The DreamWorks Animation series showrunner and EP discusses the new season’s multi-layered character arcs, which include Kenji’s unraveling as he deals with the grief of Brooklynn’s rejection, and her growing inner turmoil as she’s drawn deeper into a web of criminal dinosaur trafficking; debuts April 3 on Netflix.
Despite covering DreamWorks Animation’s Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous and Jurassic World: Chaos Theory series quite extensively over the last five years, we’ve never run out of questions to ask showrunner and executive producer Scott Kreamer about his multi-layered, danger-attracting characters. And, for the third season of Chaos Theory, releasing tomorrow, April 3, on Netflix, there were plenty of nooks and crannies to explore regarding new character arcs that could make or break the Nublar Six… permanently.
Since Season 1, Chaos Theory has been following the adult lives of the six kids who were once stranded on Isla Nublar after disastrous events took place during their time at Camp Cretaceous. Now back on the mainland and all grown up, the Nublar Five spent Seasons 1 and 2 of Chaos Theory investigating the eerie death of their friend and sixth group member, Brooklynn. Originally, they believed she had been killed by a dinosaur while investigating nefarious and shadowy dino-related schemes. But they find out, Brooklynn is alive after faking her own death.
Encountering old (and new) friends after crash landing into another wild adventure, the group faces off against even more lethal dinosaur threats while dealing with the fallout of Brooklynn's stunning rejection of their friendship. At the same time, Brooklynn's inner turmoil continues to grow as she is drawn deeper into the Broker's criminal web of dinosaur trafficking and espionage.
Check out the trailer:
Per tradition, AWN chatted with Kreamer about the new season, discussing villainous character design, Italian grandmothers, recreating the black market from Jurassic World Dominion, and how Brooklynn might be getting in too deep and could lose her friends as well as her own humanity.
Victoria Davis: One thing we haven’t talked about in all our Chaos Theory interviews is the raptor handler, who we’re seeing a lot more in this latest season. Can you talk to me about her character design? Quite a unique look!
Scott Kreamer: Way back, we had the idea of this scary villain who was more comfortable with dinosaurs than people. That's where it jumped off. And then our other showrunner, Aaron Hammersley, our art director John-Paul Balmet, and our character designer Will Nichols really dug into it and used Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men as a jumping off point for who this character was.
I think Aaron really liked the idea of The Handler’s freckles being like scales. Originally, we had this idea where maybe she's got scars all over her face from being with the raptors. We went through a lot of different iterations.
VD: Her eyes also seem a bit reptilian because you get that unblinking stare. It’s very effective. But we also get to see her more human side this season when she realizes that these raptors could get taken away from her.
SK: Villains, if you can see their side of things, are always more compelling. Going back to the end of Season 1, it's her job to kill these kids, but her [raptor] babies are hurt and she's digging into that maternal instinct. You don't want your bad guys to be one note. It was really fun to dig into that.
VD: Speaking of villains, we also get to see more of the dino black market this season, which has illegal dino fight rings, dino meat, and… taco signs?
SK: The taco sign is actually in the black market in Jurassic World Dominion, if you go look for it. But yeah. That set was way beyond the parameters of what we could pull off and John-Paul and our amazing designer Augusto Barranco cobbled that thing together with a bunch of reused assets and a few new ones. We knew we couldn't deliver exactly what they had in Dominion, but we definitely wanted people to feel it was the same place. You throw in Eric Hawkins’ lighting, making it as seedy of a place as you’re able to, and you know where you are.
VD: One of my favorite parts of the black market had little to do with the design and a lot to do with writing continuity. That scene where Brooklynn is talking to one of the black-market salesmen and grabs his knife with her prosthetic hand – which can’t feel pain – and pulls it down to intimidate him is such a great moment.
SK: Especially after we first show her in that conference room, and she can't quite open up the water bottle with that prosthetic without making a mess.
VD: It’s true. You all do such a great job at tracking all these changes and points of growth for characters so they can have moments later on where they really shine.
SK: And for Brooklynn, there are so many things about her story that, in talking to our great consultants and writer Peter Lee, we try to make feel as real and grounded as possible. When I first pitched the idea of Chaos Theory, I didn't know Brooklynn was going to lose part of her arm.
VD: Really?
