Editor's note: The following contains spoilers for Prey.In the Predator franchise prequel Prey, Naru (Amber Midthunder) is introduced as a young woman who has her mother Aruka's (Michelle Thrush) skill for healing and vast knowledge of herbs. This should be enough for Naru to support her Comanche tribe, but she yearns to complete the kühtaamia, a rite of passage where she must hunt something that’s hunting her. It’s the only way she can become a warrior like her brother Taabe (Dakota Beavers). In the end, she becomes the War Chief by bringing her people the head of the Predator that she killed. But how does Naru triumph?
Naru is underestimated at every turn, which drives her desire to hunt even more. While the film never says it out loud, it’s obvious that men and women in the tribe are perceived to have different duties. Naru strains against this rigidity. From the film's early moments, Naru leaves her farming duties to practice her skills as a tracker and a hunter, effortlessly wielding a tomahawk, but the kill consistently eludes her. Yet, she remains curious—investigating the animal trap that her faithful dog Sarii gets caught in—and observant, since she appears to be the only one who notices a strange object in the sky. Naru believes it’s the Thunderbird, and a sign for her to complete the kühtaamia, but it is, in fact, a Predator ship landing near the great plains.
These are common refrains throughout the film. That’s how the writing and directing team of Patrick Aison and Dan Trachtenberg, along with insights from producer Jhane Myers, craft Naru into a protagonist who triumphs despite the odds stacked against her. Naru is a small, fragile human. She can’t take down a giant alien with nigh impenetrable skin and advanced technology. And the creators know that, which is why she doesn’t go into the final fight with bare knuckles and nothing else. She’s fully armed with an arsenal of knowledge and intelligence and hunting skills — and she uses those to best the Predator. This is the ultimate underdog story, and it’s being told through centering a young Indigenous woman who lives in harsh conditions all the time. She knows a thing or two about surviving and killing.
Using her tracking skills, Naru is the one who notices the snake that has been skinned alive, the unusual prints on the ground, and the damage done to a tree too high for a bear to reach. Despite being untested in an actual hunt, she doesn’t waver in the face of a lion attacking her. Naru believes in herself. She has to since no one else does. This confidence goes a long way in her survival and eventual victory — but she’s not without flaws. Because of her alertness, Naru is distracted in what should have been a moment of glory and is knocked unconscious by the lion. It’s a defeat that sets her family’s perception of her back, though it leads to Taabe being declared the War Chief.
Naru's innovation is also demonstrated at multiple points. When she finds that she isn’t able to throw the tomahawk fast and far enough to get her prey, she improvises by tying a rope to her trusty weapon, making it easily retrievable and relentlessly practicing with it until she finally gets a few rabbits. Everything Naru is able to achieve comes from tons of practice, and we’re shown this, especially during a scene halfway through Prey. In her obsession with tracking the Predator, Naru gets caught in a bog and quickly begins to drown when she brings out her tomahawk, now equipped with the rope. But she’s still learning this new skill and has limited mobility because of the mud, so she isn’t able to aim correctly several times. It takes her several tries and near-death, but in the end, her axe finds the right spot, and she pulls herself to safety. What Naru lacks in natural skill, she makes up for with endless patience and perseverance.
One advantage Naru has over everyone else who encounters the Predator is that she already knows something suspicious is prowling the plains. She keeps tracking it, collecting evidence like the florescent blood and the giant footprint, so she is surprised, but not caught unawares when the alien appears. Unlike her overconfident, condescending peers, Naru is able to keep her wits about her as the Predator mounts an assault on the young hunters. It’s also notable that Naru doesn’t attack as soon as she sees her target. This sets her apart from her kin. Patience is the key once again. But Naru’s observant abilities come to the fore in the latter half of the film. When she’s caught in a trap and helpless, she notices that the Predator doesn’t attack her. Once she and Taabe are tied up as bait by the French trappers, Naru realizes that the French have accidentally saved her and her brother and spelled their own doom. The Predator is a hunter—static bait doesn’t threaten him.
Nothing assuages her curiosity, because it leads to innovation, and that is how Naru survives. When the trappers’ camp is decimated by the Predator, she helps an injured Frenchman, which in turn allows her to learn how to use his pistol. She also extracts the Predator’s weapon that injured the man’s leg and keeps it. Shout out to the writers for subtly adding how women are always prepared because they carry a bag with them. Naru’s bag of tools is one of her many saving graces in the final act of the film.
Yes, Naru has a few lucky breaks. She may have been killed had the Predator not attacked the bear before it got to her. She may not have outrun him for long enough if she hadn’t been caught in the trap near the French camp. She would have certainly been killed had Taabe not used his last breath to distract the Predator. But, most protagonists in most stories have their fair share of luck; what they do with it is most important.
This brings us to the final confrontation. Instead of going headlong into battle, Naru plots her revenge using every skill she’s trained in, combined with the knowledge she has gained by observing the Predator. While viewers are familiar with the Predator’s heat-seeking helmet, Naru finds out how to defeat the technology through observation. Throughout the film, she uses a blood-cooling herb to staunch her compatriots’ injuries. At the French camp, she gives the same injured Frenchman that herb and notices that he becomes invisible to the Predator; she later uses this knowledge to cloak herself from the alien in the final battle. Naru has trouble with her aim, so she makes sure the Predator is close enough for her to shoot his helmet off.
That stamina and gumption we saw in her hand-to-hand combat encounters return with a vengeance when she takes on the Predator. After years of being underestimated by her peers, her rage is fueled further when even the Predator refuses to see her as a threat. She’s fierce, and angry, and her survival instinct is at maximum, and she takes it all out on the Predator. This is a woman unafraid of pain, and the Predator pays the price for it. Naru also knows that none of their weapons, Comanche or French, will make a dent in the Predator, so she uses his devices to hurt him, and her tomahawk rope to shove him into the bog that had almost drowned her earlier. Kudos to Sarii for ably following Naru’s instructions. Naru owes her dog a lot! But Naru’s intelligence cannot be underestimated. She couldn’t have fought the Predator on her own, so she traps him in the bog where she had positioned his laser-guided helmet. When the Predator tries to shoot her, the lasers seek him out and kill him instead. Patience, observation, wits — all these combined allow Naru to return home triumphant.
Naru prevails where her warrior kin didn’t because she was able to marry her hunting and tracking skills with her scientific knowledge of medicine and herbs. She also uses her intelligence alongside her fighting abilities. But Naru didn’t generate these abilities all of a sudden; she learned them through blood, sweat, and sacrifice, which were developed throughout Prey to give the final confrontation a credible conclusion. Naru using her experience, and her many failures, to eventually best a Predator on her own terms, puts her up there in the pantheon of memorable action heroes—of any gender—in genre films.