Naru was a Comanche healer on the Great Plains in 1719, played by Amber Midthunder in Prey. She wanted a hunter's place beside her brother Taabe, and the men of the camp treated that as the wrong path. She went after a mountain lion that had taken a hunter from the band, then stayed on the trail when the next kills were too large for a cat. French trappers took her after the Feral Predator cut down her escort, and Taabe died fighting that hunter before she killed it in the swamp. Later films left her in Yautja stasis and showed her as Earth's hologram on a hunter's ship.
Biography
Earlier Life
Naru lived with a Comanche band on the northern Great Plains, and her name means "fight" in Comanche. Her mother was Aruka, and her brother Taabe was one of the camp's hunters. The older people kept her on a healer's path, but she wanted to hunt with the men, and she knew the grass, the river, and the tree line around the camp. She carried a bow and a hatchet, and she hunted with her dog Sarii.
A deer hunt went wrong when the dog stepped in a trap, and she cut it free and treated the wound. A cloaked ship came down in a thunderstorm while she watched from a cliff with the dog. She took that light for a thunderbird, and for a sign that she was ready for Kuhtaamia, the hunt that would prove she was a hunter. She walked back into camp with a fish while the band went on with ordinary work.
The Puma Hunt
A mountain lion took the hunter Puhi out of the camp's range, and Taabe led a search. Naru followed the party, and Taabe let her stay to treat the wounded. They found Puhi alive, and she cooled his blood with totsiyaa, an orange flower used as medicine. Taabe stayed after the lion while the others carried Puhi home. On that walk she saw a flayed snake and prints that did not match a cat, then turned back with Paaka to rejoin Taabe.
Naru and Paaka climbed a tree and used themselves as bait, while Taabe waited on the ground. The lion killed Paaka, and a light in the woods pulled her eyes off the cat. She put a spear into it, then fell and woke in her tipi with Aruka. Taabe finished the lion and brought it home, and chief Kehetu made him war chief after that hunt. Naru had wounded the cat first, and Taabe did not take her warning about lightning in the trees.
The Bear
Naru went back out with Sarii after Taabe dismissed the lightning in the trees. She found a field of flayed buffalo, then fell into a bog and pulled herself out with the tomahawk. She put an arrow into a grizzly bear by a stream. The shot did not drop it. The bear drove her into the river and into a beaver dam. The Feral Predator pulled the bear off her and killed it in the water, then lifted the carcass over his head. Blood ran down a cloak she had not been able to see, and that was the first clear look she got at the hunter in the woods.
The Escort And The Bear Trap
Wasape's Comanche party found Naru after the bear, sent by Taabe to bring her in. She told them the hunter was a Mupitsi, a monster from Comanche stories. Wasape would not hear it, they fought, and the men bound her for the walk back. The Feral Predator hit them at a rest stop and killed Wasape with a bolt gun, then Ania and Huupi. Naru cut herself free and ran. Itsee pulled her down in the grass, and the hunter killed him next. A French iron bear trap closed on her leg in the brush. The Predator came up to her, treated her as no threat, and left. The French reached her after that and took her and Sarii.
Captured By Trappers
The French party was led by Big Beard. They knocked Naru out, took her to camp, and locked her in a cage with Sarii. She saw that these were the men who had skinned the buffalo. Big Beard came at her with a stick, and she cut his hand. They had taken Taabe as well, after he left camp to find her. When she would not talk, they brought him out and cut his chest. The next day they tied the siblings out as bait in a dry valley, with riflemen on the rim. Naru knew the hunter would ignore them, because it had walked away from her at the trap. She and Taabe watched as it massacred the trappers with wristblades, a throwing net, and explosive mines.
French Trapper Fight
Naru and Taabe got free during that massacre. Taabe went after horses, and Naru went back to the trapper camp for Sarii. Big Beard was not among the men left there. The leftover trappers still had the dog, and they meant to hurt it. She came in on them with her rope tomahawk and with their own guns and blades, and she killed three of those men. She freed Sarii and sent the dog to find Taabe.
Raphael Adolini
Raphael Adolini was an Italian translator the French had hired. His leg had been cut off in the Feral massacre, and he put his flintlock on Naru after she cleared the leftover men. He showed her how to load the engraved Raphael Adolini 1715 pistol, using the measure "not too little, not too much," and he left her the gun. She treated the wound, kept a Yautja cut clamp from it, and gave him totsiyaa, which cooled his blood. The Feral Predator followed that blood into camp, failed to see Adolini in the heat, then killed him after stepping on him. Naru kept the flintlock.
Taabe's Death
Sarii found Taabe, and he rode back into that camp on a horse and went at the wounded Predator. He knocked the bone mask off, put arrows into the hunter, and, with Naru and Sarii pulling the fight sideways, drove the hunter's own combistick into its body. During that fight Naru saw that the bolt gun followed the lasers on the mask. She tried to fire Adolini's flintlock and the shot failed. The hunter treated Taabe as the threat, cloaked, and stabbed him through the chest. Taabe drove an animal skull into the hunter's foot and held it there so she could run. Naru escaped the clearing. The Feral Predator had not treated her as worthy prey.
