Overview (Spoilers Below):
The Dream
Alone and in pursuit of Sam, Ursula resorts to desperate measures, while Kamen continues his hunt amid Hollow’s demands.
The Demeter
After an encounter with another survivor, Kamen considers the weight of his actions, while Azi experiences a change of heart.
The Fall
While Ursula faces an all-too familiar adversary, Azi and Levi find themselves pitted against a formidable new foe.
Our Take:
As seen in the first three episodes, the planet is full of wondrous possibilities regarding its environment. However, it’s also full of dangerous creatures and obstacles seeking to interrupt the characters’s journey home or worse. This is the case in the next set of episodes, where their trek through the unknown world went from bad to worse, especially Ursula, who was seen captured by one of its monsters at the end of the third episode. Thankfully, Ursula’s separation from Sam didn’t last long in “The Dream”, although the remaining episodes show that that’s the least of their problems.
I assumed that Scavengers Reign would continue to impress me with its mature narrative and animation based on my experience with the first three episodes. They’re light on the stakes, but man, did they get me hooked with its sceneries and character. For this group of episodes, Scavengers Reign moved the stakes to the next level, resulting in plenty of surprisingly emotional elements to accompany the frightening imagery and beautiful animation. More importantly, they shed more light on the characters’ backgrounds, mainly Kamen, before the series’s events. Amid the episodes’s tension-filled scenarios, we see that Kamen was responsible for the Demeter being destroyed by the solar flare after changing its route without Sam’s approval. As a result, Sam holds a massive grudge against Kamen for stranding them on the planet. But wait. It gets even worse. Kamen also remembers that he accidentally left his wife, Fiona, behind during the evacuation, leaving her to go down with the ship. The guilt of his actions led to Kamen being devoured by Hollow as he succumbs to the darkness within him.
You can definitely see that this is another animated series that doesn’t hold back on its mature themes, including guilt, nature, humanity, and loss. However, that’s not the only reason why these episodes are great. It’s also due to the series’s bold choice to kill off one of its characters. The first survivor to bite the dust was Levi in “The Fall”, where it was torn apart by Hollow while getting across the canyon. What makes this death tragic is how the show’s compelling relationship between Azi and Levi builds up to it. Levi was gradually learning to be human, only to be killed instantly by the creature, making this sequence gut-wrenching to experience. There’s also Sam, who’s assumingly succumbing to the bite from the tentacle egg creature that spawned a monstrous clone of him before another survivor arrives to possibly aid him and Ursula.
I expected Scavengers Reign to be another engaging adult animated series, but I didn’t expect it to go that hard on its themes and narrative. Thanks to these three episodes, Scavengers Reign remains on course to become Max’s best animated show since Harley Quinn. We’re only halfway done with the series, and things are not looking too bright for the remaining survivors of the Demeter. However, the unknown person receiving Azi’s distress call could be their only hope of escaping this hazardous planet for good.