Season 2 of Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous made its debut on Netflix a little under a week ago, and fans are still relishing in its surprising number of twists and turns. The DreamWorks Animation series sets out to bridge the narrative gap between the events of Jurassic World and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, all while telling a surprisingly perilous story of survival surrounding its ensemble of teenage campers. As fans who have seen Season 1 know, that included a shocking twist for one of the series’ campers — all of which culminated in one of Season 2’s standout moments. Spoilers for Season 2 of Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous below! Only look if you want to know!
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Midway through Season 2, Camp Cretaceous viewers are treated to “Brave”, a largely-standalone episode that confirms the fate of Ben (Sean Giambrone) and his dinosaur best friend, Bumpy, after the two had been thrown from a monorail by a dinosaur. While the final moments of Season 1 did hint that Ben might still be alive, Season 2 really dove into how he and Bumpy moved forward and survived, and the end result was incredibly emotionally resonant. While speaking to ComicBook.com about Camp Cretaceous‘ second season, showrunner Scott Kreamer and executive producer Colin Trevorrow broke down the significance of that moment.
“We put a lot of love into that one,” Kreamer explained. “Both, the writer, Lindsay Kerns, and our story editor, Josie Campbell really got into that. And then on the art side, the director, Eric Elrod, and especially the other executive producer, Eric Hammersley, really rolled up their sleeves and dug deep into that episode. Even before we started, I knew I wanted to do a survival episode, [as] a departure. Putting as little dialogue in an episode as possible, just really telling a survival story. Ben coming back just lent itself perfectly to that.”
“I thought it was a really smart, structural decision. It wasn’t mine. I wouldn’t say that about my own decision,” Trevorrow said in a separate interview. ‘The writers chose to have Ben’s story told in a single episode in the middle of the season. For the audience to be able to have him gone long enough to experience, along with the kids, what it was like for them emotionally to lose one of the members and be able to really dig into the emotion of that for many episodes, for really half the season. Then, once he’s revealed, to show how his survival was earned over all that time and show how he changed. I like all the episodes very much, but that one is my favorite, just because it’s so unique in allowing us to — largely without dialogue — follow the journey of this child as he totally transformed. I thought it was pretty cool.”
“The relationship of Ben to his own fear was my favorite sequence in the show, and reaching that point where you see Bumpy age and you see Ben change,” Trevorrow continued. “I thought it was a pretty great transformation. We have a lot of story in the show, that was certainly the most emotional story.”
The first two seasons of Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous are now available to stream on Netflix.
