Some spoilers follow for Primal, though really nothing that the creator of the show doesn’t want you to know already! New episodes of Primal Season 3 are dropping weekly on Sundays on Adult Swim and Mondays on HBO Max.
With the return of Primal for a third season, creator Genndy Tartakovsky has done what seemed impossible – our favorite animated caveman Spear (sorry Captain Caveman) is back, despite having died in the Season 2 finale of the show. And not just that, but in doing so, Tartakovsky has also brought back from apparent near-death one of the greatest animated series of the 21st century.
Primal, of course, is about Spear (Aaron LaPlante), a Neanderthal living in a strange world where man, proto-man, dinosaur, and magical creatures all co-exist. On the dinosaur side, that includes Spear’s best friend Fang, the T-rex who he partnered with for Seasons 1 and 2. But Fang moved on after Spear’s death, which means our now-zombified hero is all alone. But for how long? Can Spear and Fang be reunited?
I spoke to Tartakovsky about that and much more, so read on for our full chat about Primal Season 3. Or watch the full conversation in the video above!
IGN: It felt like Season 3 was something that maybe wasn’t going to happen for a while there. How did you come to the decision to bring the show back?
Genndy Tartakovsky: Well, I always wanted to do another season, but I always talked about an anthology type show, and Adult Swim was supportive of it. And so I started to develop it and I had all these ideas, but nothing was feeling right and I trust my instinct when it comes to that. So something was off. And then I started to think, “Oh, I just spent 20 episodes having these characters bond and having the audience like these characters and then I kind of end the show.”
And sometimes when you’re making a show, it takes me two years and then you watch it in a week. So I suddenly started to have this awareness – “It’s still so fresh.” Then all of a sudden this idea popped up of making Spear a zombie, and then all these story ideas and character things and emotional things came up. And then I wrote down like eight episodes instantly of what can happen. And when that happens, I know that there’s something juicy there.
IGN: Can you pinpoint where that idea came from?
GT: I think because in the first season we did an episode called “Plague of Madness” where we had kind of a zombie dinosaur. And the whole world has magic and all this pulp to it, and what’s more pulpier than a walking zombie caveman? So it felt right.
IGN: Do you think there are any dangers in depicting Spear in this way? Because when you look at the poster, he doesn’t seem human. I think when you watch the show, you probably find that that’s not the case. But were there concerns about that?
GT: Yeah, for sure. I thought – you know that term jumping the shark – I was like, “Oh, did I do that maybe?” But it felt so right. And then when I talked to our other team members, they were like, “No, this is awesome.” And then when I talked about what we would do with it and the emotional journey that he’s going to take, then everybody got really excited about it.
IGN: I’ve seen the first episode and I loved it, but is there a danger of undercutting what you did in the first two seasons and how you ended the story in Season 2?
GT: I hope that when you watch it and you … realize the timeline, especially in later episodes, it doesn’t. It just becomes part of his weird journey through time here.
IGN: Yeah, he’s been through so much, this guy, right?
GT: Yes. And that was the whole idea, is that you want to cheer for him like, “Oh no, now he’s dead and he can’t even be peaceful in death?” He’s got to be like this now so you cheer for him to come back, if he does.
IGN: Can you talk about the actual animation of him, because he moves in a different way than the living Spear does. How much did you guys put into figuring that out?
GT: A lot. Because especially in the beginning he doesn’t know who he is, right? All of his motor skills under a normal scenario aren’t there, so he’s like a baby in a way, learning to walk again. And you honor some of the zombie lore of how zombies walk and stuff, and so we did a little bit of that. And then through the season, you can see a change through it a little bit – without giving too much away. And it was fun to treat a zombie this way. I think as far as zombie stuff goes, usually you’re not cheering for the zombies, you’re cheering for the people to escape. And this is the opposite. So hopefully it’ll be very interesting, especially for zombie genre fans.
IGN: I love the animation of the shoulders and even when he just plops down – he sits down at one point and he just kind of falls.
GT: Yeah, yeah. And that’s really fun to do for his animation because it’s more unique. And because Primal is the type of show that we could take our time, we could have him just walking with some cool music, and you get a lot of that.
IGN: So obviously Fang is not present. Fang went on to live the family life. How did that affect you guys creatively just in terms of telling this story, because Spear was always so intertwined with Fang?
GT: Well, I mean, you only watched the first episode, so I don’t know if that’s the right statement. [laughs] So no, you can’t make any assumptions I think is the answer to that.
IGN: I have so many questions now because in Season 2 we get a time jump in the final moments… but we’ll put a pin in that for now.
GT: All will be revealed as you watch, yes.
IGN: Can we talk about the art of storytelling without dialogue, which obviously you sort of mastered in animation. It’s a thing you’ve done in so many of your projects. Where does that come from and why is it something you continue to go back to?
GT: I think it’s the purity of movement, and I don’t know if it’s the Tom and Jerry and Tex Avery influences that really just did do gag – very low-verbal-driven cartoons. The true love of it probably came when I started doing Dexter[’s Laboratory], and it’s my first show and it’s something that I control, and then we hired composers to do music and all of a sudden I had a little like 10-second clip and the music was great and I was like, “Oh, I wish I did this for a minute. Then you could really feel it.” And then I realized, “Oh right, that’s what makes things cinematic.” It’s when you have great music with a slow pan and you’re telling something visually, and I think it started to grow from there. I was 26; I didn’t know anything and I started to realize… Especially by the time Samurai Jack came, I got to create the time so music and effects can have the opportunity to tell their own story. And of course Primal’s the epitome of that because it takes the visuals and the sound and unites them into its own thing.
IGN: Did you get pushback in the early days when you would try to do more dialogue-free stuff?
GT: No. My relationship with Cartoon Network was always so great. I got so lucky because the network was just starting, I was just starting, so there was 12 million viewers when Dexter premiered, which is nothing. And so we both learned along the way.
They were always very supportive, and then when I told them about Samurai Jack, they were really interested in it. I remember this moment where in the first episode there’s a seven-minute training sequence, right? And there’s not one word in it. And they were visiting from Atlanta in our LA studio and I showed it to them without music, with no sound and everyone was flabbergasted because they’d never seen anything like that, and the artistry, of course, was really well done. And so we all knew we had something special. They were always supportive. Nobody said like, “Well, let’s throw in a couple of one-liners here.”
IGN: What do you think of the state of getting your product in front of people’s eyeballs these days? Because things have changed so much from those early days of Cartoon Network where now everything is streaming and there’s no monoculture – everything’s so fragmented. Do you as a creator feel it’s harder to get your work out there?
GT: I’ve been lucky. People are still buying and I have my relationships – Sony for features, Adult Swim, HBO, whatever for TV stuff, streaming. The one thing that’s different that took me a minute to get over is branding, because in the early ’90s it was all about “We need the Cartoon Network brand,” “We need the Nickelodeon brand,” “Pixar brand.” Everybody was very brand loyal. And now you can make a show for anybody. It doesn’t matter.
You used to watch Cartoon Network and you knew what show you were going to get. You could watch Disney Channel and you kind of knew what show you were going to get. Now those lines are blurred, right? And so the branding of movies also is different. That’s something that’s changed the culture quite a bit.
IGN: And maybe it’s more creatively freeing.
GT: Yeah. Certainly there’s more buyers when you’re thinking like that. So Warner Bros. makes a Batman show, which always used to be for Fox back in the day. Now it’s not on HBO Max – Batman is on Amazon. So it’s kind of crazy.
Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
