Esther Coleman

**Esther Coleman** is the main antagonist in the 2009 horror film *Orphan* and the 2022 horror film *Orphan: First Kill*, the prequel to *Orphan*.

## Orphan: First Kill

Leena Klammer escapes the Saarne Institute by seducing one of the security guards and luring him in her room, only to stab him in the neck, and then stealing his key. After escaping the Saarne Institute, Leena hides in Anna Troyev’s car trunk, the art therapist at the insane asylum. Leena murders Anna that night by pushing her down the stairs. Leena cleans herself up and changes into a clean dress and tights and wraps velvet ribbons around her neck and wrists to hide the scars.

Leena researches missing American girls and notices she bears a resemblance to a girl named Esther Albright, and pretends to be her when a police officer finds her.

Leena concocts an elaborate story about how a woman abducted her and forced her to pretend to be her daughter. The Albright family matriarch Tricia takes her in, but notices she seems different; not remembering the death of "her" grandmother, or what type of bird her therapist had. It is later revealed that Tricia was aware that Leena was an imposter because her son Gunnar had accidentally killed the real Esther and she covered it up without telling her husband Allen. Tricia gives Leena specific details about the real Esther's life to ensure her therapist and family friends buy the ruse and no one discovers the truth about Esther's death. Leena and Tricia murder a detective who had discovered that her fingerprints did not match and throw his body down a well.

Gunnar and Tricia attempt to kill Esther when she is not phased by their blackmail attempts, and appears to be making romantic advances on Allen. When Allen goes to an art gallery, Gunnar and Tricia try to stage a suicide, but Esther manages to kill Gunnar with a crossbow, and accidentally sets the house on fire. When Allen returns home and finds Esther and Tricia hanging from the roof during a struggle, he saves Esther but Tricia falls to her death. After Esther's disguise comes off, he is horrified to the point he falls off the roof and died.

Esther is last seen with her therapist discussing her upcoming transferal to an adoption agency, foreshadowing the events of the first film, *Orphan*.

## Orphan

Kate and John Coleman's marriage is strained after the stillbirth of their third child, Jessica, whose loss is particularly hard on Kate, a recovering alcoholic. She and John decide to visit St. Mariana's Home for Girls, the local orphanage in hopes of adopting a child to fill the void for the loss of Jessica. They meet Esther at the orphanage and they’re impressed with her painting skills. Esther charms Kate and John and talks about how life at the orphanage is very lonely. After some consideration and not seeming appealed by the other kids, Kate and John decided to adopt her, and Esther officially becomes part of the Coleman family. The Coleman's 5 year old daughter, Max, who is deaf and communicates with sign language, embraces Esther almost immediately, but their 12 year son, Daniel, is less welcoming.

After living with her new adopted family for several weeks, Kate grows suspicious when Esther expresses far more knowledge of sex than would be expected for a child of her age. Esther further antagonizes Kate by cutting flowers planted as a memorial to her stillborn child, casually reveals when other woman flirt with John (given he previously had an affair) and reads intimate details from Kate's diary. She is further alarmed when Sister Abigail, the head of the orphanage, warns her and John about Esther's tendency to be near when things go wrong. Esther overhears this and later kills Sister Abigail by bludgeoning her to death with a hammer. She convinces Max to help her with this and they hide all pieces of evidence in their treehouse.

A few days later at school, she opens Daniel's backpack causing his books to fall out when he's walking up the stairs. Kate gets out of the car to help him but leaves it running. Esther comes back to the car puts the gear selector in neutral and takes off the parking brake, causing the car to roll down the hill with Max still inside.

Daniel decides to retrieve the hammer which was used to slay Sister Abigail to prove Esther's guilt. However when he reveals his plans to Max, Esther overhears. The next day, Daniel goes to the treehouse and finds it unlocked. He enters the treehouse and searches for the hammer but finds nothing. Esther appears behind him and sets the treehouse ablaze to stop Daniel. She leaves the now-on-fire treehouse and locks Daniel inside, in an attempt to kill him. Daniel climbs out from the treehouse through the window and near burns to death, only ends up falling to the ground, injured and unconscious. Esther near murders him with a brick but Max shoves her out of the way. Daniel is hospitalized cause of the neck injury and abdominal bleeding. Esther then murders Daniel at the hospital but doctors save him. Kate, Knowing what happened, furiously slaps Esther and knocks her down and is immediately subdued and sedated.

Esther tries to seduce a drunken John, who finally realizes Kate is telling the truth and threatens to send her back to the orphanage. Esther, mad and hurt, ransacks her room and takes off her clothing/makeup, unwraps her breasts and removes the ribbons around her neck and wrists. Meanwhile, as Kate is coming out of sedation, she receives a call on her cell phone from the Saarne Institute. Dr. Värava, who works at the Institute, reveals that Esther is actually a 33-year-old woman from Estonia named Leena Klammer. She has hypopituitarism, a disorder that stunted her physical growth and caused dwarfism and as a result, she spent most of her life posing as a little girl. The doctor tells Kate that Leena is dangerous and especially violent.

At home, Leena, hurt from being scolded, murders John now wearing black long sleeves with her hair tied looking aged. Max witnesses her father being stabbed by Leena/Esther and hides in a hamper in her closet. Kate rushes home, only to find John dead. Leena gets a revolver from John's safe, shoots Kate on the arm and hunts Kate down before she goes to search for Max. While firing at Max in their greenhouse, Kate manages to break through from above Leena/Esther and knocks her out.

Leena later follows Kate outside to a frozen pond and lunges at Kate, where they fall and struggle onto the ice as Max watches from a hill above the pond. Max maneuvers herself to grab the gun that was dropped by Kate during the struggle. She fires at Leena/Esther but hits the ice instead, which breaks, causing Kate and Leena/Esther to drop into the water below.

After a brief struggle under the ice, during which Kate is stabbed in the leg and Leena/Esther is elbowed in the face, Kate climbs out partially, followed by Leena/Esther, begging Kate not to let her die, foolishly tries to manipulate Kate again, addresses her as “Mommy” while holding a knife behind her back and begging “Mommy” not to let her die. Kate, now aware of everything she’s done and now knows everything about Leena/Esther and who she really is, angrily retorts that she isn’t her mother, furiously screaming at Esther, "I'm not your f\*\*king mommy!" and kicks Leena/Esther hard in her face, breaking her neck and sending her back into the pond, finally killing her as her corpse sinks to the bottom of the lake with blood rushing through the water, while Max and Kate are met by the police moments after as Esther's corpse keeps sinking to her watery grave. With this, the 7 people she had killed, the Sullivan family, Sister Abigail, and John Coleman are finally avenged.

## Appearance

Esther is a slender young girl with medium length dark brown hair and green eyes. Esther is a girly girl and dresses in a very feminine fashion. She loves wearing dresses and skirts with fancy boots or shoes. She usually styles her in pigtails, but sometimes she’ll wear her hair down or will accessorize with a fancy hat. She wears a velvet ribbon choker around her neck, matching velvet ribbons around her wrists, and ribbons in her hair.