The kids realise rescue isn’t coming, so they decide to rescue themselves. But not all of them are ready to leave and something awful has woken up on the island…

The show gets ambitious this season and the two arc structure from last season returns. The first focuses on the kids doing their best to leave the island and how ingenious they’ve become over the six months they’ve spent there. The season opens with them on a raft and underway, an audacious choice that defines the season. The scene, and the failure, makes it clear they’re close but they’re missing something. Ben’s heartbreak over leaving Bumpy also reminds us that any escape is going to be complicated.

The discovery of Mitch and Tiff’s boat escalates everything and gives the season focus and urgency. The rest of this arc follow the kids working out how to repair and run the boat and gives them a chance to begin to think about something other than survival. Kenji gets some major growth in these episodes as we see his father’s penthouse and how little he seems connected to his family. It’s a moment of pathos that marks the start of a major arc for him. Kenji remains a flighty, often very funny himbo but as the season closes, he’s locked in much more on what’s important to him. His loyalty to his friends is based in his terror of losing them and leads to a brilliant end of the season moment where he and Darius switch. One of them is responsible and focused. The other is happy using people for the greater good and neither are comfortable in their new positions.

That idea of the status quo shifting is key to the second arc of the season. The ‘Scorpios Rex’ is the dark twin of the Indominus Rex and its reveal is a glorious moment of flat-out horror. Loping like a biped, climbing like a monkey, throwing poisonous spikes, the Scorpios’ presence is felt long before we see it as dinosaurs act oddly, or attack or flee when they shouldn’t. That leads to arguably the best episode of the show to date, ‘The Long Run’. With Sammy injured by the Scorpios, Yaz runs through dinosaur infested forests flashing back to her friendship with Sammy as she struggles with her own feelings. It’s brilliantly handled, a one-person character study that brings both girls into sharp relief and sets the show onto a complimentary trajectory with the movies. A pair of episodes feature a cameo from ‘Blue’, Owen’s lead raptor and the final arc unfolds parallel to the second movie. So much so we even see the opening of that movie unfold from a slightly different angle. Dr Wu returns, and the kids’ innocence is burned away as they encounter a second set of adults who care more about what they can get from the island than saving their lives.

It also changes the kids’ relationship to the island forever. Ben, evolved here into a hilarious and often competent explosives expert, is more at home on the island than on the mainland or at least tells himself that. His struggle about whether to stay or go is poignantly handled and he and Darius bond over their shared love of the dinosaurs and the incredible world they inhabit. That leads to Ben saying goodbye to Bumpy and a heart in mouth moment as Bumpy’s family unite to defend her from a predator. It’s one of the moments where the show really bares its teeth and you’re right there with Darius and Ben, terrified for their friend, unable to intervene, trusting her.

That trust is what defines the kids as the season ends. They unite with Bumpy and her family, and Blue, to defend the island from the Scorpios but Kenji is more concerned with saving his friend’s lives than the island. It’s a nicely handled irony, the rich kid hating the place that defined his family but also helped him grow up. He’s also not fully wrong and as the season ends and the kids finally leave the island behind, their problems are right there on board with them.

Verdict: An immensely ambitious, and mostly very successful season sets up a new status quo. There’s a couple of hiccups (the Scorpios Rex reproduces asexually and basically instantly?) but other than that this really is a show at full strength. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart

 

Highlights: ‘The Long Run’, focusing on Yaz. The entire Scorpios arc.