Season Review: Scavengers Reign Season One

Overview (Spoilers Below):

The remaining crew of a damaged interstellar freighter ship find themselves stranded on a beautiful yet unforgiving alien planet where they must survive long enough to escape or be rescued. As the survivors struggle to locate their downed ship and missing crew mates, their new home reveals a hostile world allowed to thrive without human interference.

Our Take:

The worst thing about space travel is that you never know what’ll happen to you and your craft if something goes wrong despite being well-prepared. In this case, it’s winding up trapped on an unknown and dangerous planet following the destruction of an interstellar craft. At least it’s not as bad as drifting off into space for eternity. However, based on the condition of the unknown world and its “residents”, we might want to start rethinking that theory.

After the release of Santa Inc. back in 2021, Max started releasing its few recent IP-based animated shows to keep us occupied throughout 2023. Velma pissed everyone off for the wrong reasons, although I’m seemingly the only person who shrugged that series off like it was a speck of dust without having a hissy fit. However, the following three shows afterward turned out to be surprisingly decent regarding their respective qualities. Fired on Mars and Fionna and Cake were the best of the bunch regarding their mature commentaries and animation. Even though Young Love didn’t match those two shows quality-wise, it’s a delightful depiction of the African-American community and a decent continuation of the Oscar-winning short film.

With Young Love out of the way, it didn’t take long to get another adult-animated series based on a short film exclusively from Max. The series I’m referring to is Scavengers Reign, a sci-fi survival drama series involving the survivors of a decimated spacecraft on an unfamiliar planet. The show is created by Joseph Bennett and Charles Huettner, who are responsible for writing and directing the 2016 short film it’s based on called Scavengers. So, it appears it follows the same blueprints as Young Love, in which the main drive behind the source material returned as the showrunner for its series adaptation. It worked out well for the heartfelt adult animated series, but does it do the same for Scavengers Reign? Unsurprisingly, yes. But it turned out to be way better than I anticipated as it progressed.

Consisting of twelve episodes, the first season of Scavengers Reign depicts the remaining survivors of their spacecraft, the Demeter, who have been stranded on the alien planet, Vesta, for several months. Funny enough, there’s also a doomed ship called the Demeter from “The Captain’s Log”, a chapter from Bram Stoker’s Dracula. With a name like that, it’s no wonder people have terrible luck with their forms of transportation. Maybe people should stop naming their ships “Demeter” to avoid any more casualties like that. The series follows the crew members as they attempt to trek through unknown territory to reach the crash-landed Demeter before its passengers die while exploring the beauty and danger of the planet’s environment.

The series is told from the different perspectives of three groups of survivors. One is Sam (Bob Stephenson) and Ursula (Sunita Mani), the scientists who journey to find the Demeter while getting sidetracked by the planet’s creatures and ecosystem. The other is the relationship between Azi (Wunmi Mosaku) and Levi (Alia Shawkat), a malfunctioning robot held together by the planet’s moss, altering its behavior functions. Finally, we have Kamen (Ted Travelstead), a worker for the Demeter who falls under the sway of a psychic creature called Hollow, which shows him memories of his past, including his relationship with his wife, Fiona.

With the series switching back and forth to different groups in each episode, it would’ve risked providing unnecessary filler between the high stakes for each character. However, that isn’t the case. Each scene involving the different characters is vital to the themes and character interactions, even during the Demeter’s destruction. With each episode being 23 to 26 minutes long, the pacing fits well in exploring the characters and making the world-building mesmerizing yet suitably terrifying without the extra baggage slowing it down.

The best example is Kamen in the series’s second group of episodes, mainly “The Demeter”. That episode showed Kamen being responsible for the series’s events when he changed the Demeter’s route without Sam’s permission. He not only caused them to be stranded on Vesta but also caused the death of his wife, Fiona, and destroyed Sam’s trust. Sam and Ursula’s scenario didn’t interest me as much as others during the first two episodes. However, episodes like “The Demeter” and “The Wall” paint a clearer picture of the two explorers, mainly Sam’s grudge against Kamen, while delivering horrific and threatening stakes for them to endure. One of those stakes worth noting is the parasite inside Sam in “The Cure”, “The Nest”, “The Mountain”, and “The Decision”.

These elements emphasize the series’s themes depicting guilt, loss, and hopelessness, which I often experienced in other adult animated dramas. At least, that’s what I figured based on my experience. Along with its depictions of nature and humanity, the messages fit perfectly with its narrative, successfully revitalizing the survival drama formula with heartache and beauty. The show also uses a few body horror elements that aren’t too violent but unsettling enough to invoke some subtle frights, which is where the alien’s parasite comes into play. It showcases that Vesta’s environment functions the same way as Earth’s, in which they provide the beauty of nature, but not without the dangers lying within.

Scavengers Reign is also the latest series to be animated by Titmouse, Inc., along with Green Street Pictures. I’ve watched plenty of shows from Titmouse, Inc. that made solid use of its simplistic animation regarding the designs and presentation, even the ones I couldn’t remember the names of at the top of my head. However, Scavengers Reign blew them out of the water with its sublime animation work. Out of the shows I’ve watched from Titmouse, Inc., this series is the best the company has worked on. Despite a couple of frame rate drops during a few moments, the animation is mesmerizing for Vesta’s lively and vast settings and the creatures. The diverse aliens inhabiting the planet, including Hollow, are one of the best parts of the series regarding their designs, expressing themselves through their beauty and intimidation.  

Overall, Scavengers Reign scavenges incredible depth and heart-aching majesty to successfully survive its genre trappings. It’s another series that proves animation’s worth as a storytelling tool to emphasize the mature themes, characters, and settings. More importantly, it shows that Max can still deliver animated content for adult viewers…with the proper execution, of course. Regarding its subtle yet engaging voice cast, storytelling, a mixture of drama and horror, and sublime animation, Scavengers Reign is, to my surprise, the best adult animated series of 2023 since Fired on Mars. Like that show, this sci-fi venture is something you shouldn’t sleep on, especially if you’re an animation fan.