Editor's note: The below contains spoilers for Primal Season 2.Genndy Tartakovsky's critically acclaimed series Primal balances hyper-violence with quiet atmosphere in his most accomplished work of visual storytelling since Samurai Jack, highlighting the naturalistic beauty and relentless bloodshed of early history episode-to-episode. While the series lives in a nondescript, often fantastical, place and time in its overarching story of cavemen, dinosaurs, Vikings and wizards, Season 2’s fifth episode, "The Primal Theory," offered a drastic break from the norm to tell a story that helps solidify the show's principal thesis.
Arguably considered to be an inconsequential filler episode, "The Primal Theory" tells its own standalone story, divorced in canon from the main journeys of Spear (Aaron LaPlante) and Fang, of late 19th century English scientists fighting to survive a home invasion from a cannibalistic madman. Apart from the stylized violence, "The Primal Theory" is a far departure from a typical episode in every way to the point that it is unrecognizable as a Primal story. Despite this, the story helps crystalize and justify the intention behind the series' violence as a means of survival and natural instinct, not as solely as empty spectacle.
Set in 1890 in England, the episode opens with a scientist named Charles (Jacob Dudman) giving a lecture to colleagues at a historical society, theorizing that modern man is not that far removed from its ancient ancestors and that under the right circumstances, humanity will revert to its primal instincts in order to survive. Charles’ fellow scientists scoff at his theory as lunacy and assert that they are learned, civilized men. Once the crazed murder arrives and threatens their lives with animalistic bloodlust, the scientists are picked off one-by-one, defending themselves with guns, swords, and other modern means to no avail. It is not until Lord Darlington (Jeremey Crutchley), the scientist who outwardly mocked Charles’ theory, starts attacking the madman with violently primal force that they are able to win the day, much to Charles’ pride.
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Having a proper, self-proclaimed modern man resort to primal behavior when faced with a murderous threat shows that the kind of animalistic behavior and hyper-violence seen in every episode is justified as a means of survival and human instinct. Darlington was only able to even match the madman in combat when he stopped fighting with advanced weapons and civilized dignity and started to rely on fight-or-flight ferocity like how Spear does in his travels.
The threat the madman presented to the scientists could only have been met in kind with instinctive might that, like Charles theorized, reverted Darlington back to his savagely primal form. This gradual de-evolution demonstrates that the actions and behavior taken by Darlington were born out of human nature in order to survive and do not color him as an inherently violent person in character. This helps contextualize that the bloodshed Spear wreaks upon his enemies is not derived from the content of his character, but the nature of the world he inhabits and how he lives as an early man. The world that Spear lives in is a primordially dangerous one full of obstacles far more vicious than the escaped madman. Spear himself is not a violent or unintelligent person for acting the way he does, but does so because he relies on instinct to live another day, and the series proper goes to great lengths to show that he is not an animal to the core, but a man balancing his principles with his natural instinct. By showing Darlington, a self-assured sophisticate, fight like a Neanderthal when faced with a savage threat, the episode demonstrates that the world of the series and its dangers are met with violence as a means of survival, not as mean-spirited gore.
“The Primal Theory” posits that the kind of savagery the series indulges in on a regular basis is not derived out of pure childish pulp appeal alone, but out of the necessary instincts that enable characters like Spear to survive in the dangerous world they inhabit. Primal is a survival story above anything else and the standalone episode demonstrates that the kind of savage actions employed by the characters does not rob them of their humanity, but insists that they are a part of man's nature to survive.
Primal Season 2 premieres with new episodes every Friday on Adult Swim.
