‘Scavengers Reign’ Has Been a Rule Breaker All Along

It’s been a wild ride for “Scavengers Reign,” the critically acclaimed adult animated sci-fi series, which was canceled by Max in May and got a second chance at Netflix on May 31, where it solidified its cult standing just in time for Emmy voters to make it the dark horse in the Outstanding Animated Program race. However, we’ll have to see if it’s enough to greenlight a Season 2 from creators Joseph Bennett and Charles Huettner.

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But then the whole point of “Scavengers Reign” was to break free from every other adult animated series. It’s a mind-bending sci-fi adventure about a deep space freighter crew stranded on the beautiful yet deadly alien planet, Vesta, whose intertwining ecosystems of exotic flora and fauna pull them into the organic machinery alongside the imaginative creatures.

Adapted from Bennett and Huettner’s 2016 Adult Swim short “Scavengers,” the 2D series is definitely more of a surreal slow-burn than commercial actioner. The survivors of the damaged interstellar cargo ship, Demeter, are divided into three groups: Sam (Bob Stephenson), the commander, and Ursula (Sunita Mani), part of the ship’s horticulture lab; Azi (Wunmi Mosaku), a cargo specialist, and her robot companion Levi (Alia Shawkat), who exhibits bizarre behavior under the planet’s spell; and the isolated Kamen (Ted Travelstead), who forms a strange symbiotic relationship with the telepathic creature Hollow.

“We wanted to treat the planet like a character, so a lot of the layers of everything was cherry-picked and brought into the show,” Bennett told IndieWire. “While we were building up these character arcs and story arcs, we were building out the planet and figuring out the different ecosystems and symbiotic relationships. And so throughout, we were interweaving both as much as we could.”

Much of the show’s strength comes from the tactile, immersive nature of the planet that engulfs the characters, who must adapt or die. The research that went into the show came from nature docs, which enabled the creators to incorporate real science into their alien flowers, plants, and creatures. “It was a lot of videos of people building things,” Bennett added. “There was a YouTube channel that I kept going back to called ‘Primitive Technology,’ where you would watch [this guy] building like thatch pots, and just random, different things in the woods, and the step-by-step process of building stuff that was really exciting.”

“Just nature here on Earth and pulling references from animals and organisms,” Huettner told IndieWire. “And a lot of like microscopic photography. Because back when a lot of old-world industry was forming, it was a lot of function over form. And that gives the impression of something that is more on the frontier of things. As opposed to like it’s been there for a while, which is a theme of the entire show in general.”

In terms of concept designs for the environments and creatures, they came out of story needs for getting the characters out of certain obstacles or coming into contact with creatures and the relationships that transpired. “It was give me something I haven’t seen before, or something out of left field that can go back and inspire the writers: ‘Ooh, that’s what it looks like,'” said Bennett.

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Since the “Scavengers” short was entirely non-verbal, there was an attempt to duplicate that during key parts of the series. For example, early in the first episode (“The Signal”), with the introduction of Kamen and Hollow, who manipulates memories of his estranged wife.

“You can kind of just see everything through expressions and visual actions to tell what their motives are and what they want and need,” Huettner said. “And we thought that pairing something like that with a person who’s psychologically in a bad place, in a very fragile state, and seeing them grow together as it starts to develop their relationship.

What most appealed to the creators was exploring the relationships between the characters and the planet: how some are hostile toward it in the beginning, and others are more in tune with its intoxicating beauty. “I remember really wanting to dig deep into a nice adultish drama where it’s not a lot of what these characters are thinking or maybe their past isn’t really spelled out for you, but the history of it is laid bare in their action,” said Bennett.

One of Huettner’s favorite creatures is a tiny one in Episode 11 (“The Return”) that washes its face by a river. “It’s a creature that appears to have like some kind of underlining intelligence and personality,” he said. “His presence is short-lived but much appreciated.”

The hand-drawn animation was a co-production between Titmouse and Green Street, and contained an international crew that included French, Portuguese, and Spanish artists that worked two years on the series. “It was nice pulling from different sorts of sensibilities,” Bennett said. “And we picked the episodic directors and none of them ever worked in TV before. We knew that they had the chops and were fast and smart. And I think it worked to our benefit with all of us being naive to certain things.”

When asked about a potential Season 2 at Netflix, Bennett said, “Who the hell knows? The entertainment industry is in such a weird place right now, who can predict anything, really? But getting to make ‘Scavengers’ was such a treat. We obviously have our opinions about animation and storytelling, and just really getting to explore that in a way that we wanted to was such a golden opportunity.”