Detective Lieutenant Michael R. Harrigan was an LAPD Metro officer in Predator 2, played by Danny Glover. During the 1997 Los Angeles heat wave he ignored a federal hold order, lost his partner Danny Archuleta, and killed the City Hunter aboard the Lost Tribe ship. Greyback gave him the Raphael Adolini 1715 flintlock and left him standing in the crater. Later stories made him a retired captain who walked into another hunt in Rio, then put him in Yautja stasis beside Dutch Schaefer and Naru.
Biography
Before Predator 2
Harrigan came up on the streets of Los Angeles with Danny Archuleta. They joined the LAPD together, stayed partners for years, and put fifteen years on the street before the heat-wave hunt. He and Deputy Chief Phil Heinemann had been close until Heinemann's promotion opened a gap over methods. By the summer of the hunt Harrigan was a Metro lieutenant out of the Alvarado Precinct, eighteen years in, with ten commendations for valor and the department's best felony arrest record. That same file also charged him with wrecking eleven patrol cars, a city bus, and a streetsweeper on duty.
On the street he carried a Colt .45. A chrome Desert Eagle sat in the trunk with the rest of the extra guns, and he left it there for ordinary calls. The bigger pistol came out when he stopped treating the work as another gang case. The job had cost him a marriage and more than one long relationship, and the department used that against him when it wanted him off the street and back at Alvarado. He thought he was getting too old for Metro Command. The precinct ran as a war zone, and men who asked to come down there were usually hunting a reputation rather than a career.
Fighting The Gangs
In the 1997 heat wave Harrigan reached a Colombian shootout with Danny and Detective Leona Cantrell while news vans treated the gang war as the whole story. Deputy Chief Heinemann ordered them to hold the perimeter for a federal team. Harrigan ignored that hold, ran a shielded car at the wounded officers in the street, and pushed into the loft held by the Scorpios. El Scorpio fled to the roof with a weapon still in his hands. Harrigan followed him up, took aim, and shot him off the edge.
The City Hunter had come through the skylight under a cloak and finished the rest of the crew before Harrigan cleared the stairs. After El Scorpio went off the roof, Harrigan saw a heat-haze shape at the edge of the building and wrote it off as the weather. The hunter locked onto him as the one man who had attacked while the others waited. Danny and uniformed officers reached the roof before it could take him. Back at the precinct Harrigan brought Detective Jerry Lambert onto Metro and told him the squad came first in a war zone.
Gang Slaughter And Daddy Danny Archuleta
King Willie's Jamaican Voodoo Posse hung the Colombian dealer Ramon Vega in a Bunker Hill penthouse, then the hunter hit the room and wiped the Jamaicans out. Vega's mistress lived long enough to call the thing El Diablo. Harrigan left Danny at that scene with a warning to watch himself, then sat with Captain Pilgrim. He did not believe Special Agent Peter Keyes was DEA.
Danny climbed into the rafters, found a spear tip, and touched the cloaked hunter in the dark. Harrigan came back to a partner cut apart, and the federal team took the scene out from under Metro. Heinemann dressed him down with the same file that listed eighteen years, ten valor commendations, and the wrecked patrol cars, the city bus, and the streetsweeper. Harrigan answered with the fifteen years he and Danny had spent on the street, and he refused to roll over for the feds without a real explanation.
Encounter At Cemetery
They buried Danny in the Los Angeles heat while Leona and Jerry stood with Harrigan at the graves. After that, Harrigan stopped treating the case as another gang massacre. He went armed among the stones with the chrome Desert Eagle from the trunk, hunting whatever had taken his partner. The City Hunter stalked him through that cemetery under a cloak. Harrigan heard movement among the stones and swung the pistol onto empty ground, while the hunter watched from cover and did not close. Keyes kept the federal cover in place, and Harrigan refused to wait for that story to finish.
King Willie And The Subway
Harrigan found King Willie in an alley with thrown bones on a crate. Willie had read the hunt in the bones and had no name for the thing that was killing his people. Harrigan left with that warning and no better lead. Willie died soon after in the same alley, rapier in hand, and his skull went onto the hunter's trophy wall beside a Xenomorph skull.
