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Come with me if you want to live.
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Sergeant Kyle Reese is a Resistance soldier from the Tech-Com, serial number DN38416. From 2021 to 2027, he served with the 132nd under Justin Perry. In 2027, he joined the leader of the Resistance, John Connor's Tech-Com fighting unit, where he was assigned recon/security. Coming to view John as a surrogate father, in the year 2029, he was sent back in time to the year 1984 to protect John's mother Sarah Connor from a T-800 Model 101 Terminator. Kyle Reese ultimately becomes the biological father of John Connor himself through a predestination paradox.

Original timeline[]

T1 Kyle Reese 2029

Sgt. Kyle Reese in 2029

Main article: Kyle Reese/Original timeline

Kyle Reese was born during or after the first wars around 2003, to Dennis Reese and Mary Shea. Reese was one of the last remaining humans who achieved a victory over the machines.

He survived the capture and killing of his fellow humans only to serve as a slave in one of Skynet's concentration camps, where he and others were forced to load huge numbers of dead bodies into Skynet's furnaces to be incinerated. Reese's freedom would come when a Tech-Com, a resistance movement, led by John Connor (whom Reese would unwittingly father during his journey to the past and ironically consider his closest friend), freed him and the others from Skynet. After leaving the camps, Reese served in the 132nd division under Justin Perry from 2021 to 2027 up to the end of the Oregon and New Mexico offensives[2], before transferring as a sergeant to Tech-Com under John Connor himself. John Connor and the resistance would eventually rally enough remaining humans and resources to launch an assault on Skynet.

The final assault would eventually allow the human resistance to cripple Skynet. The Resistance was able to smash Skynet's defense grid allowing them to enter Skynet's main complex and attempt to destroy it. Skynet however would have a final move left: using time displacement equipment, Skynet would send one of its most feared machines (the Terminator) back to Thursday, May 12, 1984, to kill the young Sarah Connor, known to have been the eventual mother of John Connor, the leader of the Resistance, and thus prevent the birth of Connor and his future rebellion. The Terminator The Terminator: Dawn of Fate

The Terminator[]

T1 Kyle Reese defends Sarah

Kyle Reese defending Sarah

Realizing what Skynet was attempting to do, John Connor sends a soldier to protect himself from the machine menace. It would be Reese who would volunteer himself to go back. Once Reese had gone through, the time travel equipment would be destroyed, leaving only Reese and the Terminator in 1984.

"I'm Reese, Sergeant Techcom, DN38416... assigned to protect you. You've been targeted for termination."
- Kyle Reese informally introduces himself to Sarah Connor, The Terminator

Arriving unarmed and not knowing what the Terminator looks like in its disguise, Reese quickly dresses, arms himself with a shotgun and sets out to track the woman he has been assigned to protect. After finally tracking Sarah to a club at the same time as the Terminator, he rescues her and in the ensuing chase, introduces himself and tells Sarah the reason why the Terminator is hunting her, the impending doom of the human race and the future significance carried by her and her unborn son, but they are subsequently captured by the police after the Terminator's car crashes and Sarah and Kyle are surrounded. With the Terminator having fled the scene, Reese is questioned by criminal psychiatrist Dr Peter Silberman, who puts Reese's story of the Terminator and the Future War down as nothing more than a psychotic delusion, although complimenting the scale of it due to the explanations for the lack of future technology. Although Sarah briefly doubts Reese herself, when the Terminator attacks again, Reese manages to escape and retrieve Sarah while the Terminator tears through the station staff.

Having grown up in the future where the machines had all but wiped out the human race, Reese is both physically and mentally hardened. His body is scarred from numerous battles with Skynet, and he has a number of burns as a result of the time travel process. In a deleted scene, when he tries to stop Sarah from going to Cyberdyne Systems, he sees something he has never seen before, what the world looks like before the War Against the Machines. He says he thinks of it as a dream, the trees and stream, the flowers, and Sarah, all beautiful. Bursting into tears, he confesses that it hurts, because he wasn't meant to see this. He then agrees with Sarah that they should try to change the future.

Though hard and battle weary, Reese had a love for Sarah despite having never met and only through a photo could identify. The affection Reese felt for Sarah was based on the legend that surrounded her and on the image of her from the photograph given to him by John Connor. 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, Reese and Sarah share a night of intimacy, in which her future son and human leader John Connor is conceived.

However, Reese's life is cut short when both he and Sarah are forced to confront the Terminator. A chase ensues with the Terminator following first on a motorcycle and then in a semi-tanker truck. During the chase, Reese is hit by gunfire. After apparently thinking that they destroyed the Terminator, they run to an automated factory, later revealed to be owned by Cyberdyne Systems where the now-metal endoskeleton of the Terminator pursues them inside. Kyle turns on all the equipment as cover while the Terminator batters its way through the door.

