King Willie was the voodoo priest and drug lord who led the Jamaican posses of Los Angeles in Predator 2, played by Calvin Lockhart. In the 1997 heat wave his gunmen were fighting the Colombians for the streets when something began butchering both sides. He agreed to meet Lieutenant Mike Harrigan in a back alley, read the bones, and named the killer a demon from the other side. Minutes after Harrigan left, the City Hunter came for him, took his head, and cleaned his skull as a trophy.
Biography
Earlier Life
Before he reached Los Angeles, King Willie ran terror gangs in Jamaica for the politician Edward Seaga until he grew too powerful for that role. By the late 1990s he was the voodoo priest of the city's Jamaican posses, and their chiefs would not move without his approval. Metro detectives knew his name from crime scenes, while federal agents spoke of stopping his voodoo gangs from taking over the whole West Coast. The television reporter Tony Pope branded him the Prince of Powder for his place in the drug trade.
In Simon Hawke's Predator 2 novelization very little was known about him at all. He kept a low profile, saw himself as a witch doctor who walked the spirit plane, and surfaced only where bodies turned up that even seasoned homicide detectives struggled to look at. The book describes him as tall and enormous through the shoulders, with a scarred face, deep-set eyes, and a thick mane of dreadlocks. His voice sounded as if it came from the bottom of a barrel.
War With The Colombians
In the 1997 heat wave Willie's posse was locked in a bloody turf war with the Colombian Scorpions. When the Colombian loft was found cut to pieces with no bullet wounds, the squad wondered whether Willie had brought in outside talent for a big move. Willie answered by sending his men into the Bunker Hill penthouse of the crack king Ramon Vega. They hung Vega upside down among candles and voodoo charms, carved a mark into his chest, and told him the king wanted his soul as well as his life.
The ritual was never finished. The City Hunter dropped into the penthouse and slaughtered the Jamaicans, and Leona Cantrell read the heart-taking mark as the work of King Willie. In Hawke's version the posse leader in that room is called Gold Tooth, the killers carry a pickle jar for the soul, and a Channel 4 report names the gang the Demons. Vega's mind raced through the angles, because to him Jamaican gunmen meant Willie, a psychopath after his turf.
Summoning Harrigan
After Danny Archuleta died in the penthouse rafters, Harrigan decided that Willie had the same problem he did and asked Leona to arrange a meeting. The answer came after Danny's funeral, when a car full of dreadlocked Jamaicans pulled up beside Harrigan and Jerry Lambert and told the lieutenant the king would see him. Harrigan waved Jerry's gun down and climbed in alone. They dropped him at the mouth of a dark alley and waited with the doors open.
The novelization stretches that ride into a silent drive until nightfall in a black Cadillac, thick with marijuana smoke and Bob Marley on the stereo. The Jamaicans never searched Harrigan or asked for his gun. Walking into the alley, he felt the same crosshairs on the back of his neck he had felt on the Colombian roof, a sign that the hunter was already there. In Hawke's telling, Willie had moved fast because he was worried.
Reading The Bones
Willie's voice reached Harrigan before he stepped out of the shadows, asking why a policeman was offering him favors. Harrigan wanted the one killing both their people. King Willie said he did not know who the killer was, only where he was, on the other side in the spirit world. He cast a handful of small bones on a crate and found the same pattern as always.
He told Harrigan that nothing could stop or kill this thing, that he could feel it all around them, and that no one would see the eyes of the demon until it came calling. Then he sent the lieutenant away and told him to prepare himself. Harrigan left with a warning, not a lead. In the novelization he decides Willie actually believed every word, and that with Ramon Vega dead Willie was now the power on the streets.
The Demon Comes Calling
Alone again, Willie stayed by the crate after Harrigan's car pulled away from the mouth of the alley. He heard the hunter in the dark before he saw anything, and the cloaked shape crossed a puddle in crackling blue light. Willie drew a blade from his cane, raised the staff high, and stood his ground while reciting a verse from the Psalms. The City Hunter stepped out of its camouflage in front of him. The fight itself happens off screen.
