers Castle's impromptu confession of love, but pretends that she didn't (4x01).

* When pressed (only sort of jokingly) on her sexual history by Castle, she confirms that she's not a virgin and asks if he'd really want to know of all the men she'd been with. When asked for a specific number, she skirts the question (4x11).
* Castle seems to think that she was flirting immaturely with him, even though she was just annoyed. (WriteRCastle Twitter)
* Hours before their wedding is to take place, Kate discovers that she's still married to a guy she dated during her freshman year in college; they were in Las Vegas, drunk, and went to a "drive-through wedding chapel" (6x23). Kate didn't think it was legal, and the groom doesn't even remember it. Rogan O'Leary is the name of the guy, and she broke up with him shortly thereafter because he was a "compulsive liar, degenerate, and a thief".

### They go together like WAKKA WAKKA WHOA

* So far, Castle has given Beckett advance copies of Storm Fall (1x01) and Heat Wave (2x05), a formal dress (1x07), $100,000 to find her mother’s killer (2x13), a signed photo from the cast of Temptation Lane (3x18), and had her father’s watch repaired after her apartment exploded (2x18). He took a crazy selection of food to Beckett at the precinct at the end of "Sucker Punch" (2x13), upgraded her to first class when they went to LA, and paid for their luxury suite (3x22). He brought a bottle of 2000 Chateau-neuf-de-Pape when he went to Beckett’s to “protect” her from Dunn (2x17), and flowers when he visited her new apartment for the first time (3x13). He first brought her coffee and a bearclaw in 1x09 (it was still Esposito’s job in 1x05), and has bought or brought her an untold number of coffees since. He even gave the break room an espresso machine (1x04).

* Beckett has given Castle flowers from her sleeve when he broke up with Gina (3x12), taken him to the movies (with popcorn and possibly dinner - 3x19), brought him coffee and later took him out for consolation drinks when his friend turned out to be a murderer (3x15), and helped arrange for him to purchase one of those bottles of incredibly rare, incredibly expensive scotch (3x10).

* They’ve saved each other a number of times: In 1x06 Castle gets Beckett a clean shot when a suspect has them pinned down. Beckett saves Castle from the Russian mob (2x01) and shoots Coonan before he can shoot Castle (2x13). In 3x01 they each shoot the shooter about to shoot the other, and in 3x17 Castle saves them both from going splody along with half of NYC. Castle jumps on one killer before he can run away (1x07), and takes Lockwood down hard as he’s about to shoot Beckett (3x13). He also shoots a gun out of Dunn’s hand after they’ve both saved Jordan Shaw (2x18).

See also : Beckett's family, Johanna's murder board, Beckett's apartment , They go together

Stana Katic has also posted a four-part series of interviews with some of the tech people involved with bringing Beckett to life.

### Defining episodes

* 1x01 - Meaning to irritate her, Castle speculates that something bad once happened to someone she loved, and that's why she became a cop.

* 1x05 - While working on the case of a murdered mother, Beckett finally tells Castle the story of what happened to her mother.

* 1x07 - Kate makes a rare connection with the daughter of a murder victim. She also gets to wear an evening gown and walk the red carpet.

* 1x09 - An ex-boyfriend comes back into Beckett's life.

* 1x10 - Castle infuriates Beckett by giving her mother's casefile to a pathologist friend -- who comes up with some startling information.

* 2x01 - Beckett is forced to let Castle come back to the precinct.

* 2x13 - Beckett's father appears, and her mother's killer is finally brought to a very rough justice.

* 2x17, 2x18 - A serial killer wants to play cat and mouse with Nikki Heat, and Beckett's apartment pays the price.

* 2x22 - A witness in their case turns out to be one of Beckett's best friends from high school.

* 2x24 - About to give in and take Castle up on his invitation to the Hamptons, Beckett is left standing...well, not at the altar, but embarrassed in front of witnesses all the same.

* 3x03 - Beckett runs into her training officer, Mike Royce, on a routine nab.

* 3x13 - Raglan, the detective who lied about her mother's murder, is himself murdered by a sniper named Lockwood, setting off the next stage of that investigation.

* 3x22 - Royce is murdered, and Beckett and Castle go rogue in LA to solve the case.

* 3x24 - Lockwood escapes and Beckett will do anything to catch him and find out who ordered the hit on her mother.

* 4x01 - Beckett returns from a 3 month medical leave and covertly begins to investigate her own shooting, only to be discouraged from it by Castle.

* 4x07 - Despite having no formal training, Beckett plays negotiator when Castle and Martha are held hostage in a bank.

* 4x09 - A case involving a sniper ignites her PTSD and she confides that she's ready to start to make peace with her mom's case.

* 4x23 - Kate Beckett finally gets her man.