Charlie (S/F)

Charlie1
E-377 “Charlie,” age 3 (2015)

E-377 “Charlie” (2012 – 2015) was a female Velociraptor antirrhopus masranii originally bred for InGen Security‘s I.B.R.I.S. Project. She was the youngest member of her subspecies to survive infancy, with three older sisters. She was initially planned to be a Jurassic World attraction, though InGen Security also intended to test her capabilities as a military animal. She was contained within park facilities between 2012 and 2015.

On December 22, 2015, Charlie was used in a field test along with her sisters as a part of an incident taking place in the park. This incident involved the escape of a park asset, the genetically-engineered Indominus rex, which the Velociraptors were tasked with locating. Unfortunately, during the operation, Charlie and her sisters rejected captivity; they recognized the Indominus as an authority instead. In the ensuing conflict Charlie was killed by a member of InGen Security.

Name

This raptor’s specimen number, E-377, comes from the mobile game Jurassic World: The Game and has not been featured in the film canon proper. Its meaning is not known. Her given name, which is used almost universally, comes from the military phonetic alphabet used by the United States Armed Forces; the letter C is referred to using “Charlie.” This ensures correct spelling. Charlie’s trainer, Owen Grady, was a former sailor with the U.S. Navy and gave his animals (with the exception of the eldest, Blue) names from the military phonetic alphabet; Charlie’s older sisters have names beginning with D and E. It is unknown why the order of these letters does not correspond to the raptors’ ages. Charlie’s specimen number also begins with an E while Echo’s begins with a C; this is thought to be a mistake on the part of Ludia, Inc., the company behind the Jurassic World mobile games.

Biography
Early life

Like her sisters, Charlie was hatched in 2012 after being genetically engineered from older versions of Velociraptor antirrhopus. Charlie in particular was engineered with genes sourced from the green iguana (Iguana iguana), which had little impact on her physiology but caused cosmetic alterations. Her pigmentation was influenced by the iguana genes, giving her bold green skin with darker vertical stripes.

The exact date on which Charlie was created and the date on which she hatched are unknown. Along with her sisters, she hatched in 2012; Blue’s hatch date is between May 15 and April 19, and Charlie hatched sometime after this. She appeared to be close to her sisters in age, and was roughly eight weeks old on Day 176 of the I.B.R.I.S. Project, making her about seventeen weeks younger than the project itself.

She was the fourth of her kind to survive infancy, with the oldest being Blue. Her other two older sisters were Delta followed by Echo. All four, along with their siblings who did not survive, were hatched in the Hammond Creation Laboratory after being engineered by InGen’s lead genetic biologist Dr. Henry Wu. She most likely incubated within a surrogate egg provided by another deinonychosaur owned by InGen. Upon hatching, Charlie was met by her adoptive father, InGen Security animal behaviorist Owen Grady. He spent the next three years raising and caring for her.

After she hatched, Charlie was fitted with a subdermal RFID tracking implant which would constantly report her location to Jurassic World’s computer network. This implant could also read her biometrics and other physiological data, making it easier to track her health. Because she was intended to spend her life within a physical paddock, her implant was probably not keyed into a particular zone of the park’s invisible fence system.

At approximately eight weeks of age, a hierarchy had developed among Charlie and her sisters. Blue, the oldest, largest, strongest, and most intelligent, easily took a place at the top of this hierarchy, with her younger siblings falling in line with her. This was established by Day 176 of I.B.R.I.S., roughly twenty-five weeks into the program. Charlie was Blue’s favorite, and the most loyal to her. Grady had a difficult time getting Charlie to respect his authority. Charlie’s loyalty to Grady was achieved only through her loyalty to Blue. Over time, Charlie learned to respond to simple commands.

I.B.R.I.S. training

By 2013, Charlie and her siblings entered young adulthood, which meant their lives grew more complex. They inhabited Jurassic World’s raptor research paddock, a facility including contained jungle and a training arena. Blue began challenging Grady’s authority, and he had to take measures to establish that he was still in charge. Similarly, Blue was challenged for the beta position by Echo, which led to a violent fight between the sisters. Charlie, the least experienced of the four, remained fully loyal to Blue. She did not appear to have major conflicts with Echo or Delta, despite their differences. Delta was Blue’s second-in-command, and Echo had her rivalry with Blue, but Charlie never showed anything but familial love for her other sisters.

