Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Scavengers Reign,’ Max’s Psychedelic Sci-Fi Animated Series

Not everyone boldly goes where no one has gone before on purpose. That’s the premise of any number of science fiction masterworks, and it’s the premise of Scavengers Reign, the Max animated series that strands the crew of a disabled deep-space vessel on a place both wonderful and strange. As the scattered humans try to make their way back to the ship and each other, the animals, vegetables, and maybe even minerals of the planet make their own fascinating, frightening, frequently lethal presence felt. Can our laconic explorers survive and thrive in this gorgeous but dangerous environment? And is the resulting show, which is somehow both extremely chill and frequently disgusting at the same time, worth exploring itself? We took a look at the first episode to find out.

SCAVENGERS REIGN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A large spaceship hangs vertically  beneath the curve of a nearby planet, the glow of a sun or moon illuminating the void.

The Gist: The Demeter 227 is missing. Lost during a routine voyage, the cargo ship has gotten stranded above an unknown planet, with several members of its crew scattered across the surface in escape pods. The blue-collar joes who discover this immediately write the ship off as lost since they know their employer won’t bother to rescue anyone aboard.

Some of those crew members are luckier than others. In the months since the crash, Azi (Wunmi Mosaku) and her helpful but slightly unreliable robot Levi (Alia Shawkat) have set up a pretty solid farm, though they’re constantly under threat from a herd of large creatures. (Imagine if marshmallows had spikes and the limbs of a daddy longlegs.) 

Elsewhere, Ursula (Sunita Mani) and Sam (Bob Stephenson) attempt to use scavenged parts and the planet’s unique techno-reactive plant life to jumpstart the Demeter from below. To pull it off, they’ll have to travel to an escape pod stranded deep in a hazardous cave system, full of poisonous fauna that convert you into a petri dish for bizarre growths. If they succeed in bringing the ship down to planetside, the game changes for all the survivors.

Finally, Kamen (Ted Travelstead) remains stuck in his escape pod after all this time, subsisting on rations and whatever animals are unfortunate enough to come within stabbing range of the one tiny hole in the hull through which he can reach the outside world. Eventually, one of the large telepathic creatures he’s been watching outside approaches the pod in an attempt to free him — but can you really trust a large telepathic creature?

What Shows and Movies Will It Remind You Of? Pull up a chair, this is gonna take a minute. The pastel wonder of the all-ages series Adventure Time and Steven Universe, the beautifully creepy sci-fi psychedelia of the French animation landmark Fantastic Planet, the weird techno-organic symbiosis of G.I. Joe: The Movie, the grotesque fungal infections of The Last of Us, the adorable and improbable bio-psychic critters of James Cameron’s Avatar, the beauty and danger and environmentalism of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, the futuristic motorcycles and gloopy expanding blobs of Akira, the weird-new-thing-every-four-minutes imagination and pacing of Raised by Wolves, the working-stiffs-get-stranded-among-xenomorphs-by-an-uncaring-Company idea of Alien, the hey-we’re-just-folks-trying-our-best-in-the-wasteland vibe of Station Eleven…but wait, there’s more! Beyond films and TV, the biggest touchstone of all is the comics and art of French cartoonist Moebius, and the Moebius-indebted wave of underground science-fantasy comics that peaked around 10-15 years ago (and spawned the. If you’re a gamer, you’ll be reminded of virtually every exploration-based science-fantasy game of recent years: No Man’s Sky, Astroneer, Subnautica (the plot is virtually identical), even The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and its weirdly lovely Depths. 

Our Take: Reread that last paragraph. Think you can guess the problem here? Scavengers Reign is exceedingly well-executed psychedelic science-fiction animation for adults and teens; co-creators, co-writers (with Sean Buckelew and James Merrill), and co-directors Joseph Bennett and Charles Huettner are very obviously both huge aficionados and skilled practitioners of the genre. But if you, like me, are steeped in this stuff, you’ll react one of two ways: “Oh boy, more of this!” or “Oh boy, more of this?” I’m more in the latter camp myself.

But that doesn’t take away from the talent on display in the creature concepts and designs. Again, these are mostly attempts to reinvent a pretty reliable wheel — How can we make an alien parasite, but different? — but they’ll have you saying cool/gross/ooh/eww throughout. Considering that this is a survival adventure, that’s half the battle.

Sex and Skin: None.

Sleeper Star: As the one droid member of the crew it would be hard not to stand out, but Shawkat’s Levi is a hoot. Her placid requests that the big creatures “please stop” beating the crap out of her are both funny and kind of upsetting.

Parting Shot: Sam and Ursula set out for the Demeter at the edge of a vast mushroom forest. Adventure awaits!

Most Pilot-y Line: “What if there are survivors?” “Well, for their sake, let’s hope there aren’t any.” Dun dun dunnnnn!

Our Call: STREAM IT. While it won’t win any points for originality, its ambition, creativity, beauty, and slightly menacing tone will keep your attention, and its moments of “whoa!” deliver. You can tell from one episode that this is going to be a lot of people’s favorite animated series of the year, even if it’s unlikely to be mine.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.