Jurassic World: Dominion will continue one of the best elements seen in Steven Spielberg's The Lost World: Jurassic Park by way of the return of the sharp Velociraptor Blue. After a 14e-year dormant period, the Jurassic Park franchise roared back to life in 2015 with Jurassic World. As a long in the making franchise revival, Jurassic World arrived in theaters with the gimmick of the dinosaur-populated theme park finally being open to the public.
Jurassic World was a colossal hit to the tune of $1.67 billion, and was followed up by the 2018 sequel, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. That film, too, expanded on an earlier idea touched upon in the franchise, the movie ending with the park's dinosaur population freed upon the world. The third film in the Jurassic World series, Dominion, hits theaters on June 10, 2022, and the trailer shows the importance of Blue's role to the franchise.
In the trailer, Blue is seen with a raptor baby of her own. While the way in which this will factor into the story isn't known, it brings the concept of the T-Rex family in 1997's The Lost World: Jurassic Park full circle. In that film, an infant T-Rex sustains a broken leg when captured by game hunter Roland Tembo (Pete Postlethwaite). Dr. Sarah Harding (Julianne Moore) and Nick Van Owen (Vince Vaughn) subsequently find the infant T-Rex and treat the dinosaur's leg injury. Unfortunately, the two adult T-Rexes interpret this as their baby being kidnapped and hunt the humans across the island. Later, the male T-Rex and the infant are captured and transported to San Diego as part of InGen's plan to re-build Jurassic Park on the mainland. The adult T-Rex escapes and rampages through San Diego, but through the efforts of Harding and Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), he's recaptured and returned with his infant to the dinosaur preserve of Isla Sorna. Jurassic Park III also had its own subplot of a Velociraptor pack pursuing the human characters to retrieve their eggs stolen by Billy Brennan (Alessandro Nivola).
Meanwhile, Blue having a child of her own while being freed in human civilization in Jurassic World: Dominion continues this same idea of dinosaur families, but actually adds real character development to it. Making her debut in the first Jurassic World, Blue was shown to be one of the most intelligent Velociraptors in the park. She even developed a close relationship with the raptor trainer Owen Grady (Chris Pratt), and returned as a central dinosaur again in Fallen Kingdom. With Blue now having her own infant in Dominion, she's become something that no other dinosaur in the franchise has ever been: a full-fledged character.
Given the difficulty in anthropomorphizing dinosaurs in the context of the Jurassic Park series, any one dinosaur being so significant to the series never seemed possible. That hasn't stopped Blue from capturing the hearts of audiences around the world as the franchise's most important non-human character. Indeed, Blue's role in the Jurassic World films has made her as significant to the franchise as even the returning Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill), Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), and Ian Malcolm. Over the course of the Jurassic World movies, Blue has had a genuine character arc as an intelligent, empathetic dinosaur who can relate to humans, now finally to raise her own infant. In doing so, Blue's also carried the torch of the dino parenting concept into Jurassic World: Dominion. If that doesn't make Blue an indispensable pillar of the whole franchise, nothing does.