Grady continued training the four raptors, teaching them more commands. By May 17, at which point Charlie was about a year old, Grady came to realize that their social dynamic was more complicated than InGen originally believed. He requested that his friend Barry Sembène be recruited onto the project. His overseer Vic Hoskins agreed, and Sembène was brought on board; he became a secondary caretaker to Echo and the other raptors.

Grady performed the training exercises for Charlie and the others, using a clicker device along with visual and vocal commands to teach them to perform certain actions. When they performed successfully, he would reward them with food such as beef jerky and rats. Training exercises were often unsuccessful; for example, one of the common exercises was to have the raptors chase a small pig but cease their pursuit when commanded to do so. The raptors would often let their predatory instincts override Grady’s commands, killing the pig after being ordered not to. Charlie was the most prone to this, her instincts often getting the better of her.

When the raptors were not in training, Sembène tended to their health. While the raptors tested their caretakers and frequently made escape attempts, they still maintained a sense of loyalty. They learned to recognize and respond to at least forty distinct commands. Some exercises, such as the aforementioned pig chase, were a struggle even as of 2015; however, Charlie and her sisters were recorded as responding appropriately to commands 73% of the time.

This trust was not present with all of the human members of IBRIS. Many of the ACU personnel hired by Vic Hoskins were prepared at any time to use nonlethal weapons to subdue the raptors, and at least one paddock worker was severely mauled by a raptor in 2015. Grady himself was wary of the raptors and kept a close watch on all four of them to prevent escapes or attacks on any more workers. Charlie’s instinctual and energetic nature made her dangerous, since she could suddenly become aggressive without warning.

There was a brief incident during the night of December 19, 2015 when three campers from Camp Cretaceous trespassed into the raptor paddock. Charlie was called by Blue to help confront Kenji Kon, who was separated from them by a gate. This gate was accidentally opened, and fellow camper Darius Bowman entered the paddock to help him. The two teenagers were rescued by the intervention of camp counselors Roxie and Dave. Floodlights blinded the raptors, and meat was delivered to distract them.

2015 incident and death

On December 22, 2015, when Charlie was three years old, Blue successfully responded to Grady’s stop command during a pig chase exercise. Charlie, Delta, and Echo followed suit, deferring to Blue’s authority. This was witnessed by Vic Hoskins and other InGen personnel. Shortly after the exercise, the pig used in the chase escaped back into the paddock, and a recently-hired handler named Colby Boothman-Shepard attempted to recover the animal. While he did snare it successfully, it was grabbed by Echo while still in the snare; this caused Boothman-Shepard to be dragged off the catwalk and into the paddock. Grady entered the paddock to rescue his employee, confronting Blue while convincing ACU to stand down. Charlie and Delta advanced on Grady, only held back from attacking him by Blue’s restraint. But Blue showed signs that she knew she could kill Grady if she wanted, and Grady was slowly backing toward the exit with Boothman-Shepard in tow. Once the worker was safely out of the paddock, Grady made a quick escape, and Charlie followed Blue in a charge after him. The paddock gate was closed before they could kill him.

That night, Charlie and her sisters were commandeered by InGen Security members ranking above the usual ACU staff. They were led into a hide-and-seek exercise, which they had performed numerous times with Grady. Charlie and her sisters were presented with a piece of meat belonging to a species they had never encountered before, instructed by Grady to track down the source. They were released into the world outside for the first time, and Charlie followed Blue in joyfully sprinting through the jungle on her first real hunt. Grady, Sembène, and InGen Security members followed.

When they neared the source of the scent, they slowed and stopped. An unknown animal was heard vocalizing in the jungle nearby, and Echo responded to it with a social call. Emerging from the jungle, the enormous Indominus rex revealed itself to the raptors. Blue and the new creature sized one another up, each vocalizing to try and establish dominance. During the interaction, Echo began to realize that the Indominus was a more powerful leader than Grady, and that its strength could give her pack the one thing Grady would not: the freedom to live in the wild. Charlie observed Blue’s deliberation and followed suit.

