28 Years Later, This Jurassic Park Line Is Still a Huge Mystery for Fans

Few franchises have captured our imaginations the way Jurassic Park did. The first movie, released in 1993, blew fans out of the water. Between Michael Crichton’s premise and the utilization of massive animatronics, this movie changed the name of the game for many people. 30 years, six movies, and countless theories later, and we’re still talking about them. That’s one heck of an achievement, but here’s the thing: we still have many questions about the world, from science to dinosaurs to everything else. One such question revolves around the central location, las Cinco Muertes, the Five Deaths. The name first came up during The Lost World: Jurassic Park, and we just can’t let it go.

It may seem like such a small thing to focus on, but mentioning las Cinco Muertes opened the door to a few mysteries, as far as fans are concerned. These questions include: are the islands real? Why are they called the Five Deaths? And, finally, what is happening on the other islands?

Las Cinco Muertes

The Meurtes Archipelago, aka Las Cinco Muertes, is, first and foremost, a fictional location. Sorry, guys, you won’t find it on any map, dinosaurs or not. Still, various parts of Jurassic Park lore have confirmed it’s a chain of five islands a few hundred miles away from Costa Rica. Each island has its own name: Isla Sorna, Isla Matanceros, Isla Muerta, Isla Tacaño, and Isla Pena. Isla Nublar is not part of this archipelago but a neighboring island a little less than 100 miles away. For context, Isla Nublar is the setting for Jurassic Park and the Jurassic World movies. Meanwhile, Isla Sorna was visited during The Lost World and Jurassic Park III. This means that the other four archipelago islands are unaccounted for, as far as movie portrayals are concerned.

Richard Hammond leased access to the islands to “safely” establish a breeding facility and theme park. Sometime later, InGen gained control over the company, buying Isla Sorna and presumably picking up the lease for the rest. Isla Nublar became the base for Jurassic Park, featuring the museum, base, and the park itself. Meanwhile, Isla Sorna, the largest in the chain of islands, was “Site B,” a location for the cloning and nurturing of dinosaurs. It’s essentially the same as the primary island but doesn’t have the same aesthetics since, ideally, it’d never be seen by the public. So, what about the other four? By all appearances, they were left untouched by either version of the company. This may have been partially due to known volcanos on at least two of the islands. Ironically, it’s a volcano on Isla Nublar that becomes a problem during Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.

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Explaining “The Five Deaths”

Calling the archipelago “the five deaths” seems oddly appropriate, given the situation. As such, fans may not have questioned it when the name came up throughout The Lost World. They may have even assumed it involved dinosaurs killing anyone who got too close. That’s borderline the premise for the second movie, so it’s a reasonable assumption. However, there’s a solid chance that Hammond chose the islands because they already had a horrible reputation, thanks to folklore. In other words, they were possibly already being avoided, and the islands’ isolation furthered this.

Here’s where things get interesting: the archipelago isn’t named The Five Deaths because it has five deadly islands. Instead, it is named for a Native American legend in which a warrior was forced to choose between five ways to die. Each method would occur on a different island, hence the coinciding numbers. If that wasn’t enough to drive the point home, here’s this: each island is named after its execution method. These methods included burning, drowning, beheading, crushing, and hanging.

As the legend goes, the warrior in the story refused to choose only one method, instead demanding all of them, and thus, a series of executions were carried out. It left people to believe that all five islands were cursed because of these horrific actions. Even without the potential curse, the sudden explanation of the name is probably enough to keep all but the most determined away from these islands. It doesn’t exactly scream family vacation.

To sum it up, none of the six islands mentioned in the franchise are real; five are named after a local legend and only two ever intentionally housed dinosaurs. Yes, this is an instance where clarification matters; as we all know, the dinosaurs eventually made their way off the original islands in the books and Jurassic World movies.

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