Is Scavenger’s Reign solarpunk?
We explore this breathtakingly brilliant sci-fi series
Some of you fine people who make up our readers have been asking if we think Scavenger’s Reign is solarpunk?
This groundbreaking HBO Max animated series is now on Netflix and we’ve been loving watching it. But is it our genre?
Scavenger’s Reign is about a handful of humans who have abandoned their spaceship, The Demeter, due to a solar storm. Their escape pods land on the utterly alien planet Vesta.
This world is teeming with an incredible array of lifeforms that boggle the mind. One of the crew manages to remote pilot the Demeter to land on Vesta and the disparate survivors head towards it. On their journeys they make their way through a cornucopia of brilliantly weird plant and animal life.
We think you should definitely watch this series on Neftlix as soon as you can to help the cause of solarpunk. This is even though we don’t think Scavneger’s Reign is really solarpunk itself.
We’ll explain why in the rest of this post. Be warned what follows contains spoilers, so we strongly recommend you watch Scavenger’s Reign first and then return to read the rest of this article. If you’ve already seen this amazing show then feel free to read on.
Scavenger’s Reign does have strong ecological themes. As with the wildlife of our own planet, many of the creatures on Vesta can be spectacularly hostile to our characters.
Nonetheless, finding ways for the crew to align and cooperate with the more sympathetic natural rhythms of the planet becomes key to their survival. It even leads some of them to find new ways to flourish.
There’s a poignant subplot involving a robot called Levi. This server drone’s circuitry becomes intertwined with a yellow fungus. At first you wonder if this is going to turn him into some sort of Last of Us style robo-zombie. Instead the symbiosis of the mould and Levi’s circuitry gradually blooms a consciousness in them.
It connects Levi to the vital energy of the planet. This gives them knowledge which becomes hugely valuable in terms of helping Levi’s human companion Azi to survive threats and even enjoy parts of the nature on Vesta.
The inverse