As the surprising ending of Predator: Badlands suggests, fans might be reuniting with Dek, Thia and Bud at some point in the future, and director Dan Trachtenberg recently teased that it would be "a whole lot of fun". If you still haven't seen the film, you should stop reading right now because we're going to discuss some spoilers.
The latest Predator installment follows a young Yautja named Dek (played by Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) going on his first hunt. Considered the clan's weakest link, he needs to prove himself, so he decides to travel to a remote and hostile planet to hunt an "unkillable" creature known as the Kalisk. On his journey, he finds two unlikely allies in a Weyland-Yutani synthetic android, Thia (played by Elle Fanning), and an adorable creature (later revealed as a baby Kalisk) known as Bud.
After being captured by a group of Weyland-Yutani synths and saved by Thia, Dek decides to return home without the Kalisk and ends up proving himself in a different (and equally violent) way. At the end of Badlands, Dek kills his father, and decides to abandon his clan. Instead, he forms a new family with Thia and Bud, who decide to embark on a journey together. Before that, though, a new ship lands on Yautja Prime, and, in the very last line of the movie, Dek reveals that it's his mother.
The movie's ending clearly leaves the door open for a continuation, although a sequel is yet to be confirmed. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Trachtenberg teased what could come next. "It's definitely, I think, an awesome ending in that it is an ironic conclusion," he explained.
"After we've just been dealing with this crazy father the whole movie, that it asks what else Dek might have to go through, and how much worse that could be in the hands of mom, but also because, of course, it means that should we get to see that realized, it would be a whole lot of fun," he added.
Released in cinemas on November 7, Predator: Badlands has already earned the highest-grossing first weekend for the Predator franchise, doing better than the 1987 original starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and following sequels.
For more, read our Predator: Badlands review or our guide to watching the Predator movies in order, and see our list of all upcoming movies for everything else coming to theaters.
