[Editor's note: The following contains spoilers for Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous Season 3]
When you think of the Jurassic Park franchise, do you think of wide-eyed wonder? Thrilling adventure? As a kid watching the 1993 original movie for the first time, I considered it an exercise in horror. Before we ever get to the park and the "no expenses spared," we get an absolutely terrifying opening scene that sells you on the unspeakable horrors that await on the other side of the iconic park gates. Every movie since the first one has tried to recapture that sense of danger and horror by making the dinosaurs bigger and more aggressive, but it wasn't until the DreamWorks and Netflix animated series Jurassic World:Camp Cretaceous that the franchise made actually dinosaurs scary again.
When Jurassic World launched a sequel trilogy back in 2015, it stepped up the "T-Rex, but meaner" mantra of Jurassic Park III by creating a hybrid dinosaur that had enhanced abilities. The problem was that the Indominus Rex ended up feeling like a slightly bigger T-Rex with some fancy technical features sprinkled on top, a trend that continued with Fallen Kingdom in 2018, which introduced a bigger Velociraptor controlled by a laser pointer. When Camp Cretaceous inevitably introduced its own hybrid, however, it finally understood the assignment and gave audiences a true Frankenstein's monster of a dinosaur, which is just what the franchise needed.
The animated series follows a group of teenage kids who are forced to survive on their own on Isla Nublar after being left behind following the events of Jurassic World. Last season introduced a mysterious lab containing an experiment code-named E750, which this season revealed to be the very first dinosaur hybrid, called the Scorpios Rex. Like the first Jurassic Park, the animated series builds up its dino-horror as something worth fearing by showing us the carnage it leaves in its wake before we even see the real thing. When Episode 5 begins, we see Brooklynn (Jenna Ortega) and Sammy (Raini Rodriguez) being chased by a stampede. From above, we see the long neck of a Brachiosaurus towering over the foliage before it lets out a screech as it is attacked by an unseen dinosaur and falls to the ground. Later, dino-expert Darius (Paul-Mikél Williams) finds the corpse of a dinosaur just hanging from a tree, covered in quills. As showrunnerScott Kreamertold us:
"We wanted it to feel like a failed medical experiment and also a precursor to the Indominus and Indoraptor. The design and even the animation teams came up with this super creepy — it's not a dinosaur. We've always been very careful and specific on this show to say these dinosaurs are animals, not monsters. But the Scorpios Rex is straight-up a monster."
It is not until the last five minutes of Episode 5 that we get a proper look at the monster that is the Scorpios Rex, and it lives up to its monstrous reputation. The moment it's on-screen, at night and in the rain — another way in which this season feels more in line with the original Jurassic Park than its sequels — it's not like any other dinosaur we've seen on screen. For one, it's way thinner, almost skeletal. Its skull is more rounded, almost human-like, and it's got long, creepy arms that it uses to walk on all fours at times or even climb up trees to stalk its prey. The first thing that came to mind when watching the episode was not the Indominus Rex or even a Velociraptor, but the creepy, inhuman concept art for the abandoned Jurassic Park 4 script by John Sayles that combined humans with dinosaurs to create Island of Doctor Moreau-like creatures.
Though Kreamer doesn't specifically mention the abandoned concept art, he does admit that the design team, and even producer Colin Trevorrow chimed in with ideas that resulted in the Scorpios Rex resembling Frankenstein's Monster more than an actual dinosaur.
"We wanted it to feel like a threat that Darius, our dinosaur expert, is completely unprepared for. Early on there were discussion about whether it moved like a zombie, in that it doesn't have complete control over all its limbs, when we came up with the idea of adding the scorpionfish qualities and the poison quills to make it the most dangerous thing the kids have ever faced."
And there lies the key to what makes the Scorpios Rex different from the other two hybrids — it actually feels like something that could harm or kill the protagonists. The Indominus Rex caused a whole bunch of chaos in Jurassic World, but it wasn't really the primary antagonist, as it was (surprise!) humans all along. By the point the Indoraptor goes off the rails and starts attacking, the audience wants it to attack the humans that created it. That's not the case in Camp Cretaceous, because there is no one else on the island other than the kids and the dinosaurs, and we've spent three seasons getting to sympathize with both. So when episode five both introduces us to the Scorpios Rex, shows it for the first time, and ends with one of the main characters getting stabbed with a poisoned quill, you're wondering just what the hell can take this monster down, and whether anyone will be left to tell the tale.
Of course, we know this is a kids' show, so we as an audience don't expect any of the kids to actually die. But more than any movie since the original in 1993, Season 3 of Camp Cretaceous makes you believe for just a moment that the kids might not make it after all.
Very much in the same vein as The Clone Wars, Camp Cretaceous has been adept at tying the entire franchise, and its future, together into a nice package that both kids and adults can enjoy, and this season is not different. Where the first season showed us events from the movie from a different perspective, while also fulfilling the anti-capitalist themes of the novels, and the second expanded on the franchise's environmental message, this season also crossed over with Fallen Kingdom to show us another view of the film's prologue, while also expand on Dr. Wu's relationship with the Lockwoods before he started working on the Indoraptor. "That lined up nicely for us since the opening of Fallen Kingdom happens just a few months after the fall of Jurassic World," Kreamer said.
Though Kreamer was mum on whether future seasons of Camp Cretaceous could tie into the upcoming Jurassic World: Dominion, the season does end on a cliffhanger. The last shot shows the kids finally leaving Isla Nublar on a boat, as the sound of a dinosaur can be heard behind a closed door. What's interesting is that this happens a full two years before Fallen Kingdom released a bunch of dinosaurs in the wild, so it's hard to imagine the show not continuing this plot thread in some capacity. No matter what happens, it is safe to assume that it will be scary for the kids (and the audience), and that's just what the franchise has been missing.
Jurassic World: Camp CretatiousPart 3 is streaming now on Netflix.