The City Hunter then followed Leona and Jerry onto a subway car packed with armed riders. It killed those riders when they opened fire on a target they could not track, killed Jerry when he stood and fought, and spared Leona after a scan showed a second life in her abdomen, a rule against hunting the unborn. Harrigan reached the platform too late to save Jerry.
Meeting With OWLF
After the subway, Keyes pulled Harrigan into an OWLF trailer with Garber on the monitors. They played him a taped interview with Anna Gonsalves, the guerrilla who survived the jungle hunt ten years earlier, and they showed him a heat-scent trace they treated as the killer. A Jungle Hunter had wiped a Special Forces unit in Central America, left Dutch and Anna alive, and set a blast large enough to flatten three hundred city blocks. Anna and Dutch had been separated before the blast. The rescue chopper came to that site. Keyes treated Los Angeles as the next stop on that same trail, and Harrigan as the lion in this hunter's city.
Slaughterhouse Ambush
Keyes ran the capture in a slaughterhouse where the hunter came to feed. His team wore refrigerated suits meant to hide them from heat vision and carried nitrogen guns. They also brought lamps they meant to use once the hunter was in the dark. The suits hid the team's heat, so the City Hunter cycled through his vision modes until those lamps gave the men away. It killed most of the capture team on the floor, and Keyes was the one who got out.
Harrigan broke out of their custody, went in with a shotgun, an M-203, and plates under his vest, and called the hunter down after the capture team started dying on the monitors. A plasma caster bolt punched the vest and the plate under it. Harrigan kept firing, dropped the hunter long enough to pull its bio-mask, and got a look at the face underneath. He started the same line Dutch had used in the jungle. The hunter woke, finished the word for him, threw him aside, and broke the shotgun.
Keyes came back into the slaughterhouse with a nitrogen gun. A smart disc cut him in half before he could freeze the hunter.
Aborted Self-Destruct On The Roof
The fight went up onto the slaughterhouse roof. Harrigan attacked the hunter with its own spear. They both went off the edge and were left hanging there. The City Hunter was wounded and treated the fight as lost, so he armed a self-destruct that counted down toward the city. Harrigan cut through the wrist gauntlet and stopped the countdown. After losing the arm, the hunter fell into a bathroom. It used a medicomp to cauterize the stump, then fled down the elevator shaft toward its ship.
Killing The City Hunter
Harrigan followed green blood down the shaft and fell through onto metal that was not a sewer. He was inside a Lost Tribe ship hidden under Los Angeles. A net slammed him into a wall and bit into his skin. He cut free with the disc, then drove that disc up through the hunter's midsection in front of the same trophy wall that held Willie's skull and the Xenomorph skull from earlier hunts. That stroke killed the City Hunter. Harrigan pulled the disc out of the body and waited for whatever came next.
Meeting Greyback
The rest of the Lost Tribe stepped out of the mist and boxed Harrigan in. After Harrigan asked who was next, Guardian stepped forward with a combistick. Greyback held an elder sword in a backhand grip, then handed Harrigan an antique flintlock engraved Raphael Adolini 1715 and told him to take it. Under the honor code the gift marked a man who had won a fair fight, and it showed that this clan had hunted on Earth for centuries. Scout and another hunter carried the City Hunter's body away. Harrigan ran out of the ship and barely escaped as the cloaked hull tore loose, left a crater, and climbed.
The Adolini Pistol
Harrigan came up from the underground berth with the flintlock in his hand and dust on his face. Garber landed an OWLF helicopter at the crater and wanted to know what had happened in the hole. The federal team had come close enough to lose Keyes and most of the capture unit, and not close enough to take a live hunter. Harrigan left him with the promise of another chance. Predator: Stalking Shadows put Dutch on that same helicopter, then on the ground to salvage a severed arm and other City Hunter gear while Harrigan walked away with the pistol.
