The last we saw of Kirby in “Scream 4” was her bleeding out on her back patio after being stabbed by Charlie Walker, one of the film’s Ghostfaces, played by Rory Culkin. As we do not see the actual life leave her eyes that would confirm her demise, we were all left to speculate whether or not Kirby had actually met her end. In “Scream” aka “Scream 5,” though, we finally get an answer: There is a YouTube thumbnail of a video interview Kirby did with Bloody Disgusting about surviving the 2011 Woodsboro murders.

Even though Kirby did not end up dying in that scene in “Scream 4,” for all intents and purposes we have seen a Kirby death scene already. She has a tense phone standoff with Ghostface that ends in her getting stabbed a few times in the gut. Since she never returns in the movie and is presumed dead, we already know what it feels like to lose Kirby. Most viewers of the fifth film probably missed that Easter egg, so bringing Kirby back will be quite the surprise. The shock of her return would be immensely dampened by her not even making it through the next movie.

In the last film, we had a legacy character death with Dewey. The filmmakers could afford to kill him off because we have spent a full five movies with the bumbling police officer. He had been given the time to grow and change. He had a cinematic life that lasted over two decades. We have only had one movie with Kirby, and while she is a jolt of energy you can’t take your eyes off in that film, we do not get nearly enough time to really dig into that character. To bring back a character and have their death mean something, we need the proper amount of time with them for it to not feel manipulative or a careless decision by the filmmakers. This is why it would be less surprising to see Gale Weathers meet her end in this film than Kirby.