InGen Security opened fire on the Indominus, frightening Echo and the other raptors into the jungle and driving the larger creature away. Now viewing the humans as a threat, Echo and the others set up ambushes to kill off the InGen soldiers one by one. Charlie, after making a kill amidst a field of elephant grass, suddenly realized that Grady was nearby. He was acting cautious, but not aggressive. Likewise, Charlie did not attack. Instead she pondered what was really going on, appearing to doubt whether rejecting Grady was really their best option. For the first time in her life she may have questioned Blue’s judgment.

Sadly, this first time would also be her last. Before Charlie and Grady could reestablish their familial bond, a rocket-propelled grenade fired from an LMT M203 2003 L2B grenade launcher struck her in the back. The explosion tore her body apart, killing her instantaneously. Grady was barely far enough away to avoid the same fate.

Legacy

No identifiable remains were left behind for Charlie’s family to mourn her by, since the explosion was a direct hit. Her death was witnessed by Blue, who flew into a rage and attacked Sembène and Grady. A tense battle followed, leading south toward Main Street where Charlie’s surviving sisters cornered Grady and prepared to kill. By then, though, Blue had realized Charlie’s death was not Grady’s fault, and that the Indominus was a poor leader who had led them into a dangerous situation. The death of their beloved sister was the fault of their new alpha, who Blue decided was unfit to lead them.

The Indominus was defeated that night. Delta and Echo also died, though Blue ultimately lived on as the last member of the pack. Grady left the island, the park abandoned by its creators and the public. For three years, Blue lived alone among the creatures of Isla Nublar. She was eventually rescued and brought to the North American mainland by Grady, who was motivated to intervene against his original judgment by memories of I.B.R.I.S. including those of when Charlie was young.

Skills
Hunting and combat

Although she was a strong and aggressive hunter like any of her kind, Charlie was younger than her sisters and not as experienced with taking down prey. She relied on Blue and Delta especially to learn. This is not to say Charlie was inept; her youthfulness meant that she was highly energetic, and since she was less mature than her sisters, she was liable to fall back on her animal instincts when faced with stimulation. Her I.B.R.I.S. training had the potential to refine her skills, but she was the least obedient out of the four and had not gotten as much out of training as her sisters by the end.

Charlie was aggressive when on the attack, wasting no time in attacking her prey. On just one occasion she was pitted against armed foes when Blue led her in rebellion against InGen; she managed to ambush and kill a few InGen mercenaries before being killed in battle. The strike that killed her was a rocket-propelled grenade, so she did not really stand a chance.

Social skills

Charlie was the youngest of her sisters and the least experienced, so she relied on her older siblings for guidance and support. However, as is often the case with youngest siblings, she did not always heed their direction; she was known for falling back on her animal instincts and failing to heed Owen Grady’s orders. Charlie also distinctly lacked maturity, and as she had only recently grown to her adult size she was still getting used to her adult body. She would sometimes strike Echo with her tail by mistake, not realizing she had done it. Despite all of her immature tendencies, Charlie was still loved by her sisters (Delta, one of the more mature of the four, would sometimes move Charlie so that Echo was no longer in the line of fire).

She was especially close with her oldest sister, Blue. During mealtimes, Blue was fed last by Grady to reinforce the fact that Grady ranked above Blue, but if Charlie felt that Blue was not getting enough food, she would voluntarily offer up her own meals. The love her sisters had for her was plainly strong, and Charlie’s endearing personality and status as the baby of the family were the cause. In return, she offered her sisters all the loyalty she could muster.

Physical strength and durability

Like her sisters, and all of her kind, Charlie was an athletic Velociraptor capable of reaching fifty miles per hour in a sprint and maintaining this speed for a respectable amount of time. She was tough but nimble, and coupled with her naturally keen senses of smell and sight, she was shaping up to be a powerful predator. At the time of her death, she was still not fully experienced as a hunter. Charlie had only recently grown to her adult size, and like many adolescents, she lacked coordination; her sense of her own bodily proportions was still developing.

Charlie was only ever involved in one combat, against a platoon of InGen Security mercenaries. She fared well against them at first, using her teeth and claws to subdue enemies after ambushing them from the shadows. Her superior vision and smell gave her an edge, allowing her to spot foes where the humans needed technology to assist them. However, she did not survive this battle, being hit by an explosive projectile fired by a mercenary.