Harrigan Retired
Twenty-five years later, in the short story Drug War from Predator: If It Bleeds, retired LAPD captain Harrigan was speaking at an urban police conference in the Rio de Janeiro Convention Center. Former federal agent Garber was there selling for Legends, Inc., demonstrating the LI547-B1, a laser-scoped rifle with a grenade launcher. Explosions hit the Cortado Centro favela. Through the scope they saw a body hung and skinned. Metro homicide detectives Ana Rios and Rodrigo Villaca ran in with Harrigan. Favela resident Fernando guided him through the honeycomb alleys in exchange for a promise of Los Angeles.
They found a disc-cut corpse, a spear-killed body, and plasma burns, then four drug-militia men dead to a cloaked hunter. The hunter uncloaked, scalped a victim, and turned on Harrigan and Fernando. Garber hit it with a grenade, later lost his legs, and died when the hunter blew his head off. Fernando led Harrigan to a drug-lord bathtub cache of rifles, shotguns, and Uzis.
From a balcony Harrigan scoped the uncloaked hunter, which looked at him and used the words Ooman and Cetanu. Fernando pelted it with fruit. Harrigan shot the left shoulder, then hit it with Garber's grenades as it armed a self-destruct. Four other hunters appeared with spears and a cube that showed a wanted image of the wounded one. They stripped its weapons, bound it, and took it alive. Their leader nodded to Harrigan and spoke a phrase Harrigan tried to repeat. Harrigan, Rios, Villaca, and Fernando lived. The rogue hunter left the hill as a prisoner of its own kind.
Harrigan In Stasis
Harrigan was in a stasis pod after the Los Angeles hunt, in the extended ending of Predator: Killer of Killers. The Grendel King's clan had collected humans who had killed Yautja, and Harrigan stood in that hall with Naru from Prey, Dutch, the Viking warrior Ursa, and the other survivors of the arena. The film did not show the abduction or the years between the crater and the pod. Killing the City Hunter was enough to put him on the same shelf as the other proven fighters.
Harrigan Mention In Predator: Incursion
In September 2692, in Tim Lebbon's Predator: Incursion, Kalakta spoke to Isa Palant on the Colonial Marine transporter Tracey-Jane while they sealed a ceasefire in the Rage War. The translator caught an older hunt on Earth. Kalakta's parent group had risen in a city of heat, and a man with dark skin had been a worthy opponent. He had taken many human trophies. He did not name Harrigan, Los Angeles, Greyback, or the flintlock. A heat-struck city and a dark-skinned human who earned respect sit close to the 1997 hunt, and that is as far as the novel goes.
Harrigan In The Predator 2 Comic
Dark Horse published a two-issue Predator 2 adaptation in 1990 and 1991, written by Frank Henkel from the Thomas brothers' screenplay. Dan Barry drew the first issue. Mark Bright drew the second. In the comic Harrigan drove the disc into the hunter while calling Danny's name, a line the film never used. The subway massacre was a hunt aimed at goading him, not a chance meeting. Greyback's flintlock was engraved Vito De La Mirandella, Anno Domini 1640, matching the novel's date rather than Raphael Adolini 1715. Keyes was trying to stop the wrist bomb from flattening Los Angeles, not bag a specimen for weapons work.
Harrigan In The Predator 2 Novelization
Simon Hawke's 1990 Jove paperback followed Harrigan through a 1995 Los Angeles, two years earlier than the film. The hunter treated him as a prize specimen and killed Danny, then Jerry, to push him into a fight worth taking. Harrigan wounded the hunter with the disc and did not deliver the last blow. A darker, older hunter stepped out of a ten-hunter circle and beheaded the wounded one, then left Harrigan a 1640 matchlock instead of the 1715 flintlock.
Harrigan In Predator 2 Games
Three licensed games put the player in Harrigan's place after the film. Image Works released the first in 1991 for Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS, Commodore 64, Amstrad CPC, and ZX Spectrum. Arc Developments built the 16-bit versions as an Operation Wolf rail shooter, with Oxford Mobius on DOS and 221B on the C64. Harrigan appeared as a white outline seen from behind so the studio could skip a full Danny Glover likeness fee. The four stages followed the movie: the Colombian street fight, Vega's penthouse, the subway, and the hunter's ship. Civilians walked through the crosshairs, and one innocent shot cost Harrigan his job. Fox would not let him die on screen, so a depleted health bar sent him out in an ambulance instead.
