As if you thought one big, nasty Predator wasn't enough, it looks like we've got a whole coterie of alien nasties zipping down for the Prey sequel.
If you didn't catch the Predator prequel over the weekend on Disney+, let us hastily get you in the know: Prey, the fifth instalment of the Predator franchise, puts a twist on the long-standing action sci-fi series by dropping one of the space hunters in the Great Plains over three-hundred years ago.
In lieu of battling a platoon of Vietnam-hardened American soldiers and one big 'ol Austrian Übermensch, this guy is pit against a slew of apex predators — not least including a bear, which it snuffs out with one hell of a sucker punch — before graduating to the human warriors of the Comanche tribe.
Our heroine is Amber Midthunder's Naru, a young tribal healer determined to prove her worth as a great hunter like her much-respected brother, Taabe. While not quite boasting the terrific fighting abilities of her sibling, she still manages to overcome the Pred with a combination of wits, shrewd tactics and the help of her very good dog, Sarii.
As is the great tradition of the Comanche, Prey's ending sees Naru deposit the Predator's decapitated head at the foot of the tribe's elders, thus becoming the new warchief. But if the credits are anything to go by, this isn't the end of Naru's fight with that nefarious race of extraterrestrial huntsmen. And if one of Prey's sly easter eggs is anything to go by, the prognosis might not be as good as you'd think.
What is the Prey post-credits scene?
Prey doesn't have a post-credits scene per se. The credits reel, however, overlays a graphic retelling the events of the film in animations evocative of Indigenous paintings, from Naru's humble origins to her defeat of the Predator that had decimated her tribe.
The effect is to suggest her story has been handed down generations by way of oral tradition: the tale of the Comanche's greatest ever warrior, she who defeated unrivalled odds to save the group from an unthinkable threat.
Only, it doesn't end with her dropping the Predator's head at her village. Moments after their elated celebrations of having put the beast to bed, Naru and her tribespeople are confronted by a thunderous explosion in the clouds, followed by the emergence of three more alien ships. Looks like they're coming back for revenge. Given the rapturous response to Prey, you've got to think a sequel is on the cards.
“We have a lot of thoughts,” writer-director Dan Trachtenberg told Syfy Wire on the possibility of a sequel. “How could we ever turn off the thoughts about fun and exciting things? But certainly what was really exciting about the [credits sequence] was what would be in any other movie, an end tag, a live-action tag [in addition to the credits]. That our end credit sequence actually has a story point in it, I think is really awesome.”
What's this Prey easter egg then?
Strap in, we're taking a quick trip Christmas Carol-style back to the much-derided but nevertheless badass Predator 2, which pits Danny Glover as one of LA's finest against the titular big bad.
You might recall how that one ends: Glover's Lieutenant Mike Harrigan fights the Predator throughout the city — from the subway to the streets and rooftops — before tracking it to its spaceship hidden deep below the urban landscape. He manages to kill it with its own weapon, but then… well, a squad of its space-bound colleagues emerge from the shadows.
Instead of murdering Harrigan by way of retribution, they hand him an old-timey flintlock pistol as a trophy for his win.
Now, come back to Prey: in the third act of the film, Naru is captured by a group of French colonialists who seek to use her as bait against the Predator presently hunting them down. The plan backfires and most of them are killed. One of them, a translator called Raphael, gives Naru his flintlock pistol for her tending to his blown-off leg.
What's engraved on that pistol? Raphael Andolini, 1715.
Aaaaaaand what do we find on the pistol in Predator 2? Raphael Andolini, 1715.
Given Naru still has the gun at the end of Prey, this bodes one of two things: either the Predator race are temporal nomads that hunt creatures across time, or the Predator of the first sequel had somehow managed to get his hands on Naru's pistol.
Whether it's a fun little reference for eagle-eyed fans or an explicit teaser for the follow-up, which feels inevitable given the groundswell of acclaim for Trachtenberg's film, what a cool relic to include. It really shows what you get when you give the right person the keys to a beloved franchise.
