The Prey movie end-credits tease cleverly sets up a number of possibilities for the franchise's future. Prey stars Amber Midthunder as a Comanche warrior named Naru, who seeks to prove herself by confronting the threat of a newly-arrived Predator hunter to her lands. The film is directed by Dan Trachtenberg and takes place 300 years prior to the events of 1987's Predator, making it the first prequel in the series. The Prey movie features many of the familiar tropes of prior Predator films, while expanding it in a way that clears a path for a whole new approach to the long-running franchise.
Thus far, the Predator films have all taken place in modern day or the near future, keeping the events all set within a few decades of one another. The AVP films play with the canon in a way that places the Predator race on Earth many centuries prior to present day, but that timeline is routinely ignored as part of the main Predator canon timeline. The modern-day set sequels all play with similar themes, while loosely connecting the characters, but have yet to follow any kind of true sequel pattern that makes them feel like they're strongly linked. Outside of the mention of past encounters and a few recurring items, each sequel acts as a pseudo reboot, including Prey - though the movie's end-credits may suggest some alterations to this usual formula are coming in some form in the franchise's near future.
By the end of the Prey, Midthunder's Naru has killed the Predator in the film, returning to her camp with the creature's head and the flintlock pistol seen in the Predator 2 movie, taken from French trappers. She warns her tribe that they are still in danger and need to move to a more defensible location, meaning she wants to prepare them if more Predators are on the way. The animated cave-style drawings in the prey movie credits tease the future of the series by re-enacting the events in the film, closing with an animated fleet of Predator spaceships approaching the Comanche's area. This could signal a number of different things; be it a tease for Prey 2 or a broader tease for an expansion of the franchise on the whole.
What The Predator Art In Prey's Credits Mean
With the ships closing in on the Comanche tribe in the animated credits, it could very well mean retaliation for Naru killing the Predator. It could also signify more ships arriving to search for their fallen comrade, as the Predator movies have shown repeatedly in the franchise that they never leave one of their fallen behind if they can help it. A more metaphorical take on the animated credits could mean simply that the events of Prey are what set things in motion for the Predator race to return to Earth again and again, as Naru's defeat of the Predator shows that humans are a formidable and worthy race to hunt. The arrival of more ships may not necessarily mean more coming back to face Naru and her tribe, but simply more coming to Earth to expand their hunts, thereby kicking off their hunting expeditions all over Earth for centuries to come.
How Prey 2 Story Is Set Up By Prey's Credits Tease
The most likely scenario set up with the Prey end-credits tease is that it means more Predators are coming to see what happened to their fallen comrade and to hunt and destroy those that killed him. The Predator in Prey does not seem shy of retribution and Naru's actions could very well have lit the fuse on a battle between humans and Predators. With Naru fearing that her tribe is in danger and noting that they need to move to a more defensible area, it sounds like she's expecting a war, which could be exactly what the Prey movie credits tease is suggesting.