Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Season 1 of Scavengers Reign.

The Big Picture

The creators of Scavengers Reign found the ending of the first season organically, with a lot of bouncing back and forth and refining of ideas. The collaborative nature of the show, with international artists sharing work, raised the quality and inspired the team. The ending of the show explores themes of guilt, transformation, and the relationship between humans and the planet, emphasizing the consequences of our actions and the insignificance of individuals in the grand scheme of things.

Over the past several weeks, the beautifully animated sci-fi epic Scavengers Reign has been streaming on Max and taking us further into the variety of life on a vibrant new planet while a group of stranded space travelers tried to escape. The first season ended with all of this coming together in a violent confrontation that also left open the door for more. Ahead of the premiere, co-creator Joe Bennett and supervising director Benjy Brooke explained this exciting animated world, but with the finale officially premiering, Collider checked back in with the duo about the finale in detail and what may be coming next for the series in potential future seasons.

Image via Max Scavengers Reign After their deep-space freighter is damaged, the stranded crew of the Demeter must fight to survive on a beautiful yet dangerous planet.
COLLIDER: Did you have the ending in mind when you set out on this journey, or did you partly find it on the way there?

JOE BENNETT: I think we partly found it on the way there. We had some pretty basic beats that we fleshed out in the beginning of the show in the writer’s room. But for the most part, the process was very organic and there was a lot of bouncing back and forth and back and forth and just a lot of combing over. Which has its hardships when you’re working in a TV production, and it can be a lot. But when you have an idea, and then you’ve moved forward, you realize, “Well, oh, if I could go back and just sort of finesse this older idea because now it aligns better with this new one, let’s just do that.” So there was a lot of that bouncing back and forth, and I think the ending was definitely a part of that to discover it ourselves.

This is a bit of a tangent but kind of related, there was a fun thing that happened when we were all working remotely. You have this incredible crew of international artists and we’re all sharing work and something that we did a lot of that I think helped create this sort of beehive mentality was anytime someone was sharing something, everybody was looking at it. So when Nic Snyder, the composer, makes a new piece of music, that was all that just all of a sudden sent, and all the artists are listening to it and are getting inspired by it. It just was this really kinetic, exciting dynamic that was happening that was raising the bar and what the quality was. You were a part of this think tank and I think everybody was becoming more and more honed in on what this show was. In a lot of ways, this show is a funny metaphor for just me going with the flow or resisting. I am a control freak and, in a lot of ways, I just was like, “I’m gonna take my hands off the wheel a little and run with this.” I was lucky to have someone like Benjy, a powerhouse, and a lot of these people just brought so much to the table that I don’t think I would have been able to come up with on my own.

BENJY BROOKE: I think just the rule set that Joe and Charles [Huettner] came up with for what the feeling is we’re trying to evoke with the show, it created a really clear boundary for everyone. Then within that, there was so much freedom. The camera can do whatever you want, as long as it doesn’t glide around too much. Put it anywhere you want to put it and the acting, push the acting as far as you can. Push everything as far as you can within these guidelines. There was just this total freedom for ambition, but a really clear goalpost.

BENNETT: The last little thing I would add was that this was another example where, instead of us having very restrictive guidelines, it was a little more exploratory in the beginning until we understood what the overall look and sensibility of the show were. Then it was like, “Yeah, you know what, this extreme angle doesn’t quite make too much sense. It’s not a total no, but it doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense that we now have a robust guidebook to go off of.” Benjy was even doing a thing just for the character designs where anytime someone would come with a new beautiful pose of a character that would go into a big scrapbook for other artists to work off of. It was like the characters were becoming more and more refined just by that. It was this endless cycle that kept happening.

One of the things, when you talk about poses, that’s etched into my mind is Kamen falling, and this fall almost being a rebirth even as it’s a death. When was that in your mind, and what was it you were hoping to capture with that?

BENNETT: Him transforming was always part of it. That was always gonna be a thing where once Kamen discovers on his own what he’s done, the sort of force majeure that he was involved in, all of the guilt hits him, there’s a moment where he comes back, and to this sort of catatonic state. I think that just the way that it was done was the thing that was getting more and more refined. We were doing a lot of these flashbacks with showing The Demeter, the ship, and all that stuff that it just felt very appropriate to have a lot of that ending essentially on the wreckage post-everyone escaping. It’s funny too, because a lot of it we were trying to be very careful about staying grounded, staying true to science as much as possible. It just was this is a moment where you should break this because, and we don’t need to go over the top with exposition explaining what kind of world Kamen is in, we’re so far beyond that. It’s almost fun to not even know what world we’re in if we’re in Kamen’s mind or if we’re in the real world. Trying to toe between those two lines was a fun thing.

BROOKE: I just love that you pointed that out, because he’s falling from Episode 1 all the way to the end. It’s just one big freefall. Just that idea that the consequences of your action is a freefall with an inevitable conclusion to what you’ve done is a really great metaphor for him.

With the ending, there is a symbiosis that seems to be achieved. I think of the scene with just looking out over everything and reading a book while being at peace. What was it you came to with your own relationship to the environment via this story?

BENNETT: Oof, that’s a heavy one.

BROOKE: It’s a great question.

BENNETT: Let me start with the characters in the show first, because that might help me.

I think that the feeling was, and this is something that we’d explore more in other seasons, there’s gonna be characters that are still kind of using the planet. They’re finding utilities in the planet and using tools and things like that even if it does have some kind of ripple repercussion to the planet. Then you have characters that will soon be introduced that are sort of more like Neo-Luddites and worship the ground where taking one step is like a sin. Then you have a third party which essentially is just completely tapped into the sort of consciousness, almost acting as a vessel for the planet. Thinking about those three parties and…. Benjy, I hope I’m not ruining anything.

BROOKE: No, no, it’s great. I think the three ways of being are something we’re all thinking about all the time.

BENNETT: Obviously, with climate change and all these things happening, we didn’t want this to be necessarily a statement piece in any way. But just my relationship with the planet and, like what Benjy is saying, where it feels like a freefall and you’re always ridden with guilt. I think a part of the show is just thinking of this planet as being the accelerated version of that. The repercussions and the ripple effect are exponential. It’s just so much more and the repercussions happen so much faster. How is that going to affect the characters later on?

BROOKE: I feel like there are two ways of thinking. There is everything Joe is saying about our relationship with the planet and then our relationship with our own desire to control as humans and our willingness to let go. Life is that. You’re gonna die, but you’re holding onto some ego. There are some characters who know it’s their end, but then they see this beautiful bug and they know that the world is gonna go on and it’s okay. The reading the book at the end is a peace that comes over you in realizing that you’re just another animal in this beautiful ecosystem. I feel that was just a beautiful headspace to live in while making the show. Just dream of letting ourselves go.

BENNETT: To add to that as well, knowing that you’re totally insignificant, there is something freeing about that. A lot of this was just playing with the psychology of a human in relationship to the planet. Even with Kamen, for instance, there is a selfish agenda, there are a lot of these things that are really mostly just a human thing that we’re bringing to this planet. All of a sudden, you’re dealing with gluttony and greed that are not usually part of the natural world. I think a lot of it is just this planet as a living, breathing organism that exists. We are just bacteria on it.

Scavengers Reign Season 1 is now streaming on Max.

WATCH ON MAX