The ending of “Prey” and the great banter with the predator after the credits are explained

Loot hits Hulu in the USA and Disney Plus Star elsewhere in the world earlier this month. The film takes the Predator series back to 1719 and sees one of the alien hunters take on the Comanche Nation as Naru (Amber Midthunder). It is also absolutely excellent and ranks among the best entries in the series.

“More sci-fi movies need to take this kind of grounded approach, and this franchise just needs to pit its alien hunters against humans in gorgeously realized historical settings from now on,” I wrote in my CNET review. “For now though, stay and give Prey a watch.”

This adventure builds to a memorable finale, hints at what happened next in its beautiful animated caption sequences, and includes a great reference to the 1990s Predator 2. Let’s dive in – but be warned: these things will turn you into SPOILER A tyrannosaurus, just like me.

We can kill him

After seeing her fellow warriors of the Comanche nation and deeply unpleasant French poachers slaughtered by the Predator, Naru lures the beast into a trap in the dark forest. She kills him using a combination of her knowledge of the environment, the weapons she’s collected (including a familiar flintlock pistol engraved “Raphael Adolini 1715” — more on that later), and the Predator’s own technology.

Covered in the alien’s pale green blood, she carries his decapitated head back to camp and is revered as a hunter by her tribe. This echoes the sequence where her brother Taabe (Dakota Beavers) does this to the lion earlier in the film after she fails. By killing the Predator that took Taabe’s life, Naru proved that he was the tribe’s biggest badass.

And they all lived happily ever after. Except…

The Predator’s Revenge?

We get a great animated recap of the film’s events in the first part of the credits, with one added wrinkle. The final image pans out to show a Predator ship emerging from storm clouds above Naru’s camp, signifying that the aliens have attacked again. Which doesn’t look sporting for the Predators — you lost guys, go home.

It’s not clear how these events unfolded – perhaps we’ll find out in a sequel at some point – or when they happened. It’s possible that they left Naru in peace, and the image is a metaphor for a later hunt involving humans, as the original Predator and its sequels reveal that the aliens are somehow obsessed with fighting us.

This may be wishful thinking, however, as the flintlock gun Naru receives from murdered French poacher Raphael (Bennett Taylor) offers us a clue. It’s on her belt when she returns to camp, but fans will know that it appears later in the series.

Raphael Adolini 1715

In Predator 2, set in 1997, LAPD Lt. Mike Harrigan (Danny Glover) and the main Predator – known as the City Hunter – battle aboard one of the aliens’ ships. After the human’s triumph, a group of other Predators reveal themselves and appear ready to kill him.

Instead, one of them throws him a gift – Raphael’s 282-year-old flintlock gun.

“Take it,” the Predator snarls at a stunned Harrigan.

At the very least, it proves that the Predators got that gun back at some point in the coming years. They could kill Naru (since the image in the captions suggests they attacked her again), ally with her (humans are taken in by Predators in the Alien vs. Predator comics and the 2004 movie), or just bring him back , after she died.

Prey apparently supersedes the events of the 1996 Predator: 1718 comic, in which one of the aliens teams up with a pirate captain to fight his mutinous crew. The movie’s Raphael, the only one of the French poachers who doesn’t act like a complete scumbag, is probably the one whose name is engraved on the weapon.

The comics Alien vs. Predator were originally published by Dark Horse, but the license was transferred to Marvel after parent company Disney grabbed the rights to Alien and Predator after its acquisition by Fox in 2019. They are not currently available to read digitally, but Marvel may reissue them as they did with Dark Horse’s Star Wars comics.

Marvel has too a new Predator comic book series about a man hunting the Predator who killed her family. Only one issue has been released so far, but it’s atmospheric and intriguing.