Editor’s Note: This Article Contains Spoilers For “Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal”
When my brother and I first threw on “Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal” (“Primal”), we were just looking for a late-night show to watch; little did we know, we would binge the entire series shortly after. “Primal” has a certain distinct quality to it: hand-drawn animation, no English dialogue, and the show’s usage of alternative methods to portray its messages, choosing to show instead of tell. Behind all the blood—and there’s a lot of it—a story of loss and belonging emerges, as Spear and Fang traverse a hostile and oftentimes unforgiving world.
The first season was mostly world building. Despite this, I have to say it was my favorite season of the entire show. The whole time I watched it, I felt some vague nostalgia that I couldn’t quite place. After a couple episodes, I remembered another one of Tartakovsky’s shows that I saw as a kid: Samurai Jack. Primal seems to have the same, dark feeling while being so vastly different. When I watched Samurai Jack as a kid, a lot of the themes went right over my head. Now, watching Primal, I can really enjoy Tartakovsky’s storytelling and distinct style.
Primal follows two newly-isolated companions. While never explicitly mentioned during the show, the Neanderthal is named Spear, and the T-rex Fang. The story kicks off with episode one “Spear and Fang”, where our protagonist tragically loses his wife and two children to rogue dinosaurs. While still grieving, Spear runs into Fang. Before he tries to attack her, he realizes she too has children. The two are ambushed by the aforementioned dinosaurs, and work together to protect Fang’s young. Ultimately, they fail. They bond in their anguish, slowly becoming inseparable. The two explore their surroundings, and this is my favorite segment of world building in the entire series. Not only do Spear and Fang face prehistoric beasts, they are also up against the supernatural: intelligent apes, witches, and even plagued creatures. The world of Primal feels so fresh, blending dinosaurs, early humans, and the beginning of developed civilization all in a chaotic but believable ecosystem, with traces of elemental-based magic here and there.
The stories’ inarticulate flow meets a screeching halt when a frantic woman escapes a Viking ship and swims ashore. She speaks the Lebanese dialect of Arabic, but with zero subtitles. In my opinion, the show benefits from the language barrier. Not understanding the woman–who is revealed to be named Mira–ensures that Primal has zero exposition, which makes for such a captivating story. A lot of shows struggle to explain things without a ton of dialogue. For me, this is why the first season is so good; it paints a picture of a world and doesn’t explain it, just shows it. The season ends off with Mira’s abduction, where she is taken out to sea by a large vessel. Instead of unintelligible grunts, Spear yells out “Mira!” setting the stage for the second season.
After the events of season one, the duo creates a raft to set sail across the ocean to find Mira—and after a nearly fatal encounter with a Megalodon, the two wash upon different shores. Both reunite after their own adventures, and track down the Vikings to bring them justice. This included one of the most gruesome episodes, but one of my favorites, titled “The Red Mist”. This episode marks a noticeable
shift in the Protagonists, and after saving Mira and the other slaves in the previous episode, “Dawn of Man” they’re confronted by the Vikings. Things quickly turn violent when the Viking tribe attacks. Both Spear and Fang ruthlessly maul them in a violent battle. Deep red mist drowns out the details, leaving behind silhouettes which portray the main characters’ shift from bare minimum survival to powerful dominance. After Spear and Fang wreak havoc on the village, the Viking chieftain returns with his son, and here, the damage left behind becomes heart-breakingly apparent. Tartakovsky shows us the other side of the battlefield, the one that wasn’t victorious, the father and son who were left without their family. I enjoy “Primal”s ability to look at things from another perspective other than the main characters’. Most other shows would simply move on, but the episode intentionally looms on the destruction left behind instead of glossing over it. With that, the father and son vow to track down Fang, Spear, and Mira, with nothing to lose, they’re dead set on vengeance.
