The Best Franchise Character We Probably Won’t See in 'Jurassic World: Rebirth'

The first trailer for Jurassic World: Rebirth dropped earlier this month, and honestly? Take my money. It will be cash with a side of sads though, because there’s one beloved character we are highly unlikely to see: Rexy, the OG T-Rex from movies 1, 4, 5 and 6.

Back in 2022, when Jurassic World: Dominion wrapped up the second trilogy, Colin Trevorrow tweeted to confirm that Rexy was nearing the end of her life, and therefore her showdown with Queen Wannabe the Giganotosaurus was likely her last big moment in the franchise. There was still hope in the fandom though; surely such an iconic character couldn’t just be quietly killed off in the background? Life finds a way, right? RIGHT?

Rebirth might do that, or it might avoid the issue entirely due to being set on a specific island we haven’t seen yet in the films. Unlike Nublar (the showroom) and Sorna (the factory floor), the previously unseen island is the apparently retconned OG land of mad science where the first research experiments took place.

Rebirth may be going in a bigger, weirder and toothier direction, but let’s take a moment to pay tribute to Rexy, Queen of Nublar and Our Nightmares, Friend to Some Acceptable Humans, Occasional Ally of Assorted Other Scaries, Breaker of Fences and Chomper of Lawyers. Long may she reign.

Rexy’s more than just a big scary monster; she’s a character in her own right. She’s got more personality and motive than many of the humans in the franchise, and establishes these in just 9 minutes of screen time in Jurassic Park. She likes chasing nerds and making dramatic entrances. Sometimes she’ll do a slow rumbly build up to those dramatic entrances, but she can also apparently sneak into a visitor centre on her tippy-toes without anyone noticing, if a surprise ambush is more dramatically pleasing. (How did she get in there? NOBODY KNOWS. She’s got skills, dude.) She has a trademark victory strut and bellow.

She is not keen on white-collar capitalists, ‘being fed’, cages, electric lights or cars, though she can be distracted by something shiny, which is relatable. Her eyesight’s perfectly fine, thank you very much; she doesn’t eat when she’s not hungry, and when Grant and Lexy were right under her nose, she was focusing on being mad at the car. Sure, there’s a little ‘get off my lawn’ mentality there, but our girl’s grown up in electrified cages, and she wants to smash up the electric car. She’s not a mindless killing machine; she wants to stick it to The Man.

She’s not going to dance to John Hammond’s tune, and I respect that. She’ll eat that goat when she feels like it. She’s also smart enough to use it to test the fences, and then understand that this means she can break out. There’s more than one ‘clever girl’ at this park. She only eats one human (Gennaro on the toilet) and then saves the rest from the raptors at the end.

After the humans escape, Rexy presumably lives a free and merry life on Nublar before being rounded up and caged again for Jurassic World, where every meal is fed to her with a blazing flare. They have trained her to a degree, but it’s got a whiff of ‘every meal requires birthday candles’ about it, which just adds to her personal sense of drama. Either that, or it’s like saying pspsps to a T-Rex. Who’s a good girl? Rexy, that’s who. It’s absolutely fan-pandering to have her save the day again, but didn’t we all let out a little cheer when she showed up to battle the Indominus Rex?

Rexy’s been lonely and bored in her paddock, so maybe she just wants some friends. Maybe she hates genetic monstrosities. Maybe Claire woke her up from her nap. Maybe she was just delighted to be out and hunting again. But the Predator Alliance of Rexy, Owen the human, Blue the raptor and the mosasaur successfully team up to take out Indo, and Rexy gets her island back.

At the start of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, by all rights, the mosasaur should have starved to death in that lagoon, but when Rexy attacks the team collecting the Indominus sample, she essentially feeds a guy to the mosasaur, so my head-canon is that she’s been sharing her grub all this time. She’s loyal! Also, you’ve got to love a queen who takes a moment to do a victory bellow when there’s literally fiery death raining down.

She saves Owen and Claire for the second time, saves Blue via blood transfusion, and when she’s released from Lockwood’s mansion, she breaks her ‘no human snacks’ rule to take out The Man and then breaks into the zoo to find some new predator subordinates to rule over.

By Dominion, she’s been rounded up again, and is taken to the Biosyn ‘sanctuary’ in the Dolomites, where she meets the Giganotosaurus. Alone and getting on in years, she nopes out of the first fight, but when all of the humans she finds acceptable are together and in peril, she snaps back into action and battles Giga with a new Therazinosaurus (terrible manicure-osaurus), emerging with some new scars but with her crown and spirit intact. If you saw the extended version, then this scene packs even more punch as it also has her avenging her own death from 65 million years ago.

If that character arc is a bit too much, the regular version still has something sweet. We spot her again with some other tyrannosaurs, presumably the surviving family members from Sorna that we saw in The Lost World and Jurassic Park III, i.e. her nest mates / their offspring. We saw one of the tyrannosaurs getting killed by Spiny the Ring-Tone Menace in Park III, but there were three of them in The Lost World, so whichever two are left are now Rexy’s official BFFs.

So maybe it’s OK that Rexy has retired to live out her days with her family, and won’t be in mortal peril from any of the genetic mutants we’re going to see in Rebirth, or subject to the whims of the next generation of terrible men. That’s fine. Just maybe give us a glimpse of one last bellow? One more strut? For science? After all, Rexy is everyone’s most terrifying friend, the biggest and baddest messy bitch who loves drama, and she has earned her happy ending.