SK: Yeah, that wasn't part of the original pitch. She was always going to be dead, and then not dead, but the arm came along later. So many of these things are happy accidents and you try to get it right more than wrong while figuring it out along the way. And, when you see something like that scene in the black market, it's like, “Oh, this was what was supposed to happen.” Sometimes you catch lightning in a bottle where it feels almost predestined.
VD: I felt that way a bit about Nonna and Kenji’s pseudo mother and son relationship. Nonna was already a great character as this hot-blooded, warm-hearted Italian grandmother who is always cooking and trying to get these kids to eat. My Italian grandmother is certainly that way. I'm curious if you guys had anybody on the team with an Italian grandmother? Because you really hit that persona on the nose.
SK: Our head writer, Bethany Armstrong Johnson, has an Italian grandmother and the character design even looks like her. And we've got a few well-traveled people with Italian heritage on the crew. But I would say Bethany’s family is where it started. Then, of course, the voice performance by Isabella Rossellini brought another level of authenticity to what, we hope, felt like a real person.
VD: The way she latches onto Kenji and sees his pain feels authentic and is quite lovely to watch. There’s all the comedy that comes with the Italian grandmother. But through her, you also see Kenji’s unraveling as he comes to terms with his grief but while still wrestling with where he stands with Brooklynn. There are a lot of scenes between him and Nonna where he lets it all out, and she’s become almost like a medium as she explores Kenji’s complex emotions.
SK: It’s all a tribute to the writers and animators, as well as our voice actor Darren Barnet, who did such a beautiful job. Kenji is a complex character, and we always knew in this season – when he discovers Brooklynn's alive, and she chooses to not go with them – it was going to be a big event and really shake the foundations of the group. Kenji is coming around the bend on it, like how we find him at the beginning of this series when he’s taken off his rich kid trapping and gets back to basics. So, seeing Kenji trying to right the ship in this season was a lot of fun.
VD: It is interesting that the rich kid in the bunch, who used to be very full of himself, wants to keep things simple and normal while everyone else is chomping at the bit to get into the middle of the chaos again.
SK: There also was a lot of rough stuff to write and to watch this season character-wise. So, giving Kenji a little more peace definitely felt good.
VD: I also love that big conversation between Sammy and Yaz. Without giving much away, there's a conversation about boundaries this season, and how far you go for friendship and how far you go for family. Boundaries and self-care are huge topics of conversation these days and we're seeing it talked about in a very new way this season, where Sammy is like, ‘Yes, Brooklynn is family. Yes, she may be in danger. But at what point do we take care of ourselves?’ It’s an interesting question!
SK: We're trying to explore how these young adults are growing and figuring out where they sit in the world, which we all did at that age. We all see people on TV and in movies doing things that we would never do or have an opinion that we don't have. But you can certainly see where Sammy is coming from, even if you don’t agree with her. We try not to repeat ourselves on this show and getting a different point of view on something that also feels organic and real to that character, getting into the nitty gritty and having it land in a real way, are things that make you want to be a writer.
VD: When you’re writing a back-and-forth dialogue like Yaz and Sammy’s, is it difficult, even as a member of production, not to take a side? Were there debates in the writers’ room on who was right and wrong about scenes like this?
SK: 100 percent. And depending on this or that, my opinion changes. I think it's for every person to judge for themselves, because it's easy to say that one is completely wrong, and we wanted to keep things real. So, there were definitely a lot of conversations on the team about, “If we take this conversation this way, is it too one-sided?” Whether we agree or not, we wanted the conversations to be balanced and took great pains to make sure things weren’t black and white.
VD: It shows, even with Brooklynn and Soyona Santos’ relationship, which you would think a pretty black and white problem but is actually interesting and becomes hard to read. In those first four episodes, you can’t really tell how much of Santos’ generosity and protective nature is genuine and how much of that is affecting Brooklynn in a way that could compromise her mission. Is that a red herring or is it really happening?
SK: Well, to me, it really does affect her. Brooklynn’s got her eye on the prize, but Santos is charismatic. I don't know if I would call her aspirational, but she's a woman who is living the life she's choosing to live. I think that really appeals to Brooklynn. And Brooklynn has set aside so much of her humanity at times. We talked about the “Donnie Brasco” nature of it all, of this woman giving Brooklynn validation. Along the way, I'm not sure Brooklynn exactly knows where she's falling. But viewers will find out by the end.
Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime. She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment. Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.