After this episode, Fang acts differently. She’s pregnant, during their separation, Fang and another Dinosaur mated with each other, resulting in three eggs. The Chieftain and his son attempt to take down the group, but Fang’s maternal instincts overpower them, protecting the eggs and taking down the Vikings. The chieftain is dragged down to the underworld, where he’s faced with a demonic entity. The creature offers his son for the capture of Spear and Fang; he obliges, transforming him into a fiery magma creature. These episodes following “Dawn of Man” put a lot of emphasis on parental protection, the father protects his son because he has nobody but his kid. Fang protects her eggs in an effort to give her children a chance in such a dangerous world. They allow viewers to empathize with both sides, the Chieftain is just protecting all he has, and Fang is protecting what’s to come.
The crew sets sail for Mira’s homeland, before they’re intercepted by an Egyptian-themed colossal ship fittingly dubbed “The Colossus”. Both Fang and Spear are taken to be used as soldiers, but not without a fight. While resisting, one of Fang’s eggs slips, resulting in the loss of one of her young. Using the distraught T-rex’s remaining eggs as leverage, they forced both to fight in wars. After a three-episode subplot, Fang’s eggs hatch into two baby dinosaurs, and they escape and overthrow “The Colossus”
before continuing on their journey. These episodes consistently echo previous themes of maternal instinct, and I really enjoy how well it worked. Fang fell into this protector type role, and the suppression directly contradicts this, leaving her vulnerable and unable to shield her hatchlings from harm.
When they arrive, Mira reflects on her past, she reconnects with her people and culture. The story settles, it seems as if it will come to a slow, satisfying conclusion. During the season two finale “Echos of Eternity”, Spears’ motivations shift, using cave paintings to express his dissatisfaction and desire to leave. Almost right after they arrive, they’re once again ambushed by the chieftain. Now a fiery shapeshifting monster, he transforms into a molten snake. In a sudden turn of events, they fight; Fang gets heavily burned and Spear sustains fatal injuries. Following the Chieftains partial victory, he returns back to the underworld never to be seen again. Season two then comes to a close, with Mira giving Spear her goodbyes as he lays on his deathbed. When I watched this scene (which was only 7 minutes long) it was genuinely so jarring. After our characters had finally reached a somewhat-satisfactory conclusion, Tartakovsky threw the gut punch of killing off Spear. I think the finale could have been handled very differently, afterall, 7 minutes is a very short amount of time to wrap up a battle scene, goodbye, and epilogue. I feel as if the ending of season two could’ve held so much more emotional weight if Fang and Spear at the very least put up more of a fight, or had much more time to tie all loose ends together. I really liked season two, but it was really disappointing that the conclusion felt so shocking and rushed.
Season three was my least favorite by far, and it had a lot of problems. After the end of season two, Spear was resurrected. Now a husk of his previous self, he spent around four episodes regaining his memory before reuniting with Fang Mira, and the hatchlings. The episodes leading up started to feel overly formulaic, since they followed the pattern of Spear explores, faces an obstacle, then escapes before having a short flashback. Things only got worse when the show started over-reusing frames. It’s common practice for animated shows to recycle animation, it saves time and money, and if done right is hardly even noticeable; “Primal” season three wasn’t so subtle. There were multiple times while watching where I felt like I had re-watched the same scene and scenario multiple times, it got redundant and wasn’t as captivating as the earlier seasons. Paired with the slow pacing, I felt like I was just watching to finish the show. The ending was alright, it sort-of reversed the ending of the second season by completely changing Spears’ motivations from exploring on his own, to with his family, also portrayed through cave paintings. In retrospect, the third season felt somewhat like an unnecessary extension of season two, as if Tartakovsky was trying to “make up” for the previous season.
I loved watching “Primal”, it has such a unique narrative, frames that look like artwork, and (at times) amazing emotional depth. I would recommend this show to anybody and everybody looking for action-packed visual storytelling. Although not perfect, I had such a good experience watching the show, and in the end, that matters more than any of my harsh critiques.
