The events of the first season saw Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous saw Darius, Brooklyn, Kenji, Yaz, Ben and Sammy stranded on the dinosaur-infested Isla Nublar, with all the remaining guests evacuating and leaving them behind. During an interview with CBR, Camp Cretaceous Executive Producer Scott Kreamer spoke about the balancing act of juggling tense dinosaur scares with character growth and how the second season of the animated series afforded them a certain amount of more creative freedom.
As almost every other person has escaped the island and the group is still dealing with the chaos of the final moments of the first season, Camp Cretaceous now has space to inject more character drama and growth into Season 2. As Kreamer explained, "At its heart, despite it being Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous, this show is about these kids where the dinosaurs are an external obstacle, as far as trying to stay alive."
"Because of the nature of season one, basically the back half is just a race for survival. [Season 2] gave us kind of some time to get into and explore these characters more. And that was always what we wanted to be able to do into season two. Now that being said, it is Jurassic World, so we have all these exciting action pieces and new dinosaurs and new parts of the island we've never seen... that's basically what this show is, it's a balancing act, but we got a lot of people who care an awful lot who were working really hard to achieve that."
That character growth allowed the cast to evolve in some fun and engaging ways, especially as the threats morph over their time on the island. Despite these perils, the cast is faced with some surprisingly morally complex quandaries -- and discoveries about themselves. "They all are surprising in a different way," Kreamer said. "We did start out in episode one like any first day of school -- people presenting themselves sort of how they want to be seen. And then kind of kicking around and over and over in the writer's room about, okay, well, what subverts these stereotypical ideals? Where is something interesting? What is something surprising? All in all, that's what we wanted to do. We wanted to illuminate different parts of these characters and give them all their time in the spotlight."
The first season of Camp Cretaceous takes place largely during the events of Jurassic World, forcing the creators to build the storyline alongside the events of that film. That wasn't quite the case for the second season, which instead operates on its own time-table. "We were very much hemmed in by the timeline," Kreamer recalled, "and I say has hemmed in, but it really was a fun puzzle to put together in that first season where our characters can be and where they can intersect with the timeline of the show and where they can't be... there is a lot more freedom. We have all the time that we need. We basically have six months until the opening sequence of Fallen Kingdom. Six months of these kid's lives, so we do have that kind of freedom. Now we can take a breath. We're not just running for our lives."
For Kreamer and the rest of the creators on the show, this meant that "not every moment is running. It was nice. Yeah, without those guard rails, it's like, 'okay, well, what can we do?' And it's just, again, it's just a lot of talking in the writer's room, as well as with the directors and the artists. And we just think we came out in a pretty good place... This is kind of the good character stuff that you want to get into as different characters find out about each other, as does the audience. If you do a flash-forward to Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom... we would have missed a lot of that good character building and interesting stuff that they have to go through."
Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous is executive produced by Steven Spielberg, Frank Marshall, Colin Trevorrow, Scott Kreamer and Lane Lueras, with Zack Stentz serving as a consulting producer. The series is streaming now on Netflix. The second season premieres Jan. 22.