Language skills

In addition to the system of communication that her species normally uses, which some scientists such as Dr. Alan Grant consider to be a language, Delta had a basic understanding of some English words and phrases as well as symbolic gestures. In total, Delta comprehended over forty distinct instructions and as of 2015 responded correctly 73% of the time. Some of the incorrect responses are known to have resulted from her deliberately ignoring commands, so her actual rate of comprehension was higher than the 73% value.

During the incident in 2015 that caused Charlie’s death, she briefly accepted an Indominus rex as an authority figure, as their two species had communication methods in common. The raptors and Indominus used vocalizations and body language to talk to each other, and while Charlie did not engage directly in conversation, she was probably as capable of comprehending the new dinosaur as her sisters were.

Views
On social structure

Charlie strongly valued loyalty between family members, a trait she shared with Blue. As the youngest, Charlie’s physical and psychological development were slightly behind all of her sisters, and Blue was the best role model she could want; she also relied to some degree on Delta and Echo. Her older sisters provided her with the guidance that she needed to develop as a hunter. She did, however, have an impulsive streak, and did not always follow her sisters without question. Her instincts were strong and sometimes overpowered her reasoning abilities. She never fully accepted Owen Grady as her alpha, despite being closely bonded to him; he did not have all of the traits that a raptor alpha should possess, whereas Blue certainly did. When Blue considered abandoning Grady as their alpha and taking on a new one, Charlie was ready to support her decision.

At first, the Indominus seemed to be the ideal alpha; she was not only huge and powerful, but bold and assertive. Upon taking command of the raptors, the Indominus sent them to retaliate against InGen Security, who had fired at the hybrid. Notably, the Indominus stayed out of the battle at that time, avoiding the heavy gunfire and letting the raptors pick off her enemies. When Charlie encountered Grady during the fight, she seemed to reconsider her position. For the first and only time, she appeared to doubt whether Blue had made the right choice. Grady had never sent any of them to fight, or put them in any kind of danger. Sadly, Charlie never had the chance to switch sides; she was fired upon by InGen Security and killed.

Relationships
Owen Grady

InGen Security animal behaviorist Owen Grady was the first family member Charlie met. He was the first creature she saw when she hatched in 2012, so she imprinted on him as a parent. From then on, he fulfilled the role of father figure. Grady had been hired by InGen to be lead researcher on the I.B.R.I.S. Project, which sought to research the animal intelligence of deinonychosaurs to better human interactions with them. However, Charlie quickly began to question Grady’s right to be her leader, instead deferring to Blue.

Charlie followed Blue’s lead in challenging Grady’s authority as they grew older. Blue, of course, was the strongest of them all and a better hunter than Grady; Charlie considered Blue to be the rightful alpha and disliked when Grady fed Blue last. If she felt Blue was not getting enough food, Charlie would give up her own meals. Blue led Charlie and the others in escape attempts, which Grady repeatedly had to thwart.

On December 22, 2015, there was an incident at the raptor paddock which required Grady to enter in order to protect another employee. This placed him in a position where the raptors could harm him, at the risk of being fired upon by InGen’s taser rifles. Charlie approached Grady, hissing and growling at him and snapping her jaws. However, Blue did not attack, and so Charlie also held back. Even so, they slowly advanced on Grady as he backed away toward the paddock’s closing gates, making to pin him against the wall. Only Blue’s obedience to Grady’s hand gestures prevented their attack. When the gates were almost closed, Grady dove underneath; as soon as he showed a moment of vulnerability, Blue led Charlie and Delta into an attack, but were stopped due to the gates closing right after Grady’s dive.

That same day, Grady took Echo and her sisters in their first out-of-paddock hunt. He did not lead, instead letting the raptors chase down their target using their superior sense of smell. When they located the target, the Indominus rex, the raptors established a form of communication with it and quickly realized that this animal met all the alpha criteria: it was huge and powerful, intelligent and confident, and armed with impressive hunting implements. Grady, by comparison, was an inferior alpha. Turning on Grady was now an option on the table, and the decision was made for them when InGen Security opened fire.

Charlie was directed to attack the InGen soldiers, but after ambushing and killing one in a field of elephant grass, she found herself face-to-face with Grady. He did not attack, and neither did Charlie. She realized that while the InGen soldiers were her enemies, Grady was the same father figure he had always been; he would never send Charlie to fight his battles for him. Charlie began to doubt whether Blue had truly made the right decision. Sadly, the real danger the raptors were now in had not yet become clear, and Charlie was fired upon and killed while she was mulling over their course of action. Grady, who had been approaching her cautiously, nearly met the same fate.

