What does a female Yautja look like? (The answer is in the Predator books)

This article contains SPOILERS for Predator: Badlands.

Predator: Badlands upsets a good deal of the status quo of the Predator franchise and offers up a whole lot of firsts for audiences to behold: the first time the word ‘Yautja’ is used onscreen, the first time a film has centered on a titular Predator as a protagonist, and the first time we’ve gotten a gonzo, pulpy science fiction serial within this series. But if the end of the film is to be believed, we’re all in for an even bigger surprise when the inevitable follow-up rolls around: the first live-action iteration of a female Yautja.

The vast majority of Predator: Badlands is about Dek, the ‘runt of the litter’ of a Yautja clan from Yautja Prime, who is striving to prove himself against impossible odds. He journeys to the most dangerous planet in the galaxy and strives to hunt down and kill the Kalisk, a monster so fearsome that even his father is afraid of it.

Dek ultimately learns many a valuable lesson along his journey and befriends both Thia (Elle Fanning as a Weyland-Yutani synthetic) and Bud, a young Kalisk. The end of the film sees him returning to Yautja Prime with his new friends by his side, fighting his father (who tried to have him killed earlier in the film and successfully killed his brother) and coming out victorious. All appears to be tied up in a nice, extremely satisfying little bow, right up until a ship appears on the horizon. Upon being asked who it is, Dek says, “my mother,” just before the film cuts to black.

Thus, when the next Predator rolls around, its all but guaranteed that Dek’s mother will play an important role in it. Since the release of the film, director Dan Trachtenberg has essentially even said as much, teasing how the “ironic” twist paves the way for future stories. In the entire history of the Predator franchise, a female Yautja has never been seen in any of the live-action movies. Though each movie features a distinct and different Yautja, or even multiple of them, they have all been decidedly male, up until now. However, that isn’t to say that there haven’t been female Yautja in expanded media materials, such as the Dark Horse and Marvel comic book series, video games, and novels.

One of the earliest instances of a female Yautja being depicted occurred back in 1994 (only a handful of years after the original film had released) in Steve Perry and Stephani Perry’s Aliens vs. Predator: Prey book. The father-daughter writing duo’s book contained a few glimpses at what domestic life might look like for a Yautja, featuring female members who were highly maternal by nature. In fact, the book describes the Yautja as a matriarchal society (much like their adversaries the Xenomorphs) with females being considered the more domineering of the two genders.

Elsewhere, portions of the original Aliens vs. Predator comic book depicted female Yautja as the more dominant in the act of mating as well. Things got even more complex and nuanced when John Shirley’s book Predator: Forever Midnight described that some Yautja actually have the ability to change gender at-will.

All of this to say, when crafting any sequel to Predator: Badlands, Trachtenberg has a more than ample amount of source material to pull from regarding the role of a female, or even matriarchal Yautja. In many ways, Trachtenberg’s Predator films have always felt like incredible comics brought roaring to life, so it's befitting that he is taking the series in such a pulpy direction moving forward.

Predator: Badlands is out now in theaters.