Altered Carbon: 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Reileen Kawahara

Reileen Kawahara starts off as an estranged sister Kovacs is still looking for, in the Netflix show Altered Carbon, but, she becomes the main antagonist by the end of the series. Turned out that she was the mastermind behind all the criminal activities on the planet and was playing everyone as a pawn.

Not only was Reileen a memorable character, but, she also maintained the thriller angle to the storyline after the Bancroft murder mystery was solved. Here we are going to share with you ten such things about her that you might not know. Let’s start!

10 Personal Information

Reileen Kawahara was the only sister of Takeshi Kovacs and was separated from Kovacs in their childhood. She worked in CTAC too as a detective under an alias name of Gena. She was assigned to investigate the matters of the Yakuza. She was passed around from one foster home to another until she came of working age.

9 Origin

Reileen was born in 2100. Just like Takeshi, she was a native of Harlan’s World.

Many fans get themselves confused as to why one of the siblings will have one surname when the other has a different one. Actually, Takeshi and Reileen are biracial with a white dad and an Asian mother. While Takeshi took their father’s surname, Reileen took their mother’s.

8 Family

Takeshi and Reileen had a very dysfunctional family. Their father was a drunkard and he used to physically abuse their mother. Both the children had to face a very difficult time during their young years. One day, their drunk father shot their mother dead in a fit of anger and started looking for Reileen. Terrified, Takeshi killed their father with the same gun.

7 Early Life

Reileen faced extreme adversity growing up. Her own home was loveless mainly because of her father’s drinking issues. After Takeshi killed their father, both Tak and Reileen were arrested.

The leader of the CTAC Jaeger promised Takeshi that he will take care of Reileen, but, he did not. Neither did anyone else care for her. She spent her childhood being reassigned and rotated to foster homes. As soon as she grew up, she was hired In CTAC.

6 Struggles

Reileen not only did face a lot of struggle and hardships in her childhood, she admitted to Takeshi once that she could never be happy.

Nor she could ever find love. She was extremely obsessed and possessive of her brother and she did everything just to get close and reunite with him. She became the most wealthy and powerful meth single-handedly, by building an empire of all sorts of nasty businesses possible.

5 General Trivia

Reileen flaunted some of the most amazing fight moves throughout the series. Be it the sequence with Dimi II and the gangsters during the cage fight, her emotional fight with Takeshi, or, her iconic sword fight with Kristin Ortega. Fans still rave about her naked sword fight with Ortega wherein she walked on shards of broken glass and still gave a superb performance.

ATED: Altered Carbon: 10 Poe Facts The Show Left Out

The actress Dichen Lachman said in an interview that it was actually silicone that she walked on, which used to turn to dust as soon as she stepped on it. She said it felt like she was walking on extremely slippery black ice.

4 Reileen From The Books

One of the reasons that Reileen Kawahara has a different surname is also that she is not Kovacs’ sister in the books. She is actually an ex-boss of Takeshi Kovacs whom he had worked with, a long time ago. Yes, Reileen was wealthy, but, her life, family and businesses have not been explored in detail in the book series.

3 Death

Reileen died in 2384. In the finale of the first season, there is a very emotional moment when Takeshi Kovacs and Reileen fight with each other. Takeshi for his new friends and Reileen for him. She wanted him to stay with her forever and she could do anything for that, but, somewhere in her mind she knew it too that she is on a way to doom. That’s why she asked Tak to kill her saying that she would never stop.

2 Was She Telling The Truth In Her Final Moments?

In her last moments at the end of the season 1, she told Kovacs that she could give Quell to him if he helped her escape. She also told him that she had backed Quell up right before the explosion and not even Quell knew about it.

After the first season aired, the showrunners said these words were meant to be ambiguous, but, Dichen Lachman said she was telling the truth in her final moments. Of course, we know now(after watching the second season) that Reileen had trapped Quell in a box in Stronghold tunnels beside a Songspire tree.

1 Is She Still Alive?

Reileen is one of the most powerful Meths who ever existed and she had an insane amount of money. She could very easily have some more backup stacks stored in some remote servers and she might spin back up in season. But, the showrunners, the book series and the actress Dichen say that that seems unlikely. She has died and it was her last stack that Kovacs blew when he shot her neck.

About The Author