Grady was shocked and horrified by Charlie’s sudden death, but there was little time to mourn until after the conflict was fully over. The deaths of all but one of his raptors weighed heavily on Grady, and happy memories of Charlie and the others were what motivated him to save Blue from the perils of Isla Nublar three years later.

Blue

Charlie’s oldest sister, Blue, was the leader of their pack, and for good reason: she was not just the oldest and most experienced, but the strongest and most intelligent. She also had another trait that made her fit for the position, and this was her empathy. Blue was able to understand what her sisters were thinking and feeling. Charlie, though she loved her eldest sister dearly, was not quite on the same level emotionally. Still, Charlie was strongly devoted to Blue. At mealtimes, Grady would feed Blue last, reinforcing the fact that Blue was his subordinate; Charlie disliked this, and if she felt that Blue was not getting enough food, she would voluntarily give up her own meals to her oldest sister.

Blue and Charlie differed in a few ways, but the main one was their maturity. Charlie, being the youngest, was the least mature of the four and prone to giving in to her instincts. Blue understood that while their instincts were useful, she needed to show obedience to Grady’s commands in order to get the rewards she wanted. Charlie still struggled to realize this and had to rely on her older sisters for guidance. Success in I.B.R.I.S. for Charlie mostly came through her eternal loyalty to Blue. By following Blue’s lead, Charlie was indirectly listening to Grady. The first and only time she ever really doubted Blue’s leadership was during the incident with the Indominus. At first, Blue chose the Indominus as her new alpha and rejected Grady. Charlie followed suit, having always thought of Grady as an inferior alpha, but soon began to question this. Had she lived, doubting her beloved sister’s judgment would have been a major step forward in Charlie forming her identity and maturing as an intelligent animal, but her life was tragically cut short by InGen Security.

Charlie’s death sent Blue into a rage, and the conflict reached even more violent proportions before Blue thought things through and calmed down. In the end, Blue came to the same realization that Charlie had: Grady may not have been an ideal raptor alpha, but he had been a good father, and the Indominus was certainly a sad excuse for a leader. Blue rejected the Indominus.

Delta

Next in line after Blue was Delta, a similarly intelligent and levelheaded raptor from whom Charlie could learn useful hunting skills. Of her four sisters, Delta was the one with whom she had the least in common. Where Charlie was impulsive and brash, Delta was focused, collected, and tactical. Where Charlie expressed extreme devotion to Blue, Delta favored independence and liked to think for herself. Despite their differences, Charlie and Delta had no issues with one another; Delta acted the older sibling, keeping the peace between the two younger ones. Charlie’s poor spacial awareness, owing to her recently-attained adult body, could get her into trouble by accidentally hitting Echo with her tail. If Echo was starting to get annoyed by this, Delta would step in and switch places with Charlie.

In hunts, Charlie was the most inexperienced, but she did have a trait that was useful to Delta. Her impulsive and instinctual nature made her a lethal spring-loaded weapon, ready to launch at prey at the slightest provocation. They had just one occasion to hunt together in the wild, during the fight against InGen Security on behalf of the Indominus. Charlie held her own, but was gunned down by Security. Her death was a catalyst for the fight to escalate, this tragedy caused Delta to lose her cool and break her focus for the first time.

Echo

The second-youngest of the four raptor sisters was Echo, the one just ahead of Charlie in age. She had impulsiveness in common with Charlie, and both of them tended to go on the offensive during hunts. Echo was ferocious, a brutal fighter, and did not hold back. However, their differences were quite distinct. Like Delta, Echo was a strongly independent raptor and was wont to set her own goals. She did not share Charlie’s unquestioning loyalty to Blue, and in fact fought Blue for leadership at one point. If this caused any conflict with Charlie, it seems to have faded over time. Being beaten by Blue apparently quelled Echo’s ambition, at least for the time. By 2015, Charlie showed no ill will toward her sister.

