There has been a long theoretical fight between all the featured species in the Aliens, Predator and Alien vs. Predator franchise. While humans, the Xenomorphs and the Predators have each had their victories, because sometimes they win and sometimes they don’t, it is difficult to say who the strongest species would be. A detail in a Predator comic suggests that there may be a much stronger species out there somewhere, genetically engineered by the Alien franchise’s Engineers, just like humans and Xenomorphs.
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The Engineers
The Engineers were a race of tall beings who coded and seeded life across the cosmos. First introduced in Prometheus, the Engineers gave life to all the known species in the cosmos. Prometheus opened with a tall, pale being with indistinct features standing at the edge of a waterfall on a lifeless planet. The being drinks a strange black metallic liquid that almost moves on its own as his ship leaves him behind. The black liquid quickly breaks him down on a cellular level, his genetic material forming the basis of all life on Earth.
The Engineers were a superior species, with elegant technology, and hairless, tall beings. Only one Engineer was left on the ship that a group of human explorers encountered. After waking him from hyper-sleep and trying to communicate, he attacks the humans. There are a ton of theories as to why the Engineer attacks them, but it is thought that Weyland, a human who is obsessed with unlocking eternal life for himself, who created the Synthetic David, was like an insult to the magnificent creation that the Engineer species was all about.
While little is known about the history of the Engineers, they are shown to be the creators of humanity, having visited the Earth during its primordial stage.
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Humans’ Intelligence Helps Us Survive
Humans have won against Predators in the past through their sheer intelligence and will to survive. While meticulous thinkers, there is no denying that we are nowhere as strong or evolved as the Predators. Humans usually beat Predators by playing the long game, learning their weaknesses and eventually outsmarting them (such as in Predator 1987 and Prey 2022). If anything, humans tend to win the fight simply by catching the Predators off guard because they underestimate their quarry.
Xenomorphs Survive In Sheer Numbers
Like a hive, these aliens swarm their targets, overwhelming them in numbers. Although David, the synthetic, reverse-engineered the Xenomorphs, he was not their creator. He managed to recreate them from the “design” that was created by the Engineers, meaning that even those alien beings were made by the ones who created humans.
Xenomorphs were created as the perfect, apex, killing machines, built to speed along the evolutionary process, or to wipe out a civilization so that the Engineers could start again. With acid blood and sheer numbers, they can easily overwhelm the Predators if they are not careful.
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Predator: Fire and Stone #2
The four-issue limited comic book series created by Joshua Williamson and Christopher Mooneyham and published through Dark Horse Comics delves into the story of the Predators. The story follows a Predator named Ahab who had previously encountered a species, unlike any adversary they had ever faced before. With red skin, horse-like facial features, four arms and tremendous brute strength, the creatures sported a barbaric civilization.
Once the creatures learned to recognize the classic shimmer of Ahab’s cloaking, they were able to significantly harm him, slicing off one of his mandibles and his right eye straight through his helmet. After winning the battle against this mysterious civilization, Ahab comes across a mural of the Engineers, proving that this was one of the many planets that they gave life.
In conclusion, while humans and Xenomorphs have proven worthy adversaries to the Yautja (the Predator race) in the past, they have never really competed with them. The strength of the mysterious race, and their skills in combat are on a level comparable to the Predators. If they were to have the same technological advancements that the Predators sport, there is no doubt that they would be the strongest life form in the known universe.
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