Kyle Reese was a Human Resistance soldier in the post-apocalyptic future of the Terminator universe, where most of humanity had already been wiped out in a deadly nuclear Third World War, sparked off by an artificial intelligence entity known as Skynet. Reese, born after the first war, was one of the last remaining humans who achieved a victory over the machines.Reese survived the capture and was forced to load huge numbers of bodies into Skynet's furnaces to be incinerated. Reese's freedom would come when a resistance movement, led by John Connor (whom Reese would unwittingly father later in the movie, and ironically consider his closest friend), freed him and the others from Skynet. After the camps, Reese served in the 132nd under Justin Perry from 2021 to 2027 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, as Reese explains in The Terminator. 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 May 12, 1984, to kill the young Sarah Connor, known to have been the eventual mother of resistance leader John Connor, and thus prevent the birth of Connor and his future rebellion.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. Arriving unarmed and not knowing what the Terminator looks like in its disguise, Reese locates Sarah Connor, 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, Reese and Sarah share a night of intimacy, in which her future son and human leader John Connor is conceived.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.Though hard and battle weary, Reese was madly and irrevocably in love with Sarah Connor, a woman whom he'd 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.Reese's life, however, is cut short when both he and Sarah are forced to confront the Terminator. 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 crawl way, Reese tells Sarah to run for cover while Kyle tries to beat the Terminator with a metal rod. The Terminator slashes Kyle to the floor, and the nearly-dead Reese reaches for his last homemade pipe bomb, lights it up, and jams it into the terminator's body as he runs for cover. The Terminator's body is blown apart, and Reese is killed. Though it is not yet completely destroyed, it has been weakened to the point that Sarah is able to kill it herself, crushing it inside a mechanical press. A short time later, after Sarah removes a piece of shrapnel from her leg, she tends over to Kyle and finds his dead body with his face covered with blood from the fight with the Terminator and the shrapnel/debris from the explosion.In the end of the film, Sarah stops at a gas station in the deserts of Mexico six months later, already well into her pregnancy, and is debating to herself whether or not she should ever tell John who his father is. Eventually, she decides that she will, reflecting that Reese deserves to be remembered for his sacrifice and contribution. Although Kyle Reese died not knowing that he was John Connor's father, John himself would know. Just then a young Mexican boy takes Sarah's picture with a Polaroid camera, and gives the developed photo to her--it is the same photo John Connor would eventually give Reese to identify Sarah by. Show less «