Annihilation has always been a large inspiration behind my art. It always will be. The themes of self-destruction and all-consuming nature are phenomenal. Vandermeer’s prose is alluring. I can’t measure the impact that it’s had on me. I routinely listen to the books. Book four, which comes out later this year, is preordered.

Area X left me yearning for more. More world-building. More strangeness. Something far more chaotic. I enjoy things that are foreign to humanity. Alien life forms like John Carpenter’s The Thing. Objects that can’t exist in our world.

Much like Annihilation, people threw a suggestion at me about a new animated show on HBO Max. This show is Scavengers Reign. I didn’t have HBO Max and didn’t want another subscription. So I put it off.

(spoilers past this point)

Scavengers Reign is a science fiction animated series released in the Fall of 2023. Unfortunately, Max canceled the show in May of this year.

Scavengers Reign focuses on several survivors (Sam and Ursula, Azi and Levi, and Kamen) on the alien planet of Vesta after their space cargo ship becomes damaged. This is due to solar flares when Kamen reroutes the vessel to repair his failing marriage. Vesta is both beautiful and dangerous. They encounter various life-threatening creatures, such as the Hollow, whom Kamen forms a parasitic telepathic relationship with. All paths lead back to the now crash-landed Demeter.

After Scavengers Reign cancellation, Netflix quickly added it to the list of shows they own. This meant one thing to me:

I could finally watch it.

It didn’t take long before I got deeply invested in the concept of Vesta, I think five or ten minutes at most. The animation was lovely. It paired well with the science fiction aspects. The colors of the series made it feel foreign in all the right ways. I’d also like to highlight how amazing the soundtrack to the show is. The timing for tone shifts is always used to raise the stakes.

The life on this planet actually feels alien to me. Watching the characters make wires out of vines and puff ball venom attacks felt like something Wayne Barlowe would have done. Wayne Barlowe is a world-renowned science fiction artist and concept designer. I was honestly surprised to see that he wasn’t involved. Many creature designs were familiar to aliens seen in his book, Expedition.

A personal favorite of mine from the show has to be the white flower and how it connects to the yellow mold we see throughout the show. We see it in Levi’s inner computer. We see it on Kris’s ship. They form the little organic Levi clones? Offspring? Gave Levi sentience? Revived it? No idea! I think the flowers and mold have some level of sentience to them, in some eldritch way. I don’t think the motives are antagonistic.

Kris and two others are characters that are introduced in the show. I’m not particularly fond of that plot choice, but hey. What can you do? This show also falls into people needing more common sense, but not the worst I’ve seen. I’m looking at you, Prometheus.

The parasitic relationship between the Hollow and Kamen was a plot favorite of mine. I don’t think the Hollow was naturally evil, just a creature that saw something that could be used to help him survive. Our concept of evil may be wildly different from others. Parasites don’t know what they’re doing is evil or unhealthy. They just see a chance for survival and reproduction.

Look at The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russel. The alien species takes an almost sexual revel in causing carnal pain to others. We can see that by the treatment of the main characters and secondary species. A song of pleasure for them is one of carnal sadism. We can’t put human standards on other species. Hell, we see this on our own planet. Smiling and barring teeth are symbols of aggression in the animal kingdom, and we do it for our own happiness.

I enjoyed the quote from the co-creator Joseph Bennett about Kamen’s impact on Vesta: “You’ve introduced human greed and gluttony into this animal kingdom, and it’s changed the game. What is the ripple effect of that?” (credit to Mashable.com for the quote.)

That’s the wonder of it all. How will the impact of humans affect Vesta in the long run? How will the ecosystem adapt to the stranded survivors? How will the weird church cult at the end of the final episode react to Vesta? Is there a higher purpose for the planet?

I don’t think we’ll ever truly know if the show doesn’t get renewed for season two. It’ll end up in the cesspool of shows without proper closure. We need this to be renewed. We require science fiction that actually feels strange. There are so many unexplainable things in the cosmos that we may never understand.

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Have a happy Wednesday! – J