[Warning! This article contains spoilers for Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous Season 5]
Jurassic World has ended in two ways this summer, both on the big screen and small screen. While audiences were excited to see the return of Alan Grant, Ian Malcom and Elle Sattler in Jurassic World: Dominion; the Netflix original Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous had a few familiar faces as well! Much to our surprise, it was the Netflix show that featured a showdown that fans have been wanting to see for years!
Camp Cretaceous is a show that takes place just before, and during, the events of the Jurassic World film trilogy. Six children are brought to Isla Nublar as the first visitors of Camp Cretaceous, an exclusive camp that Jurassic World plans to offer. But when the events of the first Jurassic World go down, the campers are deserted and the race for survival begins! For three seasons, we followed the campers as they dodged and outwitted danger, both of the prehistoric and modern variety, on Isla Nublar. But in season four, things took a turn!
Season three ended with the campers finding a boat and thinking they were on the path home. But after an encounter with a mosasaur, the campers find themselves stranded on a second island. We find out that the island is a giant research facility run by Mantah Corp. It all comes to a head in season five. We meet Kenji’s dad, Daniel Kon, and Lewis Dodgson of Biosyn. That’s right, we’ve got Dodgson here!
Dodgson reveals his plan. He states that investors were worried about the safety of dinosaurs after the Jurassic World incident. He wants to sway their opinions… by mind controlling the dinosaurs with special implants! He collects many of the dinosaurs to bring back with him, including a mother T-Rex named Big Eatie, several other carnivores, and… a Spinosaurus!
Through some sleuthing and some undercover work, the campers manage to free Big Eatie from her mind control and reunite her with her daughter, Little Eatie. But things aren’t calm for long. In a scene that brings audiences back to Jurassic Park 3, Mantah Corp fires back with the mind controlled Spinosaurus, who goes after Big Eatie and appears to have killed her! Little Eatie mourns over her mother as it seems like the bad guys have won. But when it seems like all hope is lost, until mother and daughter come in to save the day, eating the person controlling Spinosaurus in the process! That’s right, Big Eatie is alive after all and she’s ready for round two!
A Twenty Year Rematch
What makes this showdown so significant is that it’s one fans have been wanting for years! In 2001, audiences reunited with Alan Grant in Jurassic Park 3. The film introduced the Spinosaurus to serve as a replacement for the T-Rex as the biggest and baddest carnivore and showed this by having the two monsters square up, resulting in the Spinosaurus killing the T-Rex. The legacy of the Spinosaurus in the franchise was mixed overall. T-Rex was just too iconic of a creature for audiences who had fallen in love with the first movie.
Spinosaurus wouldn’t re-appear in the films again but made its triumphant return in season four of Camp Cretaceous. And this time, the T-Rex regains its throne as the baddest carnivore of Jurassic Park. Big and Little Eatie come in to disarm the ones holding the controls and scare off Spinosaurus, leveling the playing field between the kids and adults.
We love watching Jurassic Park for many things. We love the music, we love the charismatic protagonists, we love the messages of messing with nature, and we love watching our dinosaurs duke it out. While the first Jurassic World was filled to the brim with references dating back to the first movie, the second trilogy branched out into its own thing shortly after. Camp Cretaceous is the creation that was made for fans that want to see the callbacks and nods to its predecessors. In a way, it’s the sequel that some audiences have been wanting all along. All five seasons are available to stream on Netflix!