[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Scream 2022.]There area tonof references to the previous four films in the fifthScreammovie, but one especially satisfying nod to the past was the confirmation we got regarding a certainScream 4character’s fate.
Hayden Panettiere’s Kirby Reed was a runaway favorite in the 2011 release. She was extremely fun to watch and knew her horror movies, had maximum chemistry with everyone in the ensemble, and significantly benefited from Panettiere’s screen presence and spot-on delivery. Hopes were high that Kirby would make it through the film alive, but in a gut-wrenching third act scene, Kirby is deceived by Charlie (Rory Culkin), just as the two are finally starting to hit it off romantically. He stabs her in the stomach and leaves her for dead.
The last shot we get of Kirby is her laying on the ground with a fairly significant pool of blood forming near her wounds. It looks pretty bad, but this is aScreammovie we’re talking about here! Unless you see a shot confirming that a character is 100% dead, there’s a chance they survived and that’s sparked a significant amount of speculation that Kirby might have made it through theScream 4massacre. Now, over ten years later, we can make it official.
At one point inScream2022,Jack Quaid’s Richie is watching YouTube videos about theStabseries and if you take a look at the side of the screen where you find recommend videos, there’s a thumbnail of Kirby with the video title, “Interview with Woodsboro Survivor Kirby Reed!”
How exactly did that Easter egg come to be and does this confirm that Kirby could return in the flesh in the future? I had to ask executive producerChad Villellaand directorsMatt Bettinelli-OlpinandTyler Gillettjust that during our 45-minute spoiler interview.
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Gillett revealed that there was a point when they considered doing more with the character and explained why a small reference to Kirby was the right move for this particular film:
“We reached out to Hayden. We always knew it’d be such a fun question to answer. We certainly know that there is a real kind of critical mass around the Kirby thing online. And for our money, she’s one of our favorite characters in the franchise. We love Hayden’s work in that fourth movie and thought it would be really fun to provide some conclusive evidence of her survival. And we reached out to her and at some point, we wanted to have her more involved. At the end of the day though, for a character that for us is as interesting and as fun to watch as she is, it didn’t make sense to do something small. It felt like a better way to service it for this movie was to just have a light nod. And we know the fans that care so dearly about that character would pick up on it. The second you see her face in that thumbnail, I think everyone’s like, ‘Well, sh*t. There she is.’ Again, I think one of the fun things about the universe of these movies is the off-screen story, you know? Mark and Sidney. What’s happened to Kirby? All of that stuff for us, that’s the fuel that kind of exists in the tank once you leave the theater, and we love thinking about who these characters are outside of the stories that we see on screen.”
Looking for more from Gillett, Bettinelli-Olpin, and Villella on the newScreammovie? We’ll have so many more spoiler details to share with you soon! Keep an eye out for the full 45-minute conversation dropping right here on Collider in the coming days.
