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| “ | I didn't want to be afraid of monsters anymore. I wanted the monsters to be afraid of me | „ |
| ~ Kirby Reed to Tara Carpenter. |
Special Agent Kirby Reed is a major character in the Scream franchise, first appearing in the 2011 slasher film Scream 4.
She is the sole teenage survivor of the Second Woodsboro Murders (2011), known as the "Woodsboro Massacre Remake", the highest body count and most violent massacre of all Ghostface killing sprees. She is also an investigator, attempted framing victim, and survivor of the New York Killings (2023) twelve years later.
A former resident of Woodsboro, California, she now works in the Atlanta office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and comes to New York City to investigates the sixth Ghostface killings.
She initially appears to serve as the "side-kick archetype", with her best friend, Jill Roberts serving as the new Final Girl, until she subverts it with all the younger characters indirectly revolving around her by the film's climax, as well as her best friend's role as a psychopath revealed.
Despite her uncertain fate in the climax after being stabbed and bleeding out, Wes Craven, and many fans, asserted that she did not die; Hayden Panettiere was also contractually obligated to not die on-screen.
Her fate was confirmed a decade later, as she re-appears via video thumbnail in Scream (2022 film). She is shown having given a Bloody Disgusting interview three years prior in 2018. Richie Kirsch observes this on his laptop; the scene occurs eleven years after her near-death experience, amid the 2022 Woodsboro Legacy Killings.
Her high school best friends appeared to be Jill and Olivia during the fourth film. She also appears close to Robbie Mercer and Charlie Walker, Cinema Club VP and President, the latter having an obsessive crush on her. Inside her own home, Ghostface terrorizes her during the Stab-A-Thon after-party she hosts to answer questions to save Charlie's life. He betrays her after she unties him, non-fatally stabbing her twice, leaving her to bleed out. Prior to her death and assuming she would get away with it, Jill, the other killer, believed Kirby had died.
She is portrayed by Hayden Panettiere, who also voiced Princess Dot from Disney/Pixar's A Bug's Life, Red Puckett in Hoodwinked, Kate in Alpha and Omega, Claire Bennet in Heroes, Juliette Barnes in Nashville, and Sam Giddings in Until Dawn.
Biography
Background
Kirby Reed was born to the Reed family sometime in 1993, two years before Billy Loomis murdered Maureen Prescott.
She lived at and grew up in 329 Whispering Lane, Woodsboro, California. She is either an only child or is the youngest daughter with distantly older siblings, as she was left home alone during the events of Scream 4 (2011 film). At Woodsboro High, she sat behind Charlie Walker during Mr. Baker's English class. At some point, she also crossed paths with Samantha Carpenter and the two formed a friendship despite the age difference between them.
Scream 4
Kirby Reed is first seen speeding to pick up her friends past Sheriff Dewey Riley. He simply yells for her to slow down without any real warning or discipline. She shouts to apologize and then proceeds to pick up her friends, Jill Roberts, and Olivia Morris. It is the sixteenth anniversary of the original Woodsboro Murders.
Thursday, 29 September 2011: On the way to school, Kirby almost gets into an accident. Olivia regards as a sign of the "angel of death", Sidney Prescott, Jill's cousin.
Kirby remarks how Sidney is in town as a last stop on her self-help book tour, and the "first stop on her road to a new life", which Kirby calls "very dramatic".
Kirby appreciates the sentimental nature of the tour, and declares Sidney "the reason why I love horror movies".
Once the three arrive at school, they are pestered by Cinema Club nerds, Robbie Mercer and Charlie Walker. Robbie is seen with a camera against his face, filming his entire high school experience as a blog, which irritates Olivia and Kirby, but Jill is nonchalant.
Kirby states her favorite film is "Bambi", much to Charlie's amusement. Charlie is seen flirting with Kirby, which is noticeable to everyone, but it is brushed off by Kirby when Jill brings it up.
Killer in the Closet
Following the discovery of Jenny Randall and Marnie Cooper's murders, Kirby is brought in alongside Olivia and Jill to the police station where they are questioned by Sheriff Riley and Deputy Judy Hicks. Another attendee is Sidney Prescott.
