Primal is one of Genndy Tartakovsky’s greatest projects. I was a huge fan of his work as a kid, especially shows like Samurai Jack and Dexter’s Lab. And as an adult, I really do enjoy Adult Swim’s tactic of saying, “Hey everyone grew up with the guy, let’s just give him money to keep making shows,” that they have been running for almost a decade now. We got a final season of Samurai Jack on the program block, but after it ended, he obviously needed to make a new project, which leads us to Primal. This series was released in 2019 as a special 5 episode event, and I was instantly hooked.
Primal follows a caveman named Spear, whose family dies at the hands of a Tyrannosaurus, and becomes an empty husk looking for a purpose. He starts on a quest for revenge, but finds the other protagonist, a Tyrannosaurus mother called Fang, getting their babies eaten by the same dinosaur that killed Spear’s family, and chooses to help Fang get instant revenge. The duo of Fang and Spear then sadly wander around the planet in some vein of looking for purpose.
Now as an easy recap for two seasons of content, essentially Spear is finding a purpose, which is a family to protect. After freeing a Nubian slave named Mira and helping her back to her tribe, he gets depressed as he failed to find a purpose in this well-organized warrior tribe in a fictionalized Africa, as he is just a violent caveman. But a Viking summoned a demon to attack the village and with Spear’s final act, he immediately fought with this entity to the death to fulfill his purpose of protecting his family, with Mira going to bear his child. Bringing everyone’s arc to a close.
With that, Gendy Tartakovsky said season 3 of Primal would be more of an anthology series, which was an idea he wanted to do originally. Viewers can see glimpses of this in practice in Season 2 with episodes like “The Primal Theory.” I then waited… only to see an ad with Spear as a zombie for season 3? I was confused, and was hoping they didn’t jump the shark for this brand new season.
The story of this new season follows a Shaman whose village was attacked, so he resurrects Spear from the dead as a mindless weapon to exact his revenge on the invaders. However, during the fight, the shaman is killed. This gets rid of the spell, allowing Spear to regain consciousness and control of his undead body, but with a lack of memories that only appear briefly with a trigger. Spear then wanders around suffering; a once great hero waddling aimlessly, trying to trigger any memory of what he once was. This brings in what I find really interesting about this season: We as the audience understand Spear’s arc is over, but Spear never did. He died a hero not understanding that he was a great man, and he has to recover his memory to understand this.
This leads to what is my favorite part of the season, the first third of this season is essentially Spear wandering the land hoping to remember something. For instance, the ending of Episode 21, “Vengeance of Death,” has a group of Lepers sheltering Spear and a gang of Marauders start chopping up the village. Spear sees a vision of his children’s death, and even without understanding anything from the vision, his primal instinct is to fight the marauders to the death, protecting the Lepers. He doesn’t bask in the glory of the win; he instantly forgets the memory and feels like he has no idea why he even did that. Episode 23, “Feast of Flesh,” was also a stand-out episode. Spear remembers that he had love for a creature with stripes similar to Fang in one of his memory flashes and finds a grasshopper, going out of his way to protect it. It’s to the point his instincts lead him protecting this bug that he loses his arm in the process. We know that usually this is what Spear does when he was alive, but he now cannot understand this or even his own thought processes. The show’s tone is quite honestly really depressing for the first third; it really tries to invoke the feelings the first episode of Season 1 had from a different perspective, and I really enjoy it.
Now while I enjoy the story so far, I have to shine a light on how great the art and animation is for this show. Spear’s new design uses a lot of new shading techniques that remind me a lot of Mike Mignola’s work with comics like Hellboy. He’s really the only character that has this kind of shading, which really makes the design stand out more (along with it helping the narrative since he is LITERALLY out of place). The backgrounds in this show, and in a lot of Tartakovsky’s other projects, are encapsulating. The slower pace of Primal really makes you appreciate the hard work it takes to make this world come to life. Which is even harder considering how this show makes no sense historically. It’s almost as if the downtime between action has the reward of, “look at the pretty colors,” and that amuses the neurons in my brain.