Hawke's novel arms him differently. There Willie re-throws the bones after Harrigan leaves and sees something that frightens him, then grabs an Uzi when a chip of brick falls from the roof. He empties two magazines into the alley, sees giant inhuman feet in the reflection of a puddle, and reaches for the fighting knife on his belt knowing it is useless. His own warning about the eyes of the demon comes back to him in the last instant.
Death In The Alley
The last thing the film shows of the living King Willie is his scream. When his body turned up, Tony Pope reported to Los Angeles that the drug lord had been decapitated with his spinal column torn out, calling it a fitting end for the Prince of Powder. Harrigan read the killing as a message. The hunter had been in that alley while he was there and had chosen to take Willie instead.
In the novelization the body lies in an alley on South Adams, and Special Agent Peter Keyes does not even show up at the homicide scene. His task force never cared about Willie or Vega, only about the creature that had killed them. Jerry Lambert passed the news to Harrigan by speakerphone, and Harrigan decided the killer had been in that alley with him and had killed Willie only to show it could just as easily have been him.
The Skull Trophy
Back in its lair the City Hunter scalped the head and stripped it to bone, then raised the polished skull as a prize. Taking it marked Willie as worthy game in the hunter's eyes, an armed man who faced it rather than ran. His skull joined the hunter's trophy collection, cleaned with the same kind of tools behind other spine and skull trophies.
Hawke carries the head through a misty corridor full of methane by its dreadlocks. The hunter strips it with surgical tools, admires the scalped locks, and presses the skull into a block of protective gel beside other human skulls with their vertebrae still attached. Later, in the slaughterhouse, it uses Willie's voice and booming laugh to taunt Harrigan, and Harrigan answers with a grenade.
King Willie In The Predator 2 Comic
Dark Horse's two-issue Predator 2 adaptation from 1991, written by Franz Henkel, gives Willie the last pages of the first issue drawn by Dan Barry. He receives Harrigan near his Cadillac with his men around him and repeats the warnings about the other side and the demon whose eyes no one sees until it comes calling. After Harrigan leaves, a voice in the dark mimics his own parting words back at him. Willie draws the sword from his cane and demands to know where the demon is hiding, and the hunter uncloaks in front of him and kills him where he stands.
Personality And Traits
King Willie ruled through fear and faith at once. His men killed with candles, charms, and carved symbols because terror was the point, and the novelization's Harrigan feels the pull of his magnetic gaze and serious presence even while dismissing the voodoo. He was a practitioner of bone-throwing divination, and in his own reading the bones had already shown the end coming.
He was also the only person in the city who named the threat correctly. Harrigan and Keyes both treated the killer as a man or a specimen, while Willie called it a demon that could not be stopped and still faced it with a blade. He called the lieutenant Babylon and Mr. Policeman, kept his gunmen waiting at the car, and met him alone in the dark. After sending Harrigan away he stayed there by himself instead of running. That mix of fatalism and defiance is what made his skull worth taking.
Behind The Scenes
Calvin Lockhart played King Willie for director Stephen Hopkins from a screenplay by Jim Thomas and John Thomas. The killing is staged like Billy's death in the first Predator, with the build-up and the aftermath on screen and the fight itself left out. A severed head of Willie was made for the trophy scene, and makeup artist Bruce Spaulding Fuller painted it. The game Predator: Concrete Jungle later gave the nickname King Willie to its Jamaican gang leader Serviteur Houngan as a nod to the film.
Famous Quotes
- "They say you want to talk to me. They say you offering me favours. Tell me why, Babylon."
- "I don't know who he is. But I know where he is."
- "There's no stopping what can't be stopped. No killing what can't be killed."
- "You can't see the eyes of the demon... until him come calling."
- "Nothing else for you here, policeman. Time to go. Prepare yourself."
Conclusion
King Willie was the Jamaican voodoo priest whose war with the Colombians gave the City Hunter its cover in 1997 Los Angeles. He told Harrigan the truth in a dark alley, that the killer came from the other side, and died minutes later with a blade in his hand. The novelization swaps the cane sword for an Uzi and follows his skull into the hunter's gel case. The Dark Horse comic ends its first issue on his death.
Appearances
- Predator 2 (1990)
- Predator 2 novelization (Simon Hawke, 1990)
- Predator 2 comic (Dark Horse, 1991)
Tag Categories: Predator Universe Characters | Predator Lore | Predator 2 Lore
