‘Primal’ Is Back From the Dead and as Gnarly as Ever

Genndy Tartakovsky‘s Primal is a series that, from the moment of its debut seven years ago, established itself as one of, if not the, quintessential “dudes rock” adult animated series of all time. With a logline containing a few choice words, such as “caveman,” “dinosaur,” “fight,” and “together,” it’s pretty easy to get pulled into the caustic mayhem, violence, and, yes, primal gravity of it. That is, until the finale of its second season, which killed one half of its winning duo: Spear, the caveman.

Its third season hangs a lantern on that dead-end climax by literally raising Spear from the dead, transforming its kickass caveman into a zombie caveman. Unsurprisingly, its third season kicks just as much ass as you’d expect while having even more heart to boot.

Primal doesn’t rest on its laurels, settling for being more of the same, regardless of how comfortably high its bar of normalcy is, offering a more narratively focused tale with fewer non-sequitur adventures that acts more as an extended epilogue to a series that resigned itself to running its course before spinning the block again for another adventure.

We meet Spear at the rolling start of Primal’s third season, a walking ship of Theseus metaphor: he’s a husk of his former self, slowly shuffling across the land and rekindling the indistinguishably human light behind his jaundiced eyes. Spear already felt plucked out of time in the prior seasons, and now, having been plucked from the grave and corralled into an odyssey based more on vibes than an outward objective, he’s once again forced to fight to survive while making sense of the man he is in a world where he shouldn’t exist. It’s all pretty heady themes for an unga bunga series, known at a glance for its ultra violence, but that’s kind of the mesmerizing magic of Primal.

© Adult Swim

Whenever Spear isn’t running the dozens with any foe fool enough to test him in his newly minted undead glory, Primal indulges in the gentle stillness of his asynchronous blinks, his hilarious side-eyeing of obstacles like the language barrier between new companions, or his doe-eyed appreciation of nature. Like anthropomorphizing your pet or an animal at the zoo, Spear still reads as an expressive caveman, with a lot going on beneath the surface, which fans have come to love more than ever. Only this time, he recognizes there’s something irrecoverably missing within him, compelling him to march forward to find it, and you can’t help but root for him even if he looks ugly as sin and probably smells mad crazy as a zombie.

As a series known for its minimal dialogue and meditative, atmospheric vibes, Primal still opts to let its artistry and techno‑tribal score by Tyler Bates and Joanne Higginbottom take center stage, with a big “National Geographic after dark” feel to its gnarly action and macro-appreciation of the hand-drawn splendor of the flora and fauna Spike encounters in the wild. Deadass, there’s an episode early in the season that, despite feeling like the animated spiritual successor to Breaking Bad‘s Fly, saturates an otherwise muted premise into one of the season’s strongest episodes on the muscle of its expressive storyboarding, plotting, and score alone without losing any sense of wonder from the show’s overarching call to action.

© Adult Swim

Although Primal’s third season feels a bit like a hat on a hat to its second season, it is just leagues more impactful as an emotional climax to the series. If the final season of Samurai Jack is a testament to Tartakovsky’s ability to tug at heartstrings while delivering picturesque action, Primal is further proof that the animation elder statesman still has yarn to weave, telling a tale that, against all logical odds, shouldn’t work as well as it does. All the while, Primal‘s third season triumphs, preserving the flames of its roaring spirit with 10 distinct and mesmerizing episodes that oscillate from pulsing action to tranquil stillness.

Primal’s third season simply isn’t built for short attention spans. A series this arresting outright rejects the casual‑viewer instincts baked into contemporary TV. It’s not something you can half‑watch while scrolling. Its stillness is so potent, so absorbing, that even a quick phone check feels like breaking the spell. More than ever, this go‑around is unapologetically crafted for viewers willing to give it their full focus—and it rewards what should be a low‑bar ask in the streaming era with its strongest narrative work yet across ten lean, 22‑minute episodes. And it’s precisely that quiet intensity that makes the season’s eruption of action land with resounding force.

© Adult Swim

Save for Jorge R. Gutierrez, you’d be hard-pressed to find a creator keeping animation as bold, fresh, and wildly original as Tartakovsky and his creative team, from Primal‘s background artists and always-on-point composers, to its animators, who show no signs of creative rust or safe storytelling. In a sea of sequels, remakes, and legacy sequel projects, Primal is a bravura of original, prestige animation. And its third season stands to endure as the exception to the long-held sentiment, “They don’t make animation like they used to.

Primal premieres on Adult Swim on January 11, next day on HBO Max.

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