Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous season three is finally here, and ahead of its launch last Friday, we were able to sit down with Primetime Emmy-nominated showrunner Scott Kreamer (Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness; Cleopatra in Space) to get all the details on what is undoubtedly the best season yet, as the six young campers face their biggest threat.
Due to some massive spoilers, we split this chat into two halves, but with the full season now out, we can finally drop the veil and share details on the big bad secret that's been hiding on Isla Nublar as well as one of the most epic battles in Jurassic history.
If you caught the first half of this interview last week, just scroll down to the second photo and pick up immediately with the spoiler half of our informative conversation.
Check out our full conversation, including MASSIVE SPOILERS for Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous season three, below!
ROHAN: I'll be honest, when this series was announced, I was very close to writing it off as just another kid's show, but after watching season one, I instantly fell in love because it's just really freaking good. I'm a huge Jurassic Park fan and you guys have done an outstanding job taking us back into this world with genuine thrills and it's just so much fun.
SCOTT: "Thank you, I appreciate you saying that. A bunch of our crew is those same types of fans, so we wanted to get it right and I appreciate you saying that."
ROHAN: Unlike some spinoffs, this show genuinely feels like it's really a part of the Jurassic universe. Could you tell me more about working with Colin Trevorrow and how you collaborate between your show and the film side of things.
SCOTT: "Yeah, well, it’s been really cool. Colin has been very generous with his time. Like, even going back to when we were first starting breaking season one, Colin had told us it was always a bucket list thing for him to be in, I think he said, “a Hollywood writers’ room” and I don’t know if many of us in kids’ animation think of ourselves that way, but it’s been really great.
Colin sat with us many times, whether or not he’s in Los Angeles when he can actually come in and spend a day with us, which is great because Dreamworks gave us better food when Colin comes to visit, so that’s cool, and he’s just been really supportive. He reads every script, looks at every design, when we sit down to kind of broadstroke and break down the seasons, he’s been there and he’s been telling us like one time we were pitching something that went to close to what was going to be happening in another movie, so having him with just knowing what the feature story, where it’s heading, where Dominion is going, when we started this - I’m not sure, but I think he’d just started writing Dominion, so it’s been great and on top of that, getting the blessing of Steven Spielberg and Frank Marshall, it’s really been an amazing experience. "
ROHAN: I do really appreciate how quickly you're able to get new seasons of the show ready because it feels like we get to go back to Jurassic World every six months or so. What's your production schedule typically look like?
SCOTT: "It takes a long time and a worldwide pandemic did not make that go faster, so we’ve really been - I don’t have the schedule in front of me, but yeah, we’re working as fast as we can, but we still obviously, whether its the visuals or the writing, or the recording, like I said before, we want to get it right, but it’s no lie, it’s a challenging schedule, but so far so good and that’s just a testament to this hardworking crew. "
ROHAN: The cast is so talented and has really done such a great job bringing these characters to life. From a writing and recording standpoint, what kind of challenges do you come across trying to get the proper amount of character development for each character?
SCOTT: "I don’t know if it’s that much different in animation than in a live-action series, but we really wanted - the beginning of every season is we start with the characters, what are they trying to do, what are they trying to overcome. They’ve gotten older, but they’ve now been on an island filled with dinosaurs for five-to-six months, so that’s a tough thing for anyone to deal with. We really love these character and for the good of the show, we wanted to dig deep and see what we come up with and what these kids can achieve and overcome. "
ROHAN: The kids have really proven themselves as capable survivors over the course of these three seasons, but this is still an island full of dinosaurs. How seriously have you really discussed possibly killing one of the main characters?
SCOTT: "I mean I’m not going to say it hasn’t ever come up, I’ll be honest, there was a version of season one where Ben didn’t survive. I’m glad we handled it the way we did, but yeah, I wouldn’t say that I’d ever rule it out, but yeah. The question is, have we ever considered killing one of the kids and the answer is yeah we have. "
ROHAN: As revealed in the trailer, Blue finally makes her Camp Cretaceous debut this season and she has a pretty big role to play. When did you know this was the right time to bring her into these campers' story?
SCOTT: "We wanted to - I’m trying to think, I don’t remember exactly when we decided - we always wanted to see more Blue, but it had to feel organic, where season one is about running for their lives and season two was waiting for rescue and having to deal with the big game hunters. You didn’t want to shoehorn something in a place whether it’s Blue or certain locations on Nublar where it wouldn’t get the due time that it deserves, so we came upon this idea of how to work Blue in this season and I think it worked pretty well. "
ROHAN: This season obviously takes place before the events of Fallen Kingdom, which confirms that only one Tyrannosaurus and one Velociraptor remain on the planet. The films have revealed that the dinosaurs on the island are able to reproduce through parthenogenesis, but even with that, we have yet to see another T-Rex or another Velociraptor.
