Why Furiosa Losing Her Arm Is An Even Bigger Deal In The Mad Max Universe

Spoilers ahead. Heading into Furiosa, the prequel to filmmaker George Miller’s 2015 hit post-apocalyptic blockbuster Mad Max: Fury Road, there are two revelations every fan will be waiting on the edge of their seat for. The first is how the now-beloved heroine — played by Charlize Theron in Fury Road and by Anya Taylor-Joy in Furiosa — came to sport her signature shaved head. The second? How the fierce warrior lost her left arm. As it turns out, the answer to both questions — especially in regards to her arm — goes far beyond Easter-egg-level and is actually the key to the movie’s heart. 

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which is in theaters now, is a sweeping, immersive epic set 15 to 20 years before the events of Fury Road and tracks the titular character’s journey to becoming the woman we met in 2015. As a young child, Furiosa (who is played by Alyla Browne during the first part of the film) is kidnapped from her home, a lush and abundant oasis hidden called the Green Place amid the Australian desert wasteland, and taken to tyrannical biker gang leader Dr. Dementus (Chris Hemsworth). Her mother attempts to save her but is ultimately killed by Dementus, and just before her death, she makes Furiosa promise two things: that she will tell no one else about the Green Place, and that she will return home no matter what. 

As young Furiosa is held hostage by Dementus, who ultimately trades her to warlord Immortan Joe in exchange for power and property, home becomes her singular focus. In a world that is falling apart, it is the only reason to survive. Before her memory fades, she tattoos a series of constellations on her left forearm, permanently etching a map home onto her body. But some years later, Furiosa is now a war rig driver for Immortan Joe, and during a high-speed chase with Dementus’ men, that same arm is crushed. She’s captured and hung by her injured arm as she’s forced to watch her driving partner — and sort of love interest — Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke) be tortured to his death. She’s trapped for hours, in what must be excruciating pain. But when Dementus is distracted, Furiosa quietly cuts off her left forearm (we’re spared the gory details on screen), allowing her to flee — while forcing her to leave the dream of home behind forever. 

“One of the first things that I connected to was just the absolute ferociousness one has to have in order to make a decision like that — to go, ‘Okay, all right, I’m going to sacrifice this in order to continue my survival.’ It felt, in the most beautiful way, feral.” Taylor-Joy tells Refinery29. “Interestingly enough, George [Miller] and I talked about this with her hair in the movie. I, like Charlize [Theron], had difficulty justifying the idea of why you would have [long] hair in the wasteland. Then I realized it was because there’s a large portion of this film where Furiosa still feels like she’ll be able to make it back to the Green Place with some semblance of the girl that she was when she was taken from it. In the losing of the map, in the losing of her hair, she becomes a creature of the wasteland and kind of accepts the fact that there’s no going home in the same way. She can only return as the warrior she now is.” 

Home, as a concept, looms large over the film. Dementus travels around the wasteland with an old teddy bear that belonged to his child, who is long gone. He becomes obsessed with claiming land as his own, and is desperate to find the Green Place as he searches for belonging. Meanwhile, home is what Furiosa sees as the endpoint of her quest, but it’s also the embodiment of hope. If she can put up enough fight and get home safely, she’ll be protected from oppressive male warlords and from the leering eyes of creepy men, while being reunited with her community, with the memories of her mother and her lost youth. So, when Furiosa loses her arm, she’s saying goodbye to both her home and her last grasp on hope. 

Furiosa’s sacrifice marks a shift in the film and a pivotal transformation that brings her closer to the character we know in Fury Road. Now driven by anger and revenge, her attention turns to Dementus, determined to make him pay for the lifetime of pain and grief she has faced without realizing it will fail to make her feel better. “It’s sort of a forbidden fruit type [of thing] — intellectually, you know [revenge] isn’t going to bring you satisfaction, but you still have to do it anyway,” Chris Hemsworth says. “You can justify it all day long and still play it out, but another side of yourself knows ultimately that it isn’t going to satisfy or fill that hole with the missing piece.”

Taylor-Joy agrees, and it’s an aspect of the film that has really stuck with her. “The reason that we’re drawn to [revenge] stories over and over and over again is because we all know that in that moment, it feels like [an act of revenge] would solve all of your problems,” Taylor-Joy says. “And yet you will never be able to be ‘full’ on [revenge] — it will never return the thing that you have lost, the thing that you need.” 

Getting caught up in revenge is almost a crueler fate for Furiosa; without the hope of home, she succumbs to the darkness and isolation she’s saddled with at the beginning of Fury Road, and it will take years — maybe decades — to pull her out as she tries to replace what she’s lost. But, for fans, the advantage of watching a prequel means you know there’s still more to come, and for Fury Road’s Furiosa, that means making peace with the rage within her younger self and forging a path forward to redemption and community.  

Furiosa is in theaters on May 24. 

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