Six years after escaping the island, the Camp Cretaceous survivors have fallen out of touch. Darius is working with the Department of Prehistoric Wildlife, Yaz is working with therapists helping deal with dinosaur trauma, Sammy has been ostracised by her family, Ben is in college and Kenji is a climbing instructor. Brooklynn is dead, and the people who orchestrated her death have come for the others…

Chaos Theory uses its time jump to shift genre and evolve every one of its characters. If Camp Cretaceous was an action adventure, this is a thriller and one set in a definitively post Fallen Kingdom, post Dinosaur singularity world. The creation of the DPW is especially fun, giving the show a Park Ranger like organisation to explore and a new lens to drop over the world.

But the characters are the key and the show has given every one of its cast some major upgrades. Brooklynn, glimpsed in flashbacks, is recast as an almost noir-like anti-heroine and her death defines the show and the way the characters interact. The always fractious friendship between Kenji and Darius especially takes some major turns this season. Darius’ voicemails to Brooklynn, the nature of how Brooklynn and Kenji’s relationship collapsed and Kenji’s father are all major parts of the plot and pieces of the puzzle.

The other three kids are just as important this time round, which after some of the beats in Camp Cretaceous, is especially refreshing. Yaz’s direct engagement with her PTSD, and the inspired idea of using holographic dinosaurs as aversion therapy, leads to one of the show’s best episodes. Sammy too, now the custodian of Bumpy on her parents’ ranch and holding the line between humanity and dinosaurs while also, it’s implied, being estranged from her parents. Best of all, Ben has had a massive growth spurt and gone full dino conspiracy nut. In every case, these are recognisably the kids from Camp Cretaceous and in every case they’re not kids anymore. Even Bumpy gets a major, and impossibly sweet, plot.

Each relationship has changed and that change powers the show along into some major set pieces and some great action scenes. There’s a crunchy fight between a van and a dinosaur on a bridge which serves as a major reveal for what’s really going on that’s seriously impressive and a great running threat with a mysterious, silent woman and her trained pack of raptors. Best of all, the season finale is essentially an all-out dinosaur war, as the Nublar Six struggle to free a group of dinosaurs and discover just who wants them dead and why. All of it feels earned and all of it feels dangerous in a way that still honours the first show but takes it some new and really successful places.

Verdict: Dark but not hopeless, mature but not sensationalistic, this is a great second stage for a great show. 10/10

Alasdair Stuart