Predator: Badlands Trailer Easter Egg May Connect It to Another Major Sci-Fi Franchise

We’ve seen the Predator franchise crossover with Alien and other sci-fi series before, but never before with Independence Day. The trailer for Predator: Badlands dropped on Wednesday, and fans zeroed in on an apparent Easter egg right in in the first shot. It shows what might be a skull from a Harvester — the alien species that attacked the earth in the beloved 1996 blockbuster. We know that Predators keep trophies from past kills in their ships, so this seems perfectly conceivable as a small gag, at the very least. However, some commenters’ heads are already spinning as they come up with more ways the two stories could come together.

The trailer for Predator: Badlands is just over a minute long, and it promises some intense new looks at the Predator species in action. We can only speculate about where these characters are and what they’re up to, so perhaps it makes sense that fans have really focused in on this familiar opening shot. We’ve seen the trophies displayed in a Predator’s ship before, but this one has some unique new items to consider.

If there is indeed a Harvester skull on this ship, it seems to be front-and-center, and was likely meant to be noticed by viewers. That doesn’t necessarily mean the crossover will be the main focus of the film, though it could be. The official synopsis for the film tells us that it’s about a young Predator outcast searching for “the ultimate adversary,” alongside a humanoid android from earth.

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The movie already has a confirmed crossover with the Alien franchise through that android, which is described as a Weyland-Yutani synthetic. Her name is Thia, and she is played by Elle Fanning. The Predator is named Dek, played by Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi. No other characters or cast members have been announced so far.

The trophy wall in the first shot does not have any other references that are immediately recognizable. There’s a human skull with the spine still attached, as well as what looks like a T-rex skull, which is by far the largest here. One looks like the skull of a fellow Predator, and others might come from recognizable primates, but none are obviously from species we know, like xenomorphs.

If we do get confirmation that this is a Harvester from Independence Day, it will be the franchise’s first crossover with another sci-fi world. It would work relatively well — Independence Day, Alien, and Predator are all contemporary sci-fi stories which imply that there is advanced extraterrestrial life throughout the universe, so there’s no reason they couldn’t all exist in the same continuity. As always, it would be a question of how the connected story was executed, and how it was used to serve a satisfying story.

Predator: Badlands hits theaters on November 7th. Previous entries in the franchise are streaming now on Hulu, while Independence Day is streaming now on MGM+.