Now one of the main plot twists happens at the start of episode 24, “Prey for the Wicked,” which takes us back to the moment after Spear died in his fight, showing us his funeral and how it affected Mira and Fang over the next few months. This is until the plot kicks in when a pack of Andrewsarchus kidnap people including a kid named Jabu, so the pregnant Mira and a few warriors go to rescue their people. They track them and find not only the original spot where Spear was revived but after losing to a sneak attack of Andrewsarchus, Spear tracked Fang’s scream and located the group. This blew my mind as I assumed we were past the ending of season 2 and were going to see how his daughter grew up. Mira realizes Spear doesn’t remember anything and Fang is freaked out as she has already accepted Spear is dead, so something is not right. Most of this middle of the season is Spear remembering that he and Fang had a bond but primarily forgot why, so he constantly tries to win the approval of Fang through unintentionally false gestures.
This part is a bit heartbreaking. Mira is doing her best to convince Spear of who he was while convincing the others that this object that goes against nature is a good person. One of the things that really helps is the really great use of body language in this series along with the pacing. We also get Fang’s subplot kicked off here, where in Season 1 her relationship with Spear was rocky and season 2 had her realize Spear cared about her as a real family. Now we have an issue; she smelt Spear’s corpse when he passed, so she accepts that he is sadly dead, and now a zombie of him is in front of her, smelling still of death. Fang is a T-Rex and also, an animal, so obviously her reaction is her getting mad at the abomination of nature in front of her and not seeing Spear, but a dead body moving, which is more heartbreaking for Spear. The way the show is able to convey this entire subplot that I just explained with no dialog and only body movement and human reactions put onto a T-rex is absolutely fantastic. One of the main reasons I love this show is that it treats the audience like an adult, clearly showing how characters feel by their reactions and movement alone.
We then get to the main fight of this act, with the remnants of our hero’s group versus the pack of Andrewsarchus at their home… which is a lot tougher than they fought initially. As it turns out, the Andrewsarchus were not eating the people they kidnap, a colossal mother of the pack eats the people, and this creature easily towers over Fang. This is probably a good time to mention that this show is gory and dark… as in I had a friend catch up to the show for the season 3 premiere, and I kept getting texts like, “JESUS CHRIST!” If you cannot handle gore, I really don’t think you would be able to watch this show, as there is literally a violent murder of an animal, dinosaur, or person every episode.
Mira tries to do a stealth mission, but everyone panics for survival, waking up the pack and causing Fang and Spear to spring into action. The fight choreography here is outstanding. And even if the plot was mid, dinosaurs fighting is super cool, which activates my dopamine levels in a very positive way. The fight ends with Fang biting the mother Andrewsarchus’ throat, but during the chaos, Mira got hurt. Spear goes to protect and care for Mira as so far she’s the only person who was nice to him that he remembers, but Fang pushes the zombie away. Even after his help he is rejected. He then tries to check up on her at the villages and is attacked by her tribe when all he wants to do is help. Which is at this point I’d say is the start of the final act of the plot, where Spear sees himself in a waterfall and gets his memories and semblance of humanity back, but is absolutely devastated and loses purpose again.
The only negative aspect so far is Jabu. I guess he is the season’s comic relief, even though Fang’s hatchlings kinda do that better at points for me. The art style of this character feels like it belongs in Tartakovsky’s other show Warriors: Unicorn Eternal, and all this kid does is scream and do Tom and Jerry charades. I did not care for him, and he does NOT fit the vibe of the show. A lot of people think this is all edge and gore but one look at this character design and you can tell they will not kill that little goober, so he is Primal’s version of Smormu.
We then reach the final act in which Spear goes to kill himself again in the nearest place he sees, that being a volcano. Before this happens he accidentally becomes a pit champion to the Black River People who live there. So as Mira is giving birth to her child, Spear does pit fights and is rewarded with liquid from the river which is what the Ape Man drank in season 1 to mutate himself. However it doesn’t mutate Spear, it just makes him more human, and this makes him feel more and more miserable as he is only in this village due to his ability to murder. Along with that it’s not even fighting to protect the Black River people, it’s a custom that seems like they invite people to participate, adding more to Spears’ depression and lack of purpose. This feeling ends when he beats a guy who rode in on a Pterosaur, using the creature to fly back to the village at night and sees his baby daughter, and giving Spear a reason to live again. This turns the pit fights into a goal for Spear to gain more of his mortal skin back, and my favorite part, turning armor from the losers he kills into a doll for his daughter when they meet again.