After Sarah accidentally turns on a machine, their hiding place is discovered and the Terminator finds them. After reaching the stairs of a crawlway, Reese tells Sarah to run for cover while Kyle tries to beat the Terminator with a metal rod. The Terminator throws Kyle to the floor, and Reese reaches for a pipe bomb and lights it up, placing it into the Terminator's abdomen. The Terminator explodes except for its lower midsection and Reese rolls down a metal stairway head first. A short time later, after Sarah removes a piece of shrapnel from her leg, she crawls to the motionless Kyle, who has died from his wounds.

Sarah mourns him briefly before the still-functioning Terminator's midsection begins to chase her again. Sarah then crushes the Terminator in a mechanical press (ironically, the machine she triggered that alerted the Terminator to their location earlier) and later tearfully sees Reese's dead body being zipped up in a body bag and taken away. Although Reese died not knowing Sarah was carrying his son that was his future commander, his strength and courage gives Sarah enough for her to teach her unborn son for the pending future he will bring.

By impregnating Sarah with John, Kyle created a predestination paradox in the same way that the discovery of the Terminator's remains in the factory gave birth to Skynet. The Terminator

Deviating timelines[]

Note: Several timelines begin after the events of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, including T2 Trilogy, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, and Terminator: Dark Fate, and a timeline where the Judgment Day never happens.

Notes[]

  • Kyle Reese was named after Mary Shea's grandfather.[3]
  • His Serial Number is DN38416.[4][5]
  • Kyle suffers from Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as he experiences a nightmare of his future and can be easily aggravated, such as during his police interrogation.
  • As seen in the extended release of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Kyle appears unchanged from his appearance in the first film to Sarah in hallucinations at her stay at Pescadero State Hospital. In these hallucinations, he tells her to go and protect John, because more Terminators are coming and the future is not set.
  • In contrast with the first film, it is evident that Kyle's history has been altered due to the events in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. He was born before Judgment Day. His father initially survived Judgment Day but was killed prior to the events of the film.
  • Marcus Wright taught Kyle Reese how to strap a shotgun to his arm with a cord to prevent losing it, a skill which he demonstrates with a shotgun upon his arrival in 1984 in The Terminator.
  • Kyle Reese says the line "Come with me if you want to live." twice: in The Terminator and again in Terminator Salvation. He also says a variation of the line in Sarah's dream in "The Good Wound". He also hears the line said by John Connor in T2: Future War and by Sarah Connor in Terminator Genisys respectively.
Snake reese

Comparison of Terminator promo shot next to cover of Konami's Metal Gear Video Game

  • Kyle Reese's appearance in the future from the film The Terminator is used for the cover of 1987 Konami game Metal Gear as the protagonist Solid Snake.[6][7]
  • Apparently John never told anyone about Kyle Reese's identity as his father, not even Kyle himself. All he did was give Kyle a picture of Sarah and left him to figure it out. Even when Skynet kidnapped Kyle and John told Ashdown that Kyle is the key to the war, he did not elaborate on why but simply stated without him, the war would be lost.
  • In contrast with the first film, there is an "Alpha timeline" where Kyle Reese is not John Connor's father at all.
  • "The Skynet Database: Human Central Archive" featured in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines DVD states that Kyle Reese was born in 2008. However, Kyle is a teenager instead of just 10-year-old in Terminator Salvation, which takes place in 2018.
  • Reese is a ticklish person, seen in a deleted scene where Sarah tickles him.[8]

Behind the Scenes[]

Quotes[]

"Your son gave me a message to give to you. Made me memorize it. Thank you, Sarah, for your courage through the dark years. I can't help you with what you must soon face, except to say that the future is not set. You must be stronger than you imagine you can be. You must survive or I will never exist. That's all." The Terminator

Merchandise[]

Hot Toys
  • Sergeant Tech-Com Kyle Reese DX 38416 (1/6th scale collectible figure, 2005)
    • Product code: LT1050504
    • Accessories: future gun, pistol, bomb, gas mask with carrier, cap, headset, goggle, holster, pouches, endoskeleton hand, figure stand
Sergeant Tech-Com Kyle Reese DX 38416 at Hot Toys
NECA
  • Kyle Reese Human Resistance Soldier (7" action figure, 2012)
    • Accessories: 12 gauge shotgun with sling, Sarah Connor polaroid
http://necaonline.com/?s=Kyle+Reese

Appearances[]

Kyle portal
Unknown pic 3.
Reese continous making pipebombs.
Films
Comic books
Novels
Video games
Television series
Main article: Kyle Reese (TSCC)

References[]

  1. Fifth draft of script
  2. The Terminator (Frakes novel)
  3. T2: The Future War
  4. "Skynet Database: Human Central Archive", from [[Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (film)|]]: DVD Special Features". In two different sections, this DVD states that Kyle Reese's serial number is BN38416 and DN38416. Apparently one of them is a typo.
  5. The fourth draft of The Terminator script gives Kyle's serial number as DN38416
  6. Junker HQ
  7. The Terminator imitated by the games (Japanese)
  8. The Terminator Original Deleted Scenes (YouTube timestamp 08:26)
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