In a 2022 “Ask Me Anything” thread, Radio Silence responded to a fan question about their plans for Kirby in “Scream 5.” They explained:

“We had wanted to include [Kirby] in some way from very early in the process and spoke with Hayden, but we didn’t want to shoehorn Kirby into the movie, so we kept looking for a place to put her in. In a deleted scene at the sheriff’s [station], there was a Kirby missing poster behind Jasmin [Savoy Brown] and Mikey [Madison].”

It’s a fascinating detail, because it implies a completely different plan for Kirby’s role in the franchise than what we got. Whereas Kirby’s “Scream VI” role paints a picture of someone who’s been living a straightforward life training and then working for the FBI, a missing poster implies that she’s gone off the grid entirely. Maybe she’s been kidnapped, or maybe she’s planning some Ghostface hijinks of her own. “Scream VI” briefly played around with the idea of Kirby being a killer, but that red herring likely would’ve been way more convincing if it’d been pre-established that she once mysteriously vanished for a significant period of time.

On the bright side, the franchise clearly made the right choice in waiting until “Scream VI” to give Kirby her proper reintroduction. The small Easter egg in “Scream 5” helped to give the more skeptical, critical fans of the franchise some extra time to make peace with Kirby’s miraculous survival, and holding off on her meant that “Scream 5” had more time to properly introduce the new cast of characters. When Kirby finally returned in “Scream VI,” she had a clear role that intersected naturally with the main plot; it may have taken a while, but Kirby fans finally got their reward.