TV Review – Scavengers Reign

Scavengers Reign Season One (HBO Max)
Written by Joseph Bennett, Charles Huettner, Sean Buckelew, James Merrill, Jenny Deiker Restivo, and Jillian Goldfluss
Directed by Joseph Bennett, Charles Huettner, Jonathan Djob Nkondo, Vincent Tsui, Rachel Reid, Christine Jie-Eun Shin, and Diego Porral

I’m not a huge fan of animated films & television. I have a soft spot for things like the films of Hayao Miyazaki or The Venture Brothers, but I don’t often gravitate toward animation. In the West, animation is still closely related to immature storytelling, leading to dreck like Family Guy or Rick & Morty. While I wouldn’t consider myself an anime fan, in the last few years, I’ve found what I’ve watched to be far more interesting than American crap. Satoshi Kon has quickly become a favorite, up there now with Miyazaki. While made by American animators, Scavengers Reign has the vibe of these Japanese productions. I was immediately thinking of Miyazaki’s Nausicaa as the characters explored the incredible alien life featured in this show. The vibe was a potent mix of chill with moments of tension & body horror.

The series begins with three separate groups of survivors from a downed cargo ship attempting to survive on a planet full of unique flora & fauna. Sam, the commander of the Demeter 227, travels with Ursula (Sunita Mani), a horticulturalist. A cargo specialist, Azi, is stranded with Levi (Alia Shawkat), one of the Demeter’s robot crew members. Then there’s Kamen, a crew member whose life was fraught with problems that led him to make bad decisions. Kamen encounters Hollow, a native creature with complex telekinetic & empathic powers. The human’s anger & greed become like a virus, which turns Hollow into one of the series’ most deadly antagonists.

The draw of Scavengers is the unique biology of the planet’s lifeforms. But that’s just the hook, and it’s a damn well-done one. Every animal & plant our characters encounter is awe-inspiring, sometimes terrifying, and others a reminder of how incredible the evolutionary process can be. It might be a brief stop to admire a flower whose petals open to reveal a tiny humanoid organism sleeping within the stamen. There are predatory vines that lie in wait, a passerby stepping on some hairs and finding they are crushed into a pulp and consumed. The show has some grisly deaths and injuries but never crosses the line into mindless gore. It’s a science fiction man vs. nature show. 

The season effectively has two halves. The first six episodes introduce viewers to the survivors of the Demeter and follow them on their three separate journeys across the planet trying to find their downed mothership. Kamen is alone, which makes him vulnerable to Hollow’s manipulations. The creature gets more than it bargained for as it plumbs the depths of the human’s memories, and quickly, the two become a destructive force destroying anything in their path. This plotline reminded me a lot of the psychic body horror of Akira and Hollow’s final battle in the second half of the season. It will likely do the same to viewers familiar with that extraordinary anime.

Azi grows frustrated with robot companion Levi and becomes so focused on navigating this harsh terrain that she doesn’t notice something is happening to the automaton. A brief encounter with local mycelium sees Levi’s programming altered. She becomes more interested in the lifeforms here, documenting them with her built-in camera and audio functions. It is too late when Azi realizes this machine is becoming much more than she knew.

And then there’s Sam and Urusula, encountering seemingly endless obstacles and always ending up the target of a hungry predator. They bond and become close, a father-daughter type relationship developing. Sam wants to hurry through each new biome they come across, while the curious Ursula wishes to stop to observe the plants now and then. By the end, she’ll have a rudimentary understanding, which will help her learn how to cultivate some of these life forms for the survivors’ benefit. Ursula will also face down one of the most horrifying parasites as Sam’s life is on the line. 

A lot of science fiction media presents alien worlds as mono-biomes, ignoring the reality we can see around us here on Earth. There are so many categories of biomes with a plethora of subcategories beneath those. Within each is a diverse array of plants and animals, all tangled up together in food webs and symbiotic relationships. It was evident to me that the creators of Scavengers have a strong background in biology and have spent a lot of time studying the structure and functions of wildlife. The balance you must achieve is making your alien life not too foreign so that an audience has no foothold in the world. You must also have enough exotic elements to intrigue them too. Scavengers absolutely nails that.

The show spans a swath of science fiction subgenres, from body horror to cosmic threats to the psychological aspects of being alone in an alien world. What I found most fascinating were the moments when the humans saw something take place that made them feel connected to the world. These scenes have no purpose in the plot but are thematically vital. Ursula’s view of the humanoid creature’s birth, life, and death in the span of minutes on the head of a flower resonates even if the viewer doesn’t know how to articulate their feelings. It’s the observation that a lifespan is a variable thing. The human view of young & old loses relevance when we study the rest of life. If you want to know about real Earth life that feels alien, look up the immortal jellyfish and have your mind blown. 

I assumed the show would be a mini-series but the final moments of the season hint at more stories to come and begin to pull in some more fantastical elements. The direction they are going could work, and I’m interested to see how it is developed further. If you’ve noticed the ebullient acclaim this show is getting lately, it is very much deserved. Rarely do we get such an intelligent, thoughtfully written piece of animated science fiction like Scavengers Reign. I would love to have more of it.