Lauren is the daughter of Senator George and Olivia Reed, and was introduced at the beginning of the third season of the show as Vaughn's wife, having married him during Sydney's two-year absence under the control of The Covenant.

She is also, contrary to her air of innocence, a cold-blooded killer, yet she also appears to have a soft side since she can't bring herself to pull the trigger when tasked to murder her own father when he is given evidence of her true affiliations and to shore up her faltering relationship with Vaughn.

Lauren then impersonates Sydney with a prosthetic mask to infiltrate the CIA, shoots Marshall Flinkman, and inflicts major damage to the building as well as killing and injuring several agents with remote-triggered bombs before murdering an innocent motorist and stealing his car to escape.

Her 'confession' is ambiguous as she does appear to have developed feelings for Vaughn, as is evident by her reaction to Sark's earlier observation that it killed her when Michael dropped his gun, which was trained on her, to save Sydney.

After Sark gives her a crucial password, she reveals herself as Sydney, wearing an identical mask to the one the real Lauren had used earlier with a voice modulator.

This information turns out to be evidence that Jack Bristow was authorized by the CIA to kill his ex-wife, Sydney's mother Irina Derevko, an order he apparently carried out.

In the fourth season episode, "A Man of His Word", Lauren's corpse was shown in a special high-security crypt after Sark demands to see her body.

[4] To explain her character's accent (George is Australian), the writers wrote that she was born in the United States but grew up in London.

"[6] The character of Lauren Reed received quite a bit of animosity from fans of the show, according to series creator J. J. Abrams, in part because she disrupted the romance between Sydney and Vaughn.