Kyle Reese - Character History

Character History

Kyle Reese (Sergeant, Tech-Com, DN38416) is a soldier in the human resistance from the post-apocalyptic future of The Terminator, where most of humanity had already been wiped out in a deadly nuclear war on August 29, 1997, sparked off by an artificial intelligence known as Skynet. The sentient computer system launched a genocidal war on the survivors. When Skynet sends one of its most feared machines, a T-800 series Terminator, back to pre-apocalypse Los Angeles, California on May 12, 1984, to assassinate the young Sarah Connor, Connor decides to send a soldier to intercept the Terminator. Sergeant Kyle Reese volunteers. Once he had gone through, the time displacement equipment was destroyed, leaving only him and the Terminator in 1984. Arriving unarmed and not knowing what the Terminator looks like in its human disguise, Reese locates and follows Sarah Connor, shadowing her until the T-800 attempts to carry out its mission. He rescues her, warning her of the impending doom of the human race and of the future significance carried by her and her unborn son. Though initially hostile towards Reese, Sarah grows to trust and love him as he becomes the only thing between her and the Terminator. On the run from the Terminator, Kyle reveals that he volunteered because he has long been in love with Sarah, because John gave Kyle a picture of her.

Though battle-hardened and world-weary, Reese fell deeply in love with Sarah Connor, a woman he had never met and only knew through her photo. After Kyle tells Sarah of this history, the two consummate their relationship and Sarah conceives. Reese's life, however, is cut short when both he and Sarah are forced to confront the Terminator. After a high speed chase where he is wounded by gunfire and thinking that they destroyed the Terminator in an explosion of a fuel truck, they are again chased by the now-metal endoskeleton inside an automated factory. In a final confrontation, the Terminator attacks Reese and delivers a mortal blow. Though dazed, Reese reaches for his last homemade pipe bomb, lights it, and wedges it in between the Terminator's pelvic strut and torso. The Terminator is blown apart, and Reese is killed.

Kyle Reese is portrayed as a teenager by Anton Yelchin in Terminator Salvation. The film takes place in 2018, and it revolves around his first meeting with his future son John (Christian Bale). As a teenager, Kyle was the leader of the Los Angeles Resistance cell, even though it only consisted of two people. Because of this, he aspires to join the formal Resistance regulars, who mark themselves with a red stripe on their left sleeve, once he has "earned it". It is clear that Kyle is immediately drawn to the charismatic figure of John Connor due to the fact that he leaves his Los Angeles base after hearing the latter's Resistance broadcast. Inspired by Connor's example, he frequently quotes segments of the broadcasts and adapts strategies that Connor suggests for taking down Terminators. He similarly shares a unique bond with Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), who helps hone Kyle's strategies in close-quarters combat, whereas Kyle's lectures on what humans are fighting for reminds Marcus of his humanity.

In the film, Kyle's father had initially survived Judgment Day but died prior to the events of the movie, and Kyle is the primary target of Skynet due to its awareness that he would eventually travel through time to 1984 and become the father of John Connor. In the film, Kyle is already working with and protecting a child named Star (Jadagrace Berry) when the two later save Marcus Wright from a T-600 attack in the ruins of Los Angeles. After Skynet captures him outside of LA, Reese, upon escaping, later worked with his future son building a bomb to destroy Skynet's San Francisco Command. The two also fought one of the first T-800 models together during this time. Connor took Reese into the Resistance with Star, granting him the promotion to Tech-Com regular. Kyle and John have begun developing a friendship as mentioned in the first film, evidenced by the way in which Kyle's promotion (signified by inheriting John's tactical jacket with red stripe) comes alongside his joining of John's inner circle at the end of the film.

In the parallel universe television show, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, it is revealed that Reese has an older brother named Derek, who becomes one of the show's main characters. He is also a Resistance soldier from the future. In this series, Kyle Reese is played by Jonathan Jackson in the episode "Dungeons & Dragons", which details the last days of what happened of how he and his brother are separated during a recon mission before he made his trip through time to protect Sarah Connor; further details are in the episode "Goodbye To All That" of the second season, during Derek's recollection of the future war. An eight-year-old version of Kyle Reese, portrayed by Skyler Gisondo, briefly appears in the episode "What He Beheld". Derek Reese takes John Connor out for ice cream on his 16th birthday.

They find a younger Kyle and Derek playing baseball at the park. In the episode "Goodbye To All That," during one of Derek's recollections of the future war, Kyle (when he was a Corporal) and a small group of his unit attempted to save forty prisoners, including General John Connor, from Skynet's forces. However, he became trapped and one of the Resistance's senior officers, Martin Bedell, sacrifices his life to save him and free Skynet's prisoners. In the episode "The Demon Hand", it's hinted at by Sarah to Derek Reese that Kyle's ashes were scattered "in the grass"; a later episode shows that he was in fact buried in a grave marked only by the year of his death, and in the next-to-last episode of the series, Derek's own ashes are buried next to his brother, or at least in the same cemetery where his brother rests. A mental image of Kyle Reese appeared to a wounded Sarah in the episode "The Good Wound". Throughout the episode, her image of Kyle guides her in finding medical treatment for herself along with getting help from Derek Reese, Kyle's brother. In the season two finale "Born to Run", John is led by Catherine Weaver to an alternate post-Judgment Day timeline where John Connor has never led the Resistance due to the displacement from his present. There, he encounters his father for the first time.