Harvester Queen

"She has arrived."

- A captured Harvester soldier announcing the Queen, through former President Thomas Whitmore.

A Harvester Queen is a breed of Harvester that serves as the leader, monarch and matriarch of a Harvester hive, and commands her personal ship, attached to the center of a Harvester Mothership. A Queen rules over her personal swarm and represents the will and consciousness of her species.

One Queen is retroactively mentioned as being behind the events of Independence Day (1996), and later becomes the true main antagonist in Independence Day: Resurgence (2016). More members of the species will likely be seen and introduced in the third film.

Backstory
For thousands of years, the Harvester Empire has been destroying civilizations and home worlds, including the Sphere's, under the command of Harvester Queens.

War of 1996
"There must have been a Queen up there that we didn't know about."

- - David Levinson.

A Harvester Queen sent an invasion force, consisting of a Supreme Commander, his/her Harvesters, and a Colony ship, to attack Earth in July 2, 1996, thus precipitating the War of 1996 so that the planet's core could be harvested. He/she is killed during the third day of the invasion when two humans, Captain Steven Hiller and David Levinson, infiltrate his/her Colony ship and destroy it by detonate a nuclear warhead from the inside out. This made the Queen so angry that she would eventually come back for revenge 20 years later, during the War of 2016.

War of 2016
"No one has ever killed a Harvester Queen..."

- - The Sphere answers about what would happen if a Harvester Queen is killed.

In July 2016, the very same Queen receives a distress signal sent by a City Destroyer from the War of 1996. She then immediately has the Harvester Mothership directed for Earth, intending to avenge the first invasion and rip the planet for its resources. Shortly before the arrival of the Harvester Mothership, the aliens' nemesis, the Sphere, first arrive to Earth and was subsequently shot down by humanity, which they mistook it for another hostile species. The Queen directs the Harvester Mothership, which promptly destroyed Earth's defense grid, before settling over the Atlantic Ocean to begin drilling towards the core of the planet.

Anticipating a counter-offensive from the humans, the Queen allows an aerial bombing human squadron to approach her ship, before launching her impenetrable defenses. Shortly after, the Queen is alarmed that the Sphere is on Earth, and immediately sets out to claim it. The Queen departed on her personal ship and headed towards the source of the Sphere's signal at Area 51. Unknown to the Queen, the ESD under David Levinson tricks the Queen by rerouting the signal to a space tug piloted by former President Thomas Whitmore, who infiltrates the Queen's pod and detonates cold fusion bombs directly in front of her.

However, the Queen is protected by her specialized bio-mechanical suit's shields and survived the explosion. She then engages Patricia Whitmore in battle, resulting in the loss of her shield and weaponry, and Patricia's craft. The Queen then makes her way toward Area 51, with telekinetically controlling her Fighters to form a protective swarm around her, to capture the Sphere. However, humans piloting stolen Fighters, Dylan Hiller, Jake Morrison, Rain Lao, and Charles Miller, attack her from behind. Together, they destroy her suit, fatally wounding her, and she collapses and bleeds to death. With her death, the Harvesters retreat without the Queen's hive-mind control, and the invasion ends.

Behavior
Like the smaller Harvesters, Harvester Queens may have telepathy with mind-controlled victims, like in a deleted scene for Resurgence. This may be because the smaller Harvesters have that ability. The Queens also communicate with them and command an entire fleet of Harvesters, possibly for dominance over smaller Harvesters. They may also control spacecraft from their smaller Harvesters to create a shield around them for protection, if their energy shield is ever to be destroyed, likely because they need some kind of protection.

However, Harvester Queens are very violent and extremely hostile extra-terrestrials. This is shown since they have hatred for mankind. This is the case with the IDR Harvester Queen in the sequel, as she activated the gravity beams on her ship to kill thousands, perhaps millions, of inhabitants.

