Predator: Badlands is now streaming on Hulu-Disney+, which means a much wider audience of viewers is now getting to see the movie. Badlands is a unique form of Predator movie, in that it is the first installment to make an actual member of the Predator race, the Yautja, the protagonist of the movie. That character, Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi), was a runt who was marked for death by his father, the chieftain of the clan.
Dek’s status as an outsider trying to earn the respect of his clan provided an interesting microscope on the customs and values of the Yautja, which are, clearly, much more brutal and savage than human civilization. However, in its final moments, Predator: Badlands makes a pretty startling cliffhanger revelation – one that taps into decades of Predator franchise lore that may have never made it onto the big screen.
Predator: Badlands Teases The Screen Debut of Female Yautja
Dek’s Mom approaches predator: Badlands / 20 century studios
(SPOILERS!) At the end of Predator: Badlands, Dek succeeds in his quest to conquer the “death planet” Genna and return home to Yautja Prime with the head of Genna’s worst beast, the Kalisk. However, Dek pulls off a smart ruse, using the head of his android foe, Tessa (Elle Fanning), as his trophy, luring his father into a final duel when the chieftain won’t honor Dek’s victory by finally giving him his cloaking device. Dek wins the duel, and therefore gets the opportunity to become the new clan leader – and offer he refuses, as his allies from Genna (Tessa’s “sister” android Thia, and the Kalisk) are now his clan. However, the glory of victory is short-lived when a massive Yautja ship appears on the horizon. Dek confirms that it is his mother and that an even bigger fight is likely ahead of them.
Female Yautja have never officially appeared in any Predator movie, but that doesn’t mean they are absent from the franchise entirely. Fans know that Predator has a deep library of comics, novels, and video games that have expanded the lore exponentially. One of the more famous examples is The Machiko Noguchi Saga within Bantam Books’ Predator novel series of the 1990s. That series centered on a Japanese woman named Machiko Noguchi who becomes an honorary member of the Yautja tribe, named Da’Dtou-di (“small knife”), the Human Predator. Noguchi starts by helping the Yautja in a hunt against a colony of Xenomorphs (Aliens vs. Predator: Prey) and earns the hunter aliens’ respect.
As Noguchi gets embedded deeper in Yautja society, she learns very gender-specific perspectives on the alien culture. It is revealed in Prey and another work, Aliens vs. Predator: War, that Yautja culture is foundationally matriarchal. Other non-canon works, like DC’s Superman and Batman versus Aliens and Predator comics, actually gave us a visual representation of a Yautja village, where females are seen maintaining domestic life and rearing the young children. It’s been further confirmed in other works that female Yautja have mammal-style reproductive and birthing systems and are attached to their young. The video game Predator: Hunting Grounds introduced female Yautja hunters to the screen for the first time and demonstrated how they are just as deadly and cunning as the males. Taking all the different lanes of storytelling into account (comics, books, games, film), there are now at least a dozen different female Yautja characters who have appeared or been featured in Predator.
Predator: Badlands director Dan Trachtenberg has seemingly confirmed one unofficial piece of lore with this cliffhanger ending about Dek’s mom: That Yautja clans have a “king” and a “queen” who rule wth equal power. In previous lore, it’s been loosely established that Yautja kings are primarily in charge of hunting parties and off-world hunting campaigns, while the queens rule the villages on the homeworld of Yautja Prime, managing everything from the domestic to political aspects of life.
Hopefully we’ll get a much clearer picture of thingsif (when?) Predator: Badlands gets a sequel, and we get to actually meet Dek’s mom. Predator: Badlands is now streaming on Hulu-Disney+. Discuss the film with us on ComicBook Forum!