I will say this part felt a little slower, even though there’s massive time skips, as there is a huge side plot of Mira going to find Spear after the village cast zombie Spear out, but here there’s more focus on Fang’s arc of hating the zombified version of her friend as she tries to get Mira to go back to the village. Even though Spear helped in the last major fight, Fang doesn’t accept it. Mira is mad at Fang for this, and is now walking through the jungle with a cut up leg, about to give birth at any moment. So Fang just kinda shuts up and helps her. Not only is this arc a bit underwhelming, but Fang’s arc from the past few episodes feels like a shrug for a solution, especially with Mira not doing anything really different than her last dozen attempts to get Fang to stop screaming. It feels like a cop out. I think I’d respect it a bit more if Fang just can’t understand what a zombie is. This is already a slow and disappointing side plot from what I’m describing, but this isn’t the actual end of that B-plot. So after this quiet acceptance, they go to the waterfall and realize Spear jumped off. So they go back, Mira gives birth, then after she’s all rested up THEY GO BACK TO LOOK FOR SPEAR AGAIN PAST THE WATERFALL. We could have fit Fang’s arc after she had the baby. Why did we have to go somewhere, give up, give birth, then do the same thing you did a week ago? Very odd pacing choice since even with Season 1 and 2’s more hectic stories, they felt pretty well-paced other than these last few episodes.
The finale is Spear ditching the Black River Villagers and going back to Mira’s village to find Mira is gone. He looks in the forest to find a bloodied aftermath of a battle between Fang and this humongous black panther, but even though Fang and Spear are reunited with his family once again, the Black River Villagers kidnap the gang. Spear wakes up to find his family mutated in the pit with him as a punishment for leaving the village. The only way to leave is with one person left breathing in the pit. Which I guess is the actual main issue with the season. We already know in season 2, Mira, Fang, and all their kids live in the future to grow up, so any fake out or tension building with these characters is completely impossible. Like when Spear went to the forest in the post aftermath he was worried about the baby and his friends dying, but we as the audience know they’re going to be fine already. Much like with this climax, we know Mira isn’t going to die as a mutated ghoul against a mutated Fang. On the other hand it does add I guess a more interesting layer of tension of “Is Spear going to die” since he is the only main cast member to not be shown into the future shown in Season 2. Which is still fine, but the narrative never really made me feel that level of tension of “How will Spear survive this?” The themes of the season were very obvious: Spear finding purpose and a loving family, so the character dying again would feel like a slap in the face for the season and a waste of everyone’s time.
Now endings are usually not Tartakovsky’s strong suit, Samurai Jack’s being a good example. However, I was pleasantly surprised at how nice it turned out. The volcano erupts during the fight, causing a lot of the Black River People to die, but the lava is so painful it snaps people out of the mutation, cycling back to Spear saving his family with his literal newfound humanity and sense of purpose, to a repeat of the final scene in season 2 only with the camera pulled farther back to see that Spear is living a happy new life with his family. It is a bit of a repeat of last season, but more of a happy ending where Spear is alive. Which is great for people who were not satisfied with the ending of Season 2, but haters be damned…I have come to really like the way Primal ended originally.
Now I do think along with the major negative being the audience’s knowledge of the ending, I think the final negative is that it feels a bit safe. The plot is pretty straightforward to lead us to the obvious ending, and I think that is my lone gripe. Season 1 and 2 felt fresh and full of artistic risks, like with a majority of the story having no dialog, the wacky history, random one off episodes, etc. There doesn’t seem to be a more creative risk with this season as we have a planned course for all killer no filler, other than the premise of Spear back as a zombie. So once the shock that our main character is a zombie happens, it just turns into more of the status quo. Is it done well? Oh, 100%, but it doesn’t feel as cutting edge in the Adult Swim sphere as Season 1 or 2 does, if that makes sense. I was really hoping that this season took place YEARS after the first two to see the impact Spear made for his family. Just something less safe and more fun in the second half, and also maybe add more dinosaurs.
However, as it stands, Primal is still a fantastic cartoon and one of Adult Swim’s best programming in the 2020s. The art is beautiful, the story is solid, every design ROCKS, and the action is engaging. If you grew up with Samurai Jack, or are super into dinosaurs, you are doing yourself a disservice by not watching this show, as even a weaker season is still a must watch. I give this a solid 8/10. While at first it feels like its premise is a real Jump the Shark moment, it sticks the landing for another great season, even if it plays it a bit safer than its previous seasons.