Acclaim and Arena published two different 1992 console games, both with Harrigan as the only playable cop. Perfect 10 Productions' Sega Genesis version was an isometric shooter across seven film locations. Harrigan had to pull hostages out before the hunter's laser killed them, sweep gang members who dropped drugs for the squad's score, and pick up Predator kit along the way. The last stage put him on the ship against clan hunters and an Elder, then handed him the flintlock as the hull left Earth. Teeny Weeny Games rebuilt that loop as a side-scroller for Master System and Game Gear, with eight-way shooting, a password system, and the same hostage count and three-dot laser. Later stages even spawned visible hunters as regular enemies.
Behind The Scenes
Stephen Hopkins directed Predator 2 from a screenplay by Jim Thomas and John Thomas. Principal photography was in Los Angeles, with the 1997 heat-wave city built around existing streets, rooftops, and the slaughterhouse set. Hopkins wanted detectives who read as tired street cops, not gym-built action leads, and he cast Danny Glover after Lethal Weapon had made him a studio name for Joel Silver. Patrick Swayze had been approached first and dropped out after a knee injury on Road House. Hopkins also met Steven Seagal, who wanted Harrigan rewritten as a CIA psychiatrist and martial-arts expert. Hopkins passed.
An early version would have opened on a golf course, with white-haired Dutch climbing out of a helicopter to team with Harrigan. Arnold Schwarzenegger left for Terminator 2, and Keyes took that federal-hunter slot. Glover was later approached for a third film, and that part became Ronald Noland in Predators. The unit publicity still put Glover with Rubén Blades, Bill Paxton, and María Conchita Alonso as Danny, Jerry, and Leona. In the slaughterhouse Harrigan started Dutch's jungle line and the City Hunter finished it. Hawke, writing the paperback in Denver after the shoot, kept Harrigan thinking he was too old for the work and, on the drainpipe, thinking the stunt should have been left to Mel Gibson.
Merchandise
Diamond Select put Harrigan into the 2-inch Predator Minimates line in 2016. Series 1, released on 6 January 2016, packed him with the City Hunter, a Desert Eagle Mark VII, a smart disc, a combistick, and a spare bronze masked Predator head. Toys "R" Us Series 2 followed on 19 May 2016 with a battle-damaged Harrigan and the Elder, again with the Desert Eagle, the pack text covering the ship fight and the flintlock gift. NECA built out the City Hunter and Greyback in 7-inch and never released a matching Harrigan in that scale.
Famous Quotes
- "Hey, kid. Welcome to the war."
- "Captain, Danny and I came up together. Fifteen years on the fucking street!"
- "I don't roll over for anybody, especially for the feds, without a goddamn good explanation!"
- "Look, I don't care who's involved. This guy killed Danny and he's going to fall!"
- "OK, pussyface. It's your move."
- "That's right, asshole. Shit happens!"
- "Okay. Who's next?"
- "Don't worry, asshole. You'll get another chance."
Conclusion
Mike Harrigan was the Los Angeles lieutenant who refused to stand down while a Yautja hunted his city, lost Danny and Jerry, and killed the City Hunter on the Lost Tribe ship. Greyback paid him with a 1715 flintlock and left him in the crater. A later story made him a retired captain who survived a second hunt in Rio and watched another clan take its rogue alive. Killer of Killers then froze him in a pod beside Dutch and Naru, the same man the Lost Tribe had chosen not to kill. In the Rage War, Kalakta later described a city of heat and a dark-skinned worthy opponent, and he never named Harrigan.
Appearances
- Predator 2 (1990)
- Predator 2 novelization (Simon Hawke, 1990)
- Predator 2 comic (Dark Horse, 1990-1991)
- Predator 2 (Amiga and home computers, 1991)
- Predator 2 (Sega Genesis, 1992)
- Predator 2 (Master System and Game Gear, 1992)
- Predator: If It Bleeds - Drug War (2017)
- Predator: Stalking Shadows (aftermath)
- Predator: Killer of Killers (2025) - stasis
Tag Categories: Predator Lore | Predator 2 Lore | Predator Killer Of Killers Lore
