Warning: this article contains spoilers for Predator: Killer of Killers.
Predator: Killer of Killers, which is now streaming on Hulu, is not what you think. Or at least, there’s a key piece of information that 20th Century Studios has been hiding about the animated movie… Yes, there is an anthology element to the movie, telling three stories throughout time set in the Predator universe. But the movie is actually one big story that connects all three elements, and ends with a wild final act that not only blows the Predator cinematic universe wide open, but also potentially sets up a sequel to Prey. Yes, seriously.
Predator: Killer of Killers’ Ending Explained
Let’s lay some of the groundwork first, before we get into that scream-inducing ending of the movie. In the film, we’re introduced to three different characters: a vengeful Viking voiced by Lindsay LaVanchy; a vengeful ninja in feudal Japan voiced by Louis Ozawa; and a non-vengeful World War II pilot, voiced by Rick Gonzalez.
However, it’s clear things are not what they seem at the end of the first section, subtitled “The Shield.” In it, we follow Ursa (LaVanchy), a warrior from 841 A.D. who wields her shield like a weapon, and is looking to kill the man who forced her to kill her own father as a girl. Joining Ursa is her son, Anders (Damien Haas), as well as a cadre of hardened warriors. But when it comes time to strike down the man she’s chased her whole life, it turns out there’s something else there. You guessed it! It’s a Yautja, aka a Predator. He slaughters Ursa’s whole clan and fights her nearly to the death, though he ultimately loses to the Viking, getting impaled under the icy water on an anchor thanks to some quick thinking. It comes at a heavy cost, though, as Ursa discovers that Anders was mortally wounded during the conflict.
“Anders, my son,” she says, trying to cool him down with the surrounding snow.
“Mother, did you kill the monster?” Anders says, and dies as she cradles him in her arms.
But then, the twist: the camera spins around Ursa, and the scene fades from Scandinavia to an alien spaceship, where Ursa is in the same position, minus Anders’ body, with some sort of glowing collar on her neck. In the same room is a man kneeling… And it turns out that’s one of two twins from Japan in the 1600s, Kenji and Kyoshi (both voiced by Ozawa). In the mostly dialogue-free section, titled “The Sword,” we see how Kenji loses a fight to his brother and is exiled, returning to try and retake his ancestral home, just as a – you’re not going to believe this – Predator attacks. In the process, the brothers team up and kill the Predator, but Kyoshi is killed in the process.
Kenji ends up on that same alien spaceship, and we get to meet the third member of the “team,” Torres (Gonzalez). In the section titled “The Bullet,” we learn how he was a bit of a screw-up and a good mechanic who dreamed of being a pilot, then watched as his entire squadron was killed by a rogue Predator who looks a lot like Christopher Plummer’s character in Star Trek VI. True to form and the title of the movie, he manages to kill that Predator, but then wakes up in a stasis chamber on a Yautja ship. We loop back to the previous scenes to see that all three of them were seemingly put in cryostasis, and that’s when it becomes abundantly clear that this is all joining together for one story… not an anthology.
Ursa, Torres, and Kenji are all thrown into a gladiatorial arena by an army of Yautja and told they need to fight to the death. If they refuse, their heads get blown up, Suicide Squad-style, hence the glowing collars. If they win? They get the honor of fighting the massive Warlord Predator (Britton Watkins), who may or may not be wearing a cape made of xenomorph tails. And to help them along the path to becoming “the killer of killers,” they each get a “weapon of their tribe.” That means a shield for Ursa, a sword for our ninja, and for Torres… Why lookie there, it’s Raphael Adolini’s pistol!
If you’re not totally familiar, the weapon was first introduced in 1990’s Predator 2, as a gift given to Lieutenant Mike Harrigan (Danny Glover) by a group of Predators. It later popped up in 2022’s Prey, which takes place in 1719, and shows Adolini (Bennett Taylor) gifting the pistol to a Comanche warrior named Naru (Amber Midthunder), which she then uses to kill the feral Yautja in that movie. So, how did it get on an alien planet where Torres is flummoxed about how to load a flintlock pistol? We’ll get to that in a second.
As you might expect, after battling each other, the three survivors manage to get their collars off and team up to take down the Warlod Predator. In the process, they take control of the Warlord’s ship, with our friendly ninja Kenji losing his sword arm… And then the Yautja fire a harpoon that holds them back from escaping. Realizing she can save two boys, if not her son, Ursa sacrifices herself to get the harpoon loose, and Kenji and Torres fly off in the distance, brothers in arms.