Echo was more mature than Charlie, but only by a few days to weeks, and she was noticeably less mature than the two older sisters. This meant that there was always some tension in their relationship unrelated to Echo’s rivalry with Blue. Echo was old enough to be irritated by Charlie’s immaturity, but not mature enough herself to address it. Charlie had only recently grown to adult size and was still getting used to her body. This meant her spacial awareness was developing and incomplete; she could sometimes hit Echo with her tail by accident, since their hunting formation placed them next to each other. In these cases, Delta would have to act the older sister and intervene before Echo’s frustration got the better of her. Charlie remained blissfully unaware that she could be an annoyance.

Despite their differences, Echo did care for Charlie and was enraged by her death. She sought vengeance, blaming Grady for the tragedy and helping her other surviving sisters hunt him down. Echo might have killed Grady in an act of revenge had Blue not thought things through and realized it was not Grady’s fault.

Barry Sembéne

When Charlie was roughly a year old, her family grew by one human. Owen Grady’s old friend Barry Sembéne was brought to Isla Nublar to join the I.B.R.I.S. Project as an animal caretaker, helping to manage the raptors as their social behavior was more complex than anticipated. While Grady was the primary trainer, Sembéne helped to keep the animals healthy and happy by providing close personal care to them.

Although Sembéne tended to the raptors closely for the next two years, he maintained a sense of caution about them. He was well aware of their power and skill on the hunt and hardly trusted Grady himself to be in the paddock with them. Sembéne expressed doubts that the raptors would ever be trustworthy enough to be let out of the paddock, believing that they would take any opportunity to reject human leadership and make their own way. His assessment was not inaccurate; when the raptors were presented with the Indominus in the wild, they accepted it as their new alpha in place of Grady. This led to a firefight with InGen Security, in which Charlie died. Sembéne was nearly killed by Blue, who was thrown into a seething rage at her favorite sister being killed by the humans.

Dr. Henry Wu

Like all of InGen’s dinosaurs, Charlie’s genome was constructed by geneticist Dr. Henry Wu. She was a particular specimen, engineered with genes from the green iguana which affected her appearance and physiology. Charlie was engineered to be more suitable for the I.B.R.I.S. Project, since the older raptor varieties had failed due to unpredictable aggression.

Despite being Charlie’s creator, Dr. Wu does not appear to have been present for much of her life. After she graduated from the Hammond Creation Lab’s hatchery, she likely did not see him often at all, since he rarely left the lab. However, Wu did also create the Indominus, which caused the incident in 2015 in which Charlie was killed.

Vic Hoskins and InGen Security

I.B.R.I.S. was an InGen Security project from its inception, with the planning stages occurring well before Charlie or her sisters were even a concept. She was hatched into a program overseen by Security’s leading mind Vic Hoskins, whose aims for the project were to determine whether genetically-modified Velociraptors could be used as military animals in the same manner as dogs and other modern species. This aspect of I.B.R.I.S. was its most controversial, with some Security employees such as Grady and Sembéne strongly opposing it. Hoskins began pressing for a field test in 2013 when it was determined that the raptors’ social behavior was more complex than originally anticipated.

Although Hoskins was the project overseer, he was not frequently at the paddock. Instead, he received updates from his employees, particularly Grady and Sembéne, but also the ACU troopers employed to watch the paddock. The troopers were tasked with keeping a close eye on Charlie and her sisters and acting to prevent escapes. Other staff at the paddock, including handlers such as Colby Boothman-Shepard, may have been employed by InGen Security. Two handlers including Boothman-Shepard were threatened by Charlie and her sisters in 2015, with the unnamed handler being wounded so badly that they could no longer continue working at the paddock. It is not known if this handler survived the injuries. Charlie and two of her sisters attempted to attack Boothman-Shepard during an incident in which he was dragged into the paddock, but their attempt was halted by Grady and other InGen Security staff.

During the night of December 22, 2015, Hoskins brought a number of InGen Security contractors and soldiers to Isla Nublar and commandeered I.B.R.I.S. following Simon Masrani’s death. These members of Security were not part of Jurassic World’s staff, so Charlie was unfamiliar with them. InGen Security accompanied Charlie and her family on their first out-of-paddock hunt, which led to her encountering the Indominus. This creature convinced Blue to abandon Grady, and Charlie concurred. Moments later, the Security personnel were ordered remotely by Hoskins to open fire on the Indominus. The raptors initially fled from the gunfire but then turned on Security, using ambush tactics to pick them off one by one. Charlie was killed in the fight by a mercenary wielding a grenade launcher.

