What's Up With Jurassic World Rebirth's New Island? Ile Saint-Hubert Explained

This post contains spoilers for "Jurassic World Rebirth."

With the release of director Gareth Edwards' "Jurassic World Rebirth," we are now seven movies into this long-running, dino-filled franchise, dating back to Steven Spielberg's original blockbuster classic "Jurassic Park." That movie took place largely on Isla Nublar off the coast of Costa Rica, where John Hammond intended to open his dinosaur theme park before disaster struck and the idea was shuttered. The series has since moved to different islands and occasionally returned to Isla Nublar, but "Rebirth" does something new by bringing us to a never-before-seen island. Namely, Ile Saint-Hubert.

In the first teaser trailer for "Jurassic World Rebirth," Scarlett Johansson's Zora Bennett explains that, "This island was the research facility for the original Jurassic Park." While the movie itself doesn't dive into the full history of the island, we do learn some key things about its history and how it factors into the larger "Jurassic" timeline. In short, it was a key location for both Hammond's original park and Jurassic World.

The movie's opening scene flashes back 17 years, showing us an incident that occurred on Ile Saint-Hubert while Jurassic World was up and running. The geneticists were working on various hybrid dinosaurs that could help keep the park more interesting, which eventually brought us the Indominus Rex. However, they first created the mutant Distortus Rex, aka the D-rex, which breaks containment thanks to, of all things, a Snickers wrapper. A scientist is eaten. Things go haywire.

From that point on, the facility was apparently abandoned, but many of the dinosaurs that were created there managed to live on, unbothered by humanity and left to fend for themselves. As the movie explains, many of the dinosaurs that had been roaming the planet since the end of "Dominion" were dying off, as the Earth isn't hospitable to them. The ones who remain can only sustainably exist near the Equator.

Unlike Isla Nublar or Isla Sorna, aka Site B as featured in "The Lost World" and "Jurassic Park III," which were located near Costa Rica, Ile Saint-Hubert is located in the Caribbean near Barbados. It is situated near the Equator, meaning that the dinosaurs there have been able to exist comfortably. Unlike the dinosaurs of Isla Nublar, who were either removed from the island or died on it during the volcanic eruption that wiped it off the map in "Fallen Kingdom," this island has been left largely untouched for nearly two decades.

Again, the movie leaves a lot of the island's history up in the air, but the implication is that this is the island where InGen cracked the code on recreating dinosaurs to make Hammond's wild theme park a reality. After the events of "The Lost World," Simon Masrani and Masrani Global purchased InGen in 1998 and began hatching plans to open Jurassic World. The park eventually opened in 2005. Masrani repurposed the island to conduct further experiments for the park. Most notably, hybrid dinosaurs.

Aside from the D-rex, the scientists on the island also crafted the Mutadons, which feature prominently in the third act of "Rebirth" and were created using a mix of Velociraptor and Pterosaur DNA. These animals never made it to the park because they were "too dangerous." As were many of the other dinosaurs that Masrani and InGen left behind after the D-rex incident.

It's important to point out that all of the dinosaurs we see in "Rebirth" are new in some way. This island has never been explored in any of the previous "Jurassic" movies, so even though we'd seen some of these same species of dinosaurs we'd seen previously, the specific ones we're seeing on screen are new. We've seen T-rexes before, but even this is a different T-rex. Even the Spinosaurus we see is different from the one we met in "Jurassic Park III." This is sort of like the island of misfit dinosaurs.

The movie ends with the majority of the survivors getting off the island, save for Krebs (Rupert Friend). Unlike 2015's "Jurassic World," though, which clearly set up a potential trilogy, this was more of a standalone adventure with no major loose threads to tie up. It's a close cousin to "Jurassic Park III" in that way.

That begs the question: could Ile Saint-Hubert return in the future? As it stands, Universal hasn't announced any plans for another sequel, though "Rebirth" does seem poised to do pretty well at the box office. As is always the case in Hollywood, if something is successful, a sequel will probably follow. Whether or not that's a more direct sequel to this movie or another adventure with more new characters remains to be seen. Edwards did leave things pretty open-ended and didn't box the studio into any specific story that needs telling.

There's also the matter of the animated shows like "Jurassic World: Chaos Theory" on Netflix. Who knows? Maybe those characters will make their way to Ile Saint-Hubert somehow. Maybe the next movie will finally bring us back to Site B after all these years, as that's largely been unexplored since "JP3." There are options for the future, but the mere existence of this new island suggests that there is more to explore, should Universal decide that's the right thing to do. 

Even if the future of the franchise isn't centered on Ile Saint-Hubert, its most significant contribution to the franchise was bringing something new to the table that could open the door for more down the line, be that a further explanation of this island or somewhere else entirely. 

"Jurassic World Rebirth" is in theaters now.