Riddick: The Case for [Redacted]’s Survival

There are spoilers for Chronicles of Riddick behind this cut.

I’m mostly blaming /Ursula for my re-watch of the Riddick films this week, although really, who needs an excuse?

Re-watching Chronicles reminds me of the ways in which they attempted to and didn’t exactly succeed in growing the universe. I admire them for trying, though.

But Jack-Kyra’s death has always bothered me. Bothered me in that I flat-out don’t believe it happened. This is why:

Kyra, throughout the course of Chronicles, proves herself to be Furian. Whether she was born of Furia or has acquired Furianness is pretty well irrelevant, although I basically subscribe to the latter: she was a relatively normal kid in Pitch Black, became obsessed with Riddick and survival, transformed herself into “Kyra” (which I assume is her original name, really; also, it’s a shame the original girl didn’t get to come back to play Kyra), and in time, is one of two people we see who is able to throw off the Necromonger conditioning.

The other one is the Purifier, an established Furian. We also see the Lord Marshall unable to rip Riddick’s soul from him, a trait which we must assume to be Furian as well, because the Lord Marshall can take everybody else’s (including Jack the Ripper’s!).

So what we have here is an example of indominable will, which in this universe is a Furian trait. Kyra displays that trait in spades, by presenting herself as broken when the Lord Marshall shows her to Riddick, then coming back to save Riddick’s ass. I read all of that as her pulling the wool over the Lord Marshall’s eyes so she can make her move when she needs to.

The only possible explanation I can find for Kyra actually dying is that native-born Furians appear to have abnormally quick regenerative powers: the cut on Riddick’s cheek, given to him by Kyra on Crematorium, is healed to an almost invisible line within 24 hours, and gone by the time he returns to Helios One (nevermind the unbelievable array of injuries Riddick survives throughout the course of all three movies: the only comprehensible explanation is accelarated healing). Kyra may not have that kind of regenerative ability, and could have died of her wounds.

That said, I still don’t buy it. Regenerative abilities or not, what appears to *really* keep Riddick alive is a blanket refusal to lie down and die, which trait I believe Kyra also exhibits. So I just flat-out don’t believe she’s dead at the end of that movie.

I’d accept that he thinks she’s dead, and that, uh, Karl Urban and Thandie Newton, whatever their character names are, take her body away, after which Riddick discovers she’s not quite dead and is is obliged to go to the Underverse and kill everything until he retrieves Kyra’s soul, or something to that effect.

Because I also don’t accept that Riddick would have remained on as Lord Marshall of the Necromongers, as is established in Riddick, if Kyra was actually dead. I think he’d have killed all of them and then gone away to a quiet planet that would try to kill him until some more humans came along to try to kill him too, thus launching another film.

Anyway. This is why I’m actually glad they skipped years of story there, because there’s no way they would’ve told the right story, as far as I’m concerned.

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1 thought on “Riddick: The Case for [Redacted]’s Survival

  1. I never really thought she was dead either. Maybe it was left hanging on purpose, maybe they intended for you to think she was dead, I dunno, but the way it was portrayed, I just didn’t see her as actually dead. It was just too open ended. And it’s been too long to tell us how it actually ended because we’ve all decided how went in our minds and lived with it for many years.

    That they just skipped ahead is interesting in a way, but not enough to make me go out and see the movie.

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