Rank and Position
These monstrously large aliens are the commanding force behind the Harvester Empire. Residing in a private and heavily guarded center pod of a Harvester Mothership, they have the ability to control nearby Fighters, and are incredibly hard to kill. They are noted for being gargantuan, extremely strong, and strategically gifted. Aside for their size, the Queens are noted for being the only Harvesters known to have a mouth and vocal chords, unlike the rest of their species.

Armory and Protection
The Harvester Queen may be large (roughly 216 feet tall in her bio-suit, 138 feet tall without it), but like her smaller soldiers, she is vulnerable outside of her ship and her bio-mechanical suit. A Queen's bio-mechanical suit is similar to the smaller ones used by the rest of her species, and it is entirely plausible that the rest of the Harvesters adopted the design to emulate their Queens. The suits the Queens wear are obviously much larger than those worn by soldiers, and emits its own protective blast shield. However, with enough bombardment (by native Harvester projectile or energy cannons from human hybrid fighters it seems) the shield generator can be disabled.

Appearance and Communication
Naturally, Harvester Queens are 138 ft. tall, and have yellowish-green skin. Their blood is green as well, but it's not acid, like the Xenomorph Queens in the Alien franchise have green acid blood, shown as when her blood does not eat away the windshield on the bus David Levinson is driving. However, they are so strikingly similar. They both have a mantle on their heads, they both have sharp, cone-shaped teeth, and they are both hostile, so it's very possible that the Harvester Queens were meant to resemble the Xenomorph Queens.

Harvester Queens also sport large tentacles on their back, which is their weak-spot. The smaller Harvester bio-suits may have tentacles on them as a way for the smaller Harvesters to praise their Queens. Their abdomen is also very similar to a locust's abdomen, so it's also possible that Thomas Whitmore said that the Harvesters are like locusts because of their Queens' similarities with locusts, including body structure and being invading creatures.The Queen is the central entity for every Harvester Mothership, including her own, with only her having an individual will outside of the hive-mind. Smaller Harvesters are able to communicate with the Queen because they are a hive-mind type race, and because of the hive-mind, any warrior would gladly die to protect a Harvester Queen.

Technology
Harvester Queens travel in gargantuan ships called Queen's Pods. These ships are around 30 km in diameter, and are connected close to the center of a Harvester Mothership. Like all other Harvester craft, Queen's Pods have their own shields, like the Queens themselves have. However, these shields are so strong that almost nothing can penetrate it. So far, the only way to destroy a Queen's Pod is to enter it, and fire cold fusion weapons once inside. This was the case with Thomas Whitmore in Independence Day: Resurgence.

Appearances

 * Independence Day: Resurgence (novelization)
 * Independence Day: Resurgence (movie)

Similar Hostile Species

 * Cy-Bug Queen (Wreck-It Ralph: The Video Game)
 * Xenomorph Queen (Alien franchise)

Trivia

 * The Harvester Queens appear to be inspired by the Xenomorph Queen from James Cameron's 1986 science-fiction action film Aliens. They could have also been inspired by the Drej Queen from the 2000 animated science-fiction action-adventure film, Titan A.E..
 * In the novelization of Independence Day: Resurgence, it is explained that the Queen's shield was damaged by the cold fusion bomb blast, weakening it enough for Patricia Whitmore to eventually penetrate it.
 * Also, in the novelization, the Queen, after being weakened, is killed by the school bus driven by David Levinson, ramming directly into her head. In the film, she bleeds to death from her weak spot being exploited.
 * The Queen's death while nearly toppling over the bus driven by David Levinson is very similar to Roland Emmerich's 1998 film, Godzilla, in which the titular monster, Zilla, is killed by jet fighters, and almost crushes the protagonists in the film.
 * Since the Harvester Queen was retroactively behind the events of the first film (the Harvester Supreme Commander was the Big Bad), the Queen serves as the mastermind behind the Harvesters' plot in Independence Day. She then appeared as the Big Bad in the 2016 sequel. Therefore, she is the Bigger Bad in the Independence Day films so far.
 * She is also very similar with Supreme Leader Snoke from the Star Wars franchise. They are both the leaders of their powerful empires, both are villains, and both are very mysterious.