Park visitors

Tourists at Jurassic World were unable to see Charlie or her sisters in person, since they were classified for I.B.R.I.S. research and not accessible to the general public. Her only direct interaction with visitors to Jurassic World was with two members of Camp Cretaceous, Kenji Kon and Darius Bowman, who trespassed into the raptor paddock on December 19, 2015. Charlie was summoned by Blue to attack the two teenagers, but they were stopped by the park rangers along with Camp Cretaceous counselors Dave and Roxie.

The Indominus

On her first out-of-paddock hunt, Charlie was tasked with tracking down an unknown animal by scent using a piece of its flesh. She followed Blue on a breakneck hunt through the island’s northern jungle, slowing down only when she smelled the creature nearby. They heard its vocalization, which sounded surprisingly familiar, and Echo responded to it. The animal revealed herself: an enormous theropod the likes of which Charlie would never have seen before, the Indominus rex. This animal was able to understand the raptors’ vocalizations and respond in turn. Blue asserted her status as the pack’s beta as the dinosaurs sized one another up.

The Indominus appeared, to Charlie and her sisters, to be everything a raptor would look for in an alpha and leader. She was powerful, much more so than any human or even a raptor, with deadly claws and teeth. She was also intelligent and confident, traits that are highly valued in raptor alphas. There was also one other advantage the Indominus could provide as an alpha: the freedom to live outside of the paddock walls, no longer confined or restricted. Blue rejected Grady in favor of this new and alluring leader, and Charlie concurred.

With the Indominus as her alpha, Charlie engaged in a fight against InGen Security. During the conflict, she encountered Grady, and suddenly realized that Blue might have made a mistake. The Indominus was powerful, but she had just sent them into a fight against InGen that was, in all fairness, a personal matter between InGen and the Indominus. This new creature had done nothing to earn their loyalty; they chose her impulsively, seduced by her power and the promise of life in the wild. Grady, while he kept them in captivity, had also ensured their safety and health. He had never put them in danger, and certainly would never have made them fight his battles. In a moment of surprisingly insightful maturity, Charlie reconsidered their decision to reject Grady, independent of Blue. Unfortunately, this did not last. Charlie was the first of the four to die that night, killed by a rocket-propelled grenade fired by InGen. The Indominus reacted in exactly the way Charlie had just realized she would: the supposed alpha did not care, and demanded that Blue, Delta, and Echo fight on anyway.

Claire Dearing

Echo’s relationship with Jurassic World’s Senior Assets Manager Claire Dearing was mostly one-sided, since Dearing mostly supervised all of the park’s animals from the control room and other operations facilities. Echo, as a specimen in a high-profile InGen Security project, would have been of particular importance. However, Dearing never actually saw Echo or her sisters in person until the 2015 incident, during which the Head of Security Vic Hoskins appropriated the I.B.R.I.S. raptors for a field test. Dearing was not involved with the exercise, but was affected by its aftermath.

Charlie, like her sisters, had been fitted with a head-mounted camera so that InGen could see what she was seeing. Dearing was linked up to this, and so witnessed Charlie turning on InGen and attacking mercenaries. When Charlie’s camera feed suddenly went dark at the same time as a grenade explosion was seen on other feeds, it was immediately evident that she had been killed.

Other InGen staff

While access to the raptor research paddock was restricted to certain personnel, many members of InGen were at least aware of Charlie’s existence. She was probably researched by geneticists due to her unique genomic constitution, and was cared for by paleoveterinarians and other animal handler staff members. The I.B.R.I.S. Project involved various other researchers, and had been authorized by Masrani Global Corporation‘s CEO Simon Masrani; he hoped that the raptors could be integrated into a park environment if they were properly understood. Masrani opposed Vic Hoskins’s plan to market the raptors as military animals.

Portrayal

Charlie is portrayed through a combination of motion-capture animation, computer-generated imagery, and animatronics. Charlie’s motion reference in Jurassic World was performed by Moses Munoz. Like most of the characters in the sequel trilogy, she is not based on any particular character from Michael Crichton‘s novels.

Disambiguation Links

E-377 “Charlie” (L/M)