Fight With The Feral Predator
After Taabe died, Naru found Big Beard by a stream. She almost shot him for the cut on Taabe, then used the cut clamp from Adolini's wound instead. She knocked him out, cut his leg, and left him an unloaded musket. At night she ate totsiyaa, which lowered her body heat, and whistled the hunter in. The Feral Predator cut off Big Beard's head, and while it looked at the trophy she shot it in the back of the head with Adolini's flintlock and took the dropped bio-mask.
She set that mask at the bog she had fallen into before the bear, then hit the hunter from the trees. Sarii pulled the tomahawk back to her when the hunter tore it free. They fought in the wet ground after that, and in a wild swing the hunter cut off its own arm with the gauntlet shield and went down in the mud. Naru had set the mask's laser on a line that pointed back at the Predator, so when it fired the bolt gun the bolts followed that mark into its own head. She tore a mandible free and stabbed the hunter with it, then cut the head off and left the body in the water.
Return To The Village
Naru walked into camp with Sarii, the Feral Predator's head, and Adolini's pistol, her face painted with the hunter's glowing green blood, the same mark a young Yautja takes after a first kill. She gave the head and the flintlock to the village and told them to move to safer ground. Aruka and the rest of the village saw the head and the paint together, and the camp made her war chief.
End-Credit Sequence
Naru and the villagers looked up as three Predator ships came out of a thunderstorm over the camp. The credit pictures showed those hulls in the style of a Plains hide painting. Adolini's flintlock was in the village when the ships arrived, the same pistol she had used on the Feral Predator and then given to the camp. That gun later sat in Greyback's hands at the end of Predator 2, when he gave it to a human who had killed a hunter. The paintings followed the hulls through the storm and ended on that arrival.
In Stasis
Naru stood in a stasis pod at the end of Predator: Killer of Killers, as young as she had been after the Feral kill, and she wore the same green face paint. The Grendel King's clan had collected humans who had killed Yautja, and she was in that hall with the Viking warrior Ursa, Dutch Schaefer, and Mike Harrigan. The film does not show who took her from the Plains. That hall is later than 1997, because Harrigan was there after the Los Angeles hunt.
Badlands Hologram
Naru appeared as a hologram on Kwei's ship in Predator: Badlands, when Kwei and Dek looked through hunting-world holograms. Earth came up beside a glowing woman with a bow, a Native warrior the ship treated as the planet's named threat the same way it tagged the Kalisk on Genna. Prey 2 and a Badlands sequel are rumored to be in development by Dan Trachtenberg.
Weapons And Equipment
Naru hunted with a bow, a knife, and a rope tomahawk she could throw and pull back. In the swamp she put that hatchet into the Feral Predator more than once, and Sarii helped her recover it after the hunter tore it free, so she could use the rope to drag the wounded Yautja in the mud. She also carried totsiyaa, ordinary camp kit, and a Yautja cut clamp taken from Adolini's wound, which she used on Big Beard. She learned the flintlock from Adolini on the same day she used it, and turned the hunter's own bio-mask and bolt-gun sight against it. After the kill she gave the pistol and the Predator's head to the village.
Behind The Scenes
Dan Trachtenberg directed Prey from a screenplay by Patrick Aison, from a story they shared, based on characters created by Jim Thomas and John Thomas. John Davis, Comanche producer Jhane Myers, and Marty Ewing produced it, and Comanche educator Juanita Pahdopony worked on names, customs, and language. The lead was first called Kee, which means "no" in Comanche. Myers pushed for a name that described what the character did, and that became Naru.
Amber Midthunder is an enrolled member of the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux tribes, and she auditioned in English and in Comanche. Bennett Taylor played Raphael Adolini. The cast spent four weeks in a Calgary boot camp on weapons, stunts, fighting, and riding before cameras rolled. Principal photography began in June 2021 on Stoney Nakoda Nation land west of Calgary, with more work at Moose Mountain and the Elbow River. The day before the shoot, Trachtenberg, Myers, Midthunder, Dakota Beavers, Stormee Kipp, and Stefany Mathias sat in a pipe ceremony and received permission to film there. Trachtenberg and cinematographer Jeff Cutter shot the film outdoors in natural light for about four months.
Costume designer Stephanie Porter cut Naru's dress from buckskin in a Comanche shape that could run and fight, including traditional twisted fringe, and makeup department head Samantha Rumball mixed period face paint from earth pigments in the Comanche colors of black, red, and white. Coco played Sarii. The original cast later recorded a full Comanche-language cut of Prey, released on Hulu beside the English version. Prey began streaming on Hulu on 5 August 2022. The end-credit pictures were Plains hide paintings by Native artists including Brent Learned, Dallin Maybee, NiCole Hatfield, Jonathan Thunder, Sheridan MacKnight, Sandra Okuma, and Nocona Burgess, then animated by Filmograph.
Conclusion
Naru was the Comanche hunter who killed the Feral Predator on the Great Plains in 1719, took its head and Adolini's flintlock home, and was made war chief. Later films left her young in a Yautja pod and put her bow on Earth's hologram aboard Kwei's ship.
Appearances
- Prey (2022)
- Predator: Killer of Killers (2025) - stasis
- Predator: Badlands (2025) - hologram
Tag Categories: Predator Lore | Historical Predator Hunts | Predator Hunt Survivors
