Season 3 of Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous premiered on Netflix this past weekend, and it brought some major revelations to the world of the Jurassic franchise. The Netflix animated series, which follows a ragtag ensemble of teenagers who have become stranded on Isla Nublar between the events of Jurassic World and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, took itself into a new narrative territory in Season 3, as the campers attempt to escape the island by any means necessary. What unfolds across the ten-episode season definitely impacts the topography of the show — and the Jurassic lore as a whole — going forward, both in terms of characters and genuine spectacle.
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In celebration of Season 3’s debut, ComicBook.com chatted with Camp Cretaceous executive producer and showrunner Scott Kreamer about the biggest moments of Season 3, the challenge of tying into the opening of Fallen Kingdom, and where the series could potentially go next.
Major spoilers for Season 3 of Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous below! Only look if you want to know!
ComicBook.com: One of the biggest things that stands out to me about Season 3 is all of the happier moments. I love all of the bottle episodes at the start of the season, where the kids are trying to celebrate this thing and then stuff goes awry. I was wondering if you could speak to the decision behind that, because it feels like it leads to some really meaningful character moments as the season goes along.
Scott Kreamer: Every season, [when] the writers sit down to frame the season, it all starts and ends with the characters. What they’re feeling, how they’re changing, and what they’re dealing with. But this season especially, there at the beginning — the first two seasons we were pretty relentlessly terrible to these kids, and there was no time to really take a breath. Season One, it was literally a race for their lives, at least from episode four until the end. And then Season Two, they had to deal with Mitch and Tiff and there was no time.
So we wanted to jump ahead in time a few months and let’s have a little fun where we can. Let’s do some cool things that still move our characters forward. Let’s do hang gliding with the Dimorphodons. Let’s do a spooky dock with a fixed fog. Let’s do a Die Hard episode, up in a building filled with dinosaurs. We wanted to have those moments to breathe and moments to kind of check-in, to see where all the kids are, and doing our best to turn those into thrilling and exciting moments.
It feels like the season really strengthens all of the interpersonal relationships between all the different characters. There were pairings and combinations that really got chances to thrive in a way that I was really fascinated by. Were there any of those relationships that kind of naturally found themselves along the way?
Before we started each season, we sort of go character by character [and decide] who each of them are at the beginning of the season, and where do we see them going? Sometimes you start with one plan, and it goes a different way.
But, with the whole thing, its discovery. We knew we wanted to have Darius as our leader, so it’s kind of already been there for a while, so what can we do differently? Well, he still is the youngest, and not everybody is going to go for every decision he makes. What is that struggle like? What’s Sammy’s struggle, as far as she still doesn’t know what happened to her family? What happens when you put Kenji back in the trappings of being a rich kid, is there a backslide to who he used to be? And then, of course, Ben, who had this amazing but harrowing adventure and time alone on the Island. What does that mean for him? How does he come to terms with just trying to figure out who he is for himself? All the writers, we fell in love with these characters along the way. We just want to put them in the best light, but also figure out what’s the most interesting route as you stack obstacle after obstacle against them.
I have to ask about Bumpy, because it feels like she has become this fan favorite in such an awesome way, and this season has really meaningful moments with Ben and Bumpy. I was wondering about your approach to that arc this season, because it definitely will pull at some heartstrings.
We were hoping people would like Bumpy. Then I was like, when season two came around, “Oh, are people still going to like Bumpy, now that Bumpy [isn’t] little adorable, toddler Bumpy?” Luckily people still love her. But yeah, this is a show about dinosaurs alive in the world, but we do try to ground it all in as much reality as we can. It’s not like Ben can go keep Bumpy in his apartment in Chicago, so we definitely had to come to terms with that fact. We don’t know where the kids are going to end up after they leave, but just the reality of the situation made them feel like the call to make would be that Bumpy would have to stay with her own kind.
Another aspect of the season that I found really interesting was the set-up to Fallen Kingdom. What was the process like of trying to fit with what that movie has established, but also still being able to tell your own story and make your own decisions?
That’s one of the challenging, but super fun things, about this show. We got to interweave in and out of the plot of Jurassic World in season one. I think it was when Colin came to LA — I could have this wrong, but when we sat down and started talking about Season Three. I don’t know if we were completely aware, or maybe it just came up, or maybe I’m completely misremembering, but the fact that that opening sequence of Fallen Kingdom takes place six months after Jurassic World falls, just felt like, “Okay, well this is perfect, this is right.”
And then from there, you started thinking, “What if it’s our kids who lead the T. rex into the direction of that poor guy in the yellow coat who gets chased down Main Street before he incepted sight of the Mosasaurus?” We just started going down that, and then with the whole idea of, “Okay, who else could be involved with this?” We knew we had mercenaries there at the beginning of Fallen Kingdom. But we just stumbled upon the idea of “What if Dr. Wu came back?” and we just started pitching ideas based on that.
The final episode of Season 3 was just so much fun to watch. It feels like you guys really earn the kids getting off the Island. I was curious about the approach to that finale and that ending, because it almost had this Braveheart, Avengers: Infinity War chaotic, epic energy.
We really approached those last two episodes as almost their own little mini Jurassic action movie. We did want it to feel satisfying. Two episodes before, when it seems like they’re going to get off the Island, we didn’t like people to be going, “Oh, are you kidding me? Now they’re going to be stuck there for another eight years?” We wanted them to make it feel earned. They had put in their time, they’ve worked together as a family, they used all their knowledge they had gained over the last three seasons or six months. And we wanted to make it feel like, “Yeah, you did it! We’ll see what that ends up meaning, if anything, but you did it!”
Tying into that, the final scene of the season hints that the story isn’t over yet. Is there anything you can tease about just the approach to where that could go if you get a Season Four, and just what the long-term future is? When I’ve spoken to Colin in the past, he’s really indicated that this will be one of the tenants of the overall franchise. So, I’m just curious to see how that would evolve, now that they’re no longer on the Island.
Unfortunately, we never really had that info. So we wanted to go out on — if this is the last episode, we want it to feel like a fitting conclusion. But the fact that they’re off the Island on a boat with something else on the boat, kind of leaves it wide open. There are so many [questions]. Do they get home? Do they go to Isla Sorna? Do they get one of the Five Deaths? Do they go to another island completely? Do they make it? I don’t know. We’ll have to see. But you do twenty-six episodes of kids running from dinosaurs, and at a certain point, you got to get off the Island and see what happens next.
What do you hope people take away from this season? It feels like the series has really resonated with people over the past couple years, especially in the pandemic.
It’s the same thing we’ve been talking about from the beginning. As a people, we’re all a lot stronger when we work together and stick together, and overcome our differences to be together. And just that kids can do anything, and kids are resilient and they’re smart. Generally, they can do more than we sometimes give them credit for. So, the overall feeling of this season isn’t that different from what we’ve tried to establish from the first episode, and hopefully, people will enjoy it.
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Season 3 of Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous is now available to stream exclusively on Netflix.
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