With over $943 million grossed worldwide, Universal Pictures’ Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom has dominated cinemas this summer. While the film hasn’t received the warmest reception from critics and fans alike, the fifth installment of the Jurassic Park franchise, as well as the second in the often-considered standalone Jurassic World series, has demonstrated its ferocity in box office power. Audiences still crave dinosaur action as well as the nostalgia of the original Steven Spielberg-helmed 1993 hit. However, the ending of Fallen Kingdom has left many fans flabbergasted as to what it means for the Jurassic universe. And to those who have not seen the film yet, there are SPOILERS AHEAD.

The Future of the Franchise for JURASSIC WORLD

So What Happened in Fallen Kingdom?

Towards the end of the film, after a failed auction of the recently-saved dinosaurs from Isla Nublar, which has now been engulfed in a volcanic eruption, our main human characters find themselves in a containment unit in an enormous Northern California estate where a deadly gas has been unleashed on the remaining creatures. Owen (Chris Pratt) warns Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) to not set them loose, but instead let them die in the gas. She hesitates, but then agrees.

But just when you think the world is safe, the door opens and the dinosaurs are let go, due to one little girl named Maisie (Isabella Sermon) pressing the red button which did the job of opening the gates. Her reasoning: “They’re alive, like me.” Her reason: Minutes earlier, it was revealed by the human villain Eli Mills (Rafe Spall) that Maisie is actually a clone of the deceased granddaughter of Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell), the former business partner of the late John Hammond (the late Lord Richard Attenborough), the creator of the original Jurassic Park and originally against human cloning.

Now the dinosaurs, including Brachiosaurus, Pterodactyl, Mosasaurus, Triceratops, Stegosaurs, Tyrannosaurus Rex, and the lone Velociraptor Blue, have now been released into our world. Our old friend and chaos theorist Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) returns to the franchise to chastise humankind for not learning from our mistakes and how we must now have to learn to live with dinosaurs, declaring “Welcome to Jurassic World.”

So…where should Jurassic World III take us?

When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth…Again

The next installment will be released in June 2021 under the direction of returning director Colin Trevorrow. If there is any indication of what Part III will have in store, it’s that it will undoubtedly be an insane sci-fi thriller of catastrophic proportions. In a way, the franchise has now reached Dawn of the Planet of the Apes territory; a world where mankind is being wiped out due to a force of nature that cannot be contained.

There is currently no telling for what the plot of Jurassic World III will be, but if anything, some history-building needs to take place. First of all, now that dinosaurs are out in the open, the nations of the world must make the decision to properly arm themselves and align with each other to face the threats upon them. Considering that the dinosaurs were released in Northern California, the battle will have to take place mostly in North America. However, the Mosasaurs and Pterodactyls can travel by sea and land respectively, so special forces will take their battles those ways.

It will be a world of chaos once meat-eaters like the T-Rex, Allosaurus, and Blue the Velociraptor start hunting down humans. The nation will declare a state of emergency and force its citizens to take shelter in designated safe zones set up by the government. It will be a war zone to say the least. But where do our key human characters come in? At the moment when a movement to safely gather dinosaurs will be launched. Owen and Claire will most likely join this union; not only to save the dinosaurs but to protect humans.

Now as for the dinosaur action, it was never explicitly stated at the end of the film that any of the wealthy buyers actually left with their monstrous purchases. The intention of selling the dinosaurs was to give humans the abilities to weaponize them. Well, what if before the Stygimoloch disrupted the auction, those early buyers had time to leave with their new weapons of dino destruction? These same people could potentially use them to arm themselves in the impending war against the unleashed dinosaurs.

Double Dino-Trouble

But another threat lingers. What was the deal with Maisie being a clone? Was it just to show that cloning humans is also possible in the Jurassic universe? Was it to give a new dimension to the kid-trope obligation in this franchise? Well, yes. Way back in the early 2000s, drafts of the fourth Jurassic Park film featured dinosaur-human hybrids, originally to be used as super soldiers. But the idea was scrapped and the rest is dino history.

But even before the release of Fallen Kingdom, it was rumored that the concept was to be revisited. In a way, the film almost got it down. Maisie, the aforementioned cloned human, would be an interesting character to follow in Jurassic World III. She is a clone, and as far as we know, she’s the only one of her kind. But is she really? What else were Eli Mills, Dr. Henry Wu (B.D. Wong), and the Masrani Corporation making in the basement of the Lockwood Estate besides the Indoraptor? In fact, what if experimentation on dino-humans had already begun by the time Maisie released the dinosaurs into the open?

There is a brief but striking moment towards the end of Fallen Kingdom where the camera zooms in on Maisie’s eyes, as if to show us she is not what we believe her to be. But nothing is revealed. What could later be revealed in Part III is that she could also potentially be a dino-human hybrid. But how does this work? She doesn’t look anything like a dinosaur. But the way she moved around the house, spying on Mills, her nanny, and her dying grandfather nearly matches the cunning stealth of a Velociraptor. She knows her way around certain places and she can hide pretty well. And another big takeaway is her letting the dinosaurs free. Because…they’re just like her. So maybe, just maybe, Maisie is in the early stages of showing her dinohood. Maybe…Maisie could become a villain herself.

Last Word on Jurassic World III

This is all purely speculation. Who knows what Universal Studios and Trevorrow present for audiences in 2021? If anything, the installment should take the franchise into new, daring heights. Humans against dinosaurs. Cloned human-dinosaur hybrids. Why? Because Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom left us with many questions and implications about the world this series has created. They must not only be answered, but executed fully. Go all out and give us a Jurassic World War.

 

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