Inside the room where they face police questioning, Kirby fears she may not live as long as Olivia and Jill because she did not receive a phone call from Jenny or Marnie's phones like Olivia and Jill did.
Kirby is then seen at the Roberts residence, where she is staying over with Jill and her mother, Kate. Deputy Hoss and Perkins are giving the girls 24/7 police protection, though Olivia does not want to come upstairs with them.
Kirby and Jill are watching Shaun of the Dead (2004), while Jill calls Olivia next door. Kirby answers a call from Trevor Sheldon's phone, and the Ghostface voice begins speaking to her.
Meanwhile, Jill pranks Olivia next door pretending to be Ghostface. The real Ghostface claims to be in the closet, but, as Kirby checks Jill's closet, the killer reveals he did not say which closet he was in. The killer brutally murders Olivia next door while Kirby and Jill helplessly watch through Jill's window.
Third Annual Stab-A-Thon
Friday, 30 September 2011: In the aftermath, Kirby appears stern and serious at the Cinema Club meeting at Woodsboro High the next day, which is Friday (as noted by Robbie). The group is discussing the murders and the rules of a horror remake.
She shows Sidney, who attends as guest, camera footage on her iPhone 3GS which shows Trevor Sheldon glaring at her from the back of the classroom. The scene paints a parallel between Sidney and Kirby, with both wearing leather brown jackets.
Later that night, Kirby attends the third annual Stab-A-Thon. The event is taking place at an abandoned farm on Fort Dillon Road. She tells Jill that she believes Olivia would understand and that she'd "want me to see other people".
However, she becomes irritant when she notices Trevor show up. After Gale is stabbed, she is forced to vacate the premises. Although Jill has already texted her, asking for her to pick her up as her mother is apparently aggravating her.
Homecoming afterparty
From there, Kirby returns to her house, where she is home alone in the early morning hours of Saturday AM. They text Robbie and Charlie to come over as well. Just as Charlie is putting on Stab 7, Trevor also appears, telling Kirby that she should not leave the door unlocked. Kirby appears deeply annoyed at his appearance, and asks what he is doing at her house. He claims Jill sent him a text inviting him over.
This angers Jill and she heads upstairs to look for her phone. Trevor then asks who sent the text from Jill's phone and Kirby laughs at him. She asks him, "Isn't your phone missing?" He says he "got a new one" and she comments on how "incredibly convenient" that is while he leaves the room.
Soon enough, Robbie dismisses himself and heads outside, drunkenly, to do a podcast. In this, he says that he thinks Charlie will get the girl (Kirby). It is true.
Back inside, Kirby knocks Charlie out of his Stab trance and tells him he should probably make a move. Charlie asks why doesn't she. She says she already did, telling him she always thought he was cute. They kiss but are interrupted when Trevor bursts in and ruins the moment. Charlie furiously walks out, angered his moment with Kirby is ruined.
The killer first kills Robbie, who wanders around to the front of the house outside. Kirby seemingly hears the commotion and goes to the front door to investigate. She is startled by Jill coming back down the stairs who claims to have found her phone with no text sent to Trevor.
They open the front door to look for Robbie, Charlie, and Trevor, but find Sidney suddenly on the doorstep in tears instead. Sidney grabs Jill's hand, telling her they need to hurry and leave. They start to leave but see Robbie walking up the steps, fatally stabbed. He tells them to run, before collapsing.
Killer in the house
The three girls notice Ghostface rushing in from behind. Kirby runs to another room downstairs while Sidney and Jill run upstairs with Ghostface (Charlie inside the costume) following them. Sidney soon joins up with her and Kirby leads the way to a room in the basement. They lock themselves in.
Charlie appears at the sliding doors, with his hands covered in blood, claiming he found Robbie's dead body. Kirby refuses to let him in, for fear of her own life, but Ghostface soon attacks him.
He yells for Kirby and the outside lights go out. Once they flicker back on, Charlie appears outside tied to a chair. This scene likens itself to the first movie, where Casey Becker is trying to save her boyfriend, Steven Orth, who was tied up outside to a chair.