You've already introduced so many dinosaurs we hadn't seen in the films, but have you discussed bringing more of these fan-favorite legacy dinosaurs back into the mix?
SCOTT: "Yeah, I mean, again, I would say nothing is really off the table. We’re trying to make the show that not only fans want to see, but that we want to see as well. "
ROHAN: Alright, so let's get into *SPOILERS* and talk about the big elephant in the room, the big bad monster that's been unleashed on the island... the Scorpios Rex!
You've essentially been teasing the new hybrid's release since season one and its debut definitely didn't disappoint - the way it could climb was sufficiently terrifying - could you tell me more about its creation?
SCOTT: "I think we started with the idea of that the Indominus Rex couldn’t have been Dr. Wu’s first shot, like he didn’t get the recipe right out of the gate, so that’s kind of where we started. Where did he start? Where are the broken eggs that he was going to make his omelet with?
So, that’s where it came from and it ties us further into the lore and the canon of the film franchise, but also, we get to do our own thing with it as well. We also wanted to ratch up the tension on these kids, Darius knows how dinosaurs are supposed to be and we’ve always treated the dinosaurs on this show as animals and not monsters, so what if we throw an unpredictable monster into the mix? What would happen then? And, that’s kind of how the idea came about."
ROHAN: When it was first teased, I was lowkey expecting one of the hybrids from the Jurassic World Evolution game to show, and when it was revealed as the Scorpios, found myself pleasantly surprised.
Are there any more plans for hybrids to show up or can we finally close the book on that chapter?
SCOTT: "Well, never say never. I mean, I remember talking with Colin about the game and we looked at some of those really cool hybrids in the game. For this one, we didn’t want it to be something that was plausibly the precursor to the Indominus Rex and then later the Indoraptor, so that’s why we chose this way to go. You know, I don’t know - *laughs* - we could maybe do more with hybrids, I don’t know the answer to that right now. "
ROHAN: The big highlight of the season is that awesome final battle in the Jurassic Park Visitor Center with the two Scorpios Rex, Blue, and the kids. It was basically like watching my childhood get destroyed since it takes place at arguably the most iconic location in the franchise.
From an animation standpoint, is a sequence like that the most difficult thing to realize?
SCOTT: "It’s right up there because we have our animators led by Dan Devinis, who are just trying to make this harrowing fight, meanwhile, you have a ton of characters, you have all the kids and the Scorpiuses and Blue - for TV, that’s a real tall order, to have that many characters animated on screen at one time. Then, you throw in the sets and the effects, it was a huge undertaking, but I’m glad you liked it. I thought that the team and Jacky Cheng and her effects team, I just thought they did an amazing job on what is normally hard to pull off, but they worked their butts off and delivered."
ROHAN: We know what ultimately happens to Isla Nublar in Fallen Kingdom, with a majority of the dinosaurs getting killed off, but based on the show’s timeline, that’s still about three years away. How many seasons have you mapped out or do you expect to wrap before Dominion hits theaters?
SCOTT: "We go season to season until they tell us to do more, so yeah, do we have an idea of where the show will go, yes. Could the show comfortably end where it does, I think that answer is yes too, so we’ll just kind of have to see what the future holds. "
ROHAN: While the films have steered away from it, have you ever discussed taking the kids to Isla Sorna?
SCOTT: "Yeah, definitely. We’ve discussed a lot of things or even talked about one of the other five sites, so yeah, *laughs*, we’ve probably discussed every possible iteration of what could possibly happen next, should we do more."
ROHAN: I grew up a huge fan of Michael Crichton and love his original Jurassic Park books, which both have sequences the films haven't used. When breaking down a season, do you ever draw inspiration from his work?
SCOTT: "We’ve talked about it, I love the books too, and everyone in the writers’ room has read the books, so we’ve used him for inspiration before. The answer is yes, there’s also scenes that were storyboarded and were not used in the movies -
I assume this is for the spoiler-y - the whole T-Rex and the helicopter, in the second-to-last episode, that came from the original - there was a storyboarded ending to Jurassic Park where when Hammond and everyone gets on the helicopter to go away, the T-Rex showed up and grabbed the helicopter, so we took that, that was inspired by those storyboards."
Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous season three is now streaming on Netflix!