It’s not over yet, though. They don’t kill Ursa, but instead make her watch as Warlord raises his massive axe. “Let’s go hunting,” says the Warlord, and a massive fleet of Yautja ships takes off after Torres and Kenji, meaning they are very much not out of the woods yet.
Seems like a nice setup for a Killer of Killers sequel, right? But wait, there’s more to it. Way more.
How Predator: Killer Of Killers Might Set up Prey 2
After the tease that Torres and Kenji’s days are about to get exponentially worse, we cut to the main title, and then we cut back to Ursa, now once again in cryogenic freeze. The camera pulls out, and shows two Yautja taking her to storage in a chamber filled with hundreds, if not thousands, of other units, in a scene that both in terms of the framing and music is purposefully reminiscent of the classic “storing of the ark of the covenant” scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Side-note here of potential interest: this isn’t the first time we’ve seen the Predators use cryostasis. A similar device was used in the Marvel Comics series Predator: The Last Hunt by Ed Brisson and Francesco Manna, which brought together various people from throughout time, including the brother of Dutch (Arnold Schwarzenegger), on a planet that served as a Yautja hunting preserve.
Back to Killer of Killers, though. They pass by a stasis chamber holding a strange alien that, of note, is not the xenomorph, as well as a chamber holding an unidentified, shadowed man with a close-cropped haircut. But the stinger is left for the third cryo-chamber, which is holding none other than… Naru.
Wait, what? How did Naru get there? And what does this mean for potential sequels?
So, if it’s been a while since you watched Prey, while the main action of the movie ended with Naru victorious and becoming War Chief of her tribe, the end credits showed an animated sequence that recapped the events of the movie and ended ominously with three Predator ships descending over the village.
The assumption was that this was leading into Prey 2… But as it turns out, something very different happened. While there are some gaps to fill in, it seems likely, as a “killer of killers,” Naru was captured by the Yautja, put in cryo-stasis, and that’s how the Predators have possession of Raphael Adolini’s pistol. In Killer of Killers, Torres drops the pistol on the ground of the gladiatorial arena when he’s almost eaten by a giant beast. Meaning the pistol is back with the Yautja by the end of Killer of Killers, not with Torres, so they can give it to Harrigan in Predator 2. Cool? Cool.
Back to it, though, could Naru’s stasis be leading into a Prey 2? Given director Dan Trachtenberg has seemed to want to forge a new path with every movie, probably not a direct Prey sequel. But it also seems likely this tease is more than an Easter egg. Whether Naru shows up in a potential Killer of Killers 2 or somewhere else remains to be seen.
In fact, there’s a pretty tantalizing possibility…
Could Amber Midthunder’s Naru Be In Predator: Badlands?
Later this year, on November 7, 2025, Predator: Badlands will be released in theaters. Based on what we know about the movie so far, it’s supposed to be a standalone film set at least in part on the Predators’ homeworld, starring Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi as an outcast Predator named Dek and Elle Fanning as a Weyland-Yutani android named Thia. Badlands is directed by Trachtenberg, who directed Prey and Killer of Killers, and written by Patrick Aison, who also wrote Prey.
We’re connecting a lot of dots here that may or may not connect, but it’s never specified where Torres and company end up in the final part of Killer of Killers. Given the density of Yautja, it sure could be the Predator homeworld, Yautja Prime. And while 20th Century Studios is selling Badlands as a standalone film, they also sold Killer of Killers as an anthology film, which it most decidedly is not. Is a similar twist coming with Badlands? Is it possible that Killer of Killers is, in fact, a direct setup to the plot of the live-action movie? And if so, could Naru be unfrozen to enter the fray, and/or Torres and Kenji pop up in their rogue Yautja spaceship?
That’s a lot to put on a mid-credits stinger, but Trachtenberg’s oeuvre is filled with films that often aren’t what they seem to be (see 10 Cloverfield Lane, Prey, and Killer of Killers for more on that). While there have been no reports of Amber Midthunder on the set of Badlands, there also haven’t been a lot of reports from the set, period.
To play this conservatively, let’s say we take Trachtenberg at his word, and despite both Killer of Killers and Badlands possibly being set in the same location, they are separate movies, and also separate from Prey. Even if Badlands mostly stands alone, there’s still a whole universe to explore out there. And it’s clear that Naru is still part of that universe. Will she eventually become the killer of killers? Or a trophy? We’ll keep hunting for clues until we find out.
For more, check out IGN's Predator: Killer of Killers review and see why fans think there's a Predator cameo in the Alien: Earth trailer.
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