Genndy Tartakovsky's Primal: "Slave of the Scorpion" and The Art of the Gamechanger Episode
The Newest Entry In a Long Line of Universe-Warping Season Finales
Some legendary television episodes, (usually season finales) have this quality of pulling out the floor from under you, of upending months and years’ worth of ruminations, discussions, fan theories, and predictions with just one scene, or in this instance, one word.
TV in this era has many such moments. The most iconic among them is, of course, the beheading of Ned Stark, the definitive scene where you realize with bone-chilling certainty that Game of Thrones is not yet another “good guys win” fantasy.
A more recent example is the season 1 finale of The Good Place; a show initially viewed as a quirky follow up to Parks and Recreation set in the afterlife and yet another addition to the Mike Schur universe of feel-good sitcoms, but transforming into an almost unrecognizably different and ambitious show within the 10 seconds of Ted Danson’s demonic laugh in the finale. The Boys season 2 finale was also equally mind-blowing.
But Primal’s “Slave of the Scorpion” is by far the most impressive season finale streamed in recent memory in my humble opinion, and it’s not close. Let me attempt to articulate why.
The show is set in a (fictional) prehistoric time, featuring a man and a dinosaur (Spear and Fang) teaming up to survive in the harsh wilderness after a shared tragedy. Here’s the central conceit: the show has no dialogue. And no cheap tricks to compensate for it either.
Take the scene where the duo brings down a giant mammoth. There is a superb “mirror shot”, a close up of the animal’s eye with Spear’s face reflected in it. As its eyelid begins to close, we see what appears to be regret, and a weariness that comes with the constant killing and fighting that is his life. This beautifully segues into a flashback in a later scene echoing a similar sentiment. What is incredible about Primal is that the episodes are filled with the entire spectrum of emotions, sadness, compassion, and humor among others (did I mention there was no dialogue?). This is facilitated by the painstakingly detailed animation that speaks volumes through the smallest gestures and changes in expression. The visual mastery on display is just stupendous.
Also stupendous is the pacing. Stretches of tranquility are followed by sharp bursts of bloody, savage, action and violence. The opening scene of the first episode features the stoic Spear fishing in the middle of a stream, suddenly interrupted by an alligator with its massive jaws wide open and ready to swallow him. Cut to the title card. The pacing ensures that even in moments of tranquility, we’re constantly on edge, alert for the next strange horror that’s going to strike the protagonists. We’re not mere flies on the wall; we’re drawn in, our pulse rates mere puppets in the hands of Tartakovsky and his team.
For a story that initially comes across as an action-packed “buddies” journey, Primal has an overarching theme: the importance of cooperation and kindness. At the core of the duo’s struggle to survive is not the strength of their muscles or the sharpness of their fangs, but an empathy that allows them to work together to overcome winged predators, flaming volcanoes, and rabid dinosaurs alike. More often than not, compassion helps the two survive in the harshest of worlds. As if to forcefully ram this point into our heads, there is an incredible episode involving time travel (yes, you read that right), where our protagonists are rendered absolutely helpless and completely dependent on the kindness of a stranger who just so happens to understand and empathize with their plight. To overcome the challenge of conveying such complex emotions and themes in mere 20-minute episodes without a single word of dialogue being spoken has to count among the most impressive feats of storytelling.
The show throughout the first 9 episodes followed the standard adventure-of-the-week format, with seemingly no presence of a broad story arc. Fans of the show were content with gaping at the incredible artwork for 20 minutes every week, marveling at the fact that it didn’t require any written words or dialogue to keep us invested. And then the finale dropped, giving us something we never expected in the first place.
(Spoilers ahead)
It turns out the world of Primal is not quite as pre-historic as it seems, with the arrival of a strange woman with a tattoo of a scorpion on her head, calling herself “Mira”, in the first instance of a character using dialogue in the series. In a typical superbly animated underwater fight sequence, the duo rescues her and then gains her confidence. Through crudely drawn imagery, she manages to convey that her tribe was enslaved by a mysterious tyrant and his hordes and that she managed to escape from their clutches before finding Spear and Fang. Over the course of the day, they get to know her various unique abilities, including advanced cooking and hunting techniques (she uses a bow), language, and even religious ritual, developing a bond with her in the process.
Mira then gets kidnapped by her tormentors in the night, while Spear and Fang are waylaid by demonic monkeys and fail to save her. And then we get to the final scene, with Spear and Fang watching in despair as she is spirited away by her captors in a ship with a (you guessed it) scorpion on its flag. As it sails into the sunrise, Spear utters his first word: “Mira”.
Before releasing on Adult Swim, Primal was already garnering hype amongst animation enthusiasts, with Tartakovsky and his team playing up the artistic decision of using no dialogue at every opportunity and every interview. It wasn’t cheap talk, obviously, as they met and exceeded expectations with what they put on screen week after week. What makes this beyond genius is that it acted as the ultimate decoy for setting up the finale, which has not only completely upended the story (like any standard great finale) but has also given whole new dimensions to the fantastical world that Primal is set in, with seemingly whole civilizations left undiscovered. Now it’s not just “ that show with stunning visuals without dialogue”, but a show that has set up a fascinating and as yet unexplored world populated by intriguing and mysterious characters like Mira and the tyrant, that fans can’t wait to see quickly enough.
Thankfully, Tartakovsky has a rather impressive body of work to revisit in the meantime, which should keep me occupied till season 2 drops.