Clever Girl: The Truth Behind 'Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom's' Indoraptor

SPOILER WARNING!

Now that you’ve seen Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom you’ll know it’s the first film in the franchise to end with a pretty major cliffhanger. In fact, it’s the first Jurassic to do a lot of things, like have a secret ending, a human clone, and… probably a dinosaur-human hybrid. Confused? Okay, such a thing is never talked about in the film, but it’s all about the devil in the detail – or in this case, the Indoraptor. When it comes to that awful script about dino-human hybrids from way, way back, “something has survived”. So let’s look at all the clues that suggest Fallen Kingdom’s socially-inept hybrid may not only be part-human, but part-Maisie….

1. The “wild animal” reference

Lockwood Manor: Maisie's prehistoric playground

In an early scene, Maisie (Isabella Sermon) creeps around Lockwood Manor pretending to be a dinosaur. And when she jumps out on poor old Iris (Geraldine Chaplin), it’s clear there’s something up with her. Sure, those “smaller versions of adults” do like to play hide-and-seek and make-believe, but the odd thing with this scene is the build-up of suspense, despite it being pretty obvious it’s just a kid fooling around. And when Maisie then fails to pronounce the word “bath” properly, Iris even tells her she’s not a “wild animal”….

2. It isn’t just the Indoraptor who needs a mother

Wu, clearly preoccupied with whether or not he could

While exploring Lockwood Manor, Maisie eavesdrops on Eli Mills (Rafe Spall) and Dr. Victor Frankenstei_ sorry, Dr. Henry Wu (B.D. Wong). Wu explains that making more Indoraptors beyond their existing “prototype” will prove difficult as it needs a “mother” to emulate. But when we later discover Maisie is actually a clone of Benjamin Lockwood’s (James Cromwell) deceased daughter, it’s hard to ignore the fact that both Maisie and the Indoraptor are motherless orphans of genetic engineering.

3. The Indoraptor is fascinated with Maisie

You can't suppress a 65-million-year-long desire to play with one's hair

After overhearing Mills and Wu’s dastardly plans, Maisie hides in Lockwood Manor’s basement facility where we discover the Indoraptor is living in a cell. When she’s within reach of the creature, it slowly extends its claws through the bars and starts playing with her hair (a little like when Dr. Malcolm plays with Ellie’s in the original, but far less inappropriate). It doesn’t growl, roar, or bring its snapping jaws to the bars – at least not until Maisie screams – it just plays with her freakin’ hair!

4. It’s made from “two of the most dangerous creatures on the planet”

The Indoraptor: Man and dinosaur quite literally thrown into the mix together?

In revealing the Indoraptor to a crowd of moustache-twirling buyers at the dinosaur auction, Gunnar Eversol (Toby Jones) describes the hybrid as a combination of “two of the most dangerous creatures on the planet”. Well, we know it’s part-Indominus, hence the opening scene with the bone-retrieval in Isla Nublar’s lagoon. But the other creature that makes up this genetic monster is never mentioned or alluded to. So, besides the dinosaurs, what’s the second most dangerous creature in the entire Jurassic franchise? Heck, what’s the most dangerous creature on the planet? Well, there it is.

5. It can smile!

The Indoraptor doesn't want to be fed - it just wants to play

When sadistic mercenary Ken Wheatley (Ted Levine) seemingly-tranqs the Indoraptor and enters its cage (yep, we know), it’s obvious the animal is only pretending. But why doesn’t it just kill Ken and make an escape? Because the Indoraptor doesn’t want to be fed, it wants to play with its food, which becomes pretty clear when it smiles. Yes, it smiles - twice! Before killing Ken it even toys with him, like it’s having fun forcing him to shit his pants – a little like when Maisie takes pleasure in scaring poor old Iris in the museum earlier in the film...

6. Mills needs Maisie for his plan

Why does Mills want Maisie so badly?

You could be forgiven for thinking the wicked Eli Mills doesn’t care about Maisie, that to him she’s nothing more than an annoying kid who interrupts those important, villain-related phone calls. But when Benjamin Lockwood is found dead, Mills tells Iris that he will take Maisie into care, and that she’s “valuable”. Later on in the basement facility, he even demands that Owen (Chris Pratt) and Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) hand her over. If Mills’ plan is to create more Indoraptors with Wu, why the hell does he need Maisie?

7. Maisie and the Indoraptor are both “mirror images”

Need I say more..?

The biggest hint of all is given during the scene where Owen, Claire and Maisie are hiding in one the dinosaur displays in Lockwood Manor’s museum. When Franklin (Justice Smith) reboots the power and the lighting, we see Maisie’s reflection merge with the Indoraptor’s before it breaks through the glass. Earlier in the film, Maisie is also described as a “mirror image” of her mother (or previous-self), but strangely there are a few things the Indoraptor does which mirror Maisie’s behaviour, like scaling the rooftop, unlocking doors, running around museums in the dark, and finding joy in scaring the holy hell out of people.

8. The Indoraptor never tries to kill Maisie (and not just because the film isn’t R-rated)

Does the Indoraptor imprint on Maisie?

After discovering Owen, Claire and Maisie hiding in the dinosaur display, the Indoraptor curiously turns its attention to Maisie. And when it later enters her bedroom (having figured out how to open doors), it seems pretty reluctant to kill her and even starts sniffing her. Could it somehow sense that Maisie is a clone – and human - and therefore “imprints” on her? Raptors can sure as hell do this, and we know the Indoraptor is part-raptor having been made from Indominus-DNA. So does Maisie somehow become the “mother”?

9. Its upper body is eerily human-like

Full Moon-reference? Half-beast, half-man?

It might surprise you to learn that humanoid features within dinosaurs is no mystery to the Jurassic films. In 2001’s Jurassic Park III, the Spinosaur – which has since been confirmed to be a hybrid of sorts - possesses super-dexterous forearms which it uses to destroy the plane and snap a T-Rex’s neck (heck, it probably even wrote the script). Jurassic World’s antagonist, the Indominus Rex, also puts poor Rexy’s mini-forearms to shame. But in Fallen Kingdom, when the Indoraptor climbs back onto the roof after falling through the glass, it’s unsettling just how freakishly-humanoid its upper body appears to be.

10. The emphasis on Maisie

Is Maisie the future of the franchise?

When Maisie releases the dinosaurs from Lockwood Manor and into the human world (ingeniously greenlighting Jurassic World 3) she tells Owen and Claire that the animals are “like her” – that “they’re alive”. Sure, this is her way of accepting what she is, but moments later, after Blue heads off into the night, the camera focuses on her eyes before cutting to the next scene. While this at first seems like an emphasis on her importance in the film, seeing as we’re already fully aware she’s a pretty big deal by this point, this is probably because the true nature of her character is much bigger than is made clear.

Do you think the Indoraptor is part-Maisie, or at the very least part-human? What did you think of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and do you think "dinosaurs will rule the earth" in Jurassic World 3 in 2021? Comment below - I'm curious to hear your thoughts!