Near-death experience
Kirby, assuming the role of Casey, receives a call from Charlie's phone at 2.57am, and is forced to participate in movie trivia from Ghostface (who turns out to be Jill Roberts on the other line). She correctly answers the warm-up questions which consists of horror villains' weapons. When the Ghostface voice asks her about a groundbreaking horror remake, she interrupts him and names all the horror movies that have been remade. Thinking she has answered correctly, she heads out and unties Charlie.
He says, "Kirby, this is making a move!" before stabbing her in the stomach, revealing that he is the killer. This refers to their previous talk back in the house, where Kirby told him she already made the first move.
He continues to speak to her, telling her, "Four years of classes together and you notice me now?" Saying this reveals his obsessive crush on her but also his psychotic resentment at never having received attention from her the way he wanted.
He catches Kirby from falling and yells, "You stupid bitch. It's too late," before stabbing her once again in the same location. His voice seems to be breaking and quivering at this point as if he's going to cry. "Doesn't happen as fast as it does in the movies, I know," he says as he painfully holds her in place.
These are his last words to her before he lets her fall to the ground. Kirby is left to hold her bleeding stomach. Sighing, he regretfully runs his fingers through his hair and walks away from the scene of the crime.
Soon after, Sidney hears a noise coming from the basement and calls out Kirby's name, before Charlie grabs her by the neck.
Kirby was legally dead for four minutes and was then revived where she took time to recover.
Aftermath
Kirby was presumably resuscitated after she was rescued from her basement, after suffering two stabs to the stomach. It is unknown whether she overheard Jill's rant to Sidney, and the subsequent chaos. Her reaction to finding out Jill was a serial killer is also unseen.
After recovering, she became a special agent in the FBI Atlanta office, taking a personal mission to investigate Ghostface killings.
Woodsboro Survivor Interview (2018)
In 2018, Kirby gave a public interview about her survival with Bloody Disgusting 7 years after her near-death experience. By October 2022, it had received 4.6 million views on YouTube.
Scream (2022)
In 2022, the interview is visible as an Easter egg in the fifth film. it is the top recommended video for Richie Kirsch as he watches a YouTube video that criticises Stab 8 (2021).
She is seen with long hair in this Youtube thumbnail video clip snapshot (a publicity still of an actual photo of actress Hayden Panettiere). Her whereabouts after her near-death experience and during the next string of murders is unknown.
Scream VI
Kirby arrives in New York City after hearing about the murders of Jason Carvey and his roommate, Greg Bruckner, two Blackmore University students who she'd been tracking the online activity of. She meets with Wayne Bailey, who is threatened by her arrival, and the two agree to work together to find the killer.
After Wayne's daughter, Quinn Bailey, is killed, Kirby goes with the remaining survivors to a theatre tracked down by Gale, much to Kirby's surprise as she hadn't come across this in her research. Kirby is disturbed to see clothes and Ghostface robes worn by Jill and Charlie, and she then bonds with Mindy Meeks-Martin about horror movies and with Tara Carpenter about living as a survivor.
Wayne devises a plan to track down the killer and Kirby sends Gale away as she is not an authority figure. Kirby uses her skills to track down a call from Ghostface, unaware that it's a setup by Wayne and his kids, and discovers that Ghostface is at Gale's penthouse where he plans to kill her.
Kirby later meets the group at the theatre again as they plan to trap Ghostface there and Wayne frames her as the killer by stating that she was exiled from the FBI for mental health reasons and locking the group in the theatre whilst Quinn and Ethan hid Kirby after knocking her out. Kirby comes to and pleads her innocence and is then shot by Wayne who reveals himself, Quinn and Ethan Landry, his son, as the killers, all wanting revenge against Sam for killing Wayne's other son, Richie Kirsch, mastermind of the 2022 Woodsboro Murders.
Kirby comes to after Sam and Tara Carpenter have killed the family, however Ethan tries one last time to kill them but Kirby is able to crush his skull using the same TV that killed Stu Macher. She is then wheeled into an ambulance and tells Sam to call her if she ever needs help.
Ghostface Kill Count
- Ethan Landry.
External Links
- Kirby Reed on the Scream Wiki
- Kirby Reed on the Heroic Benchmark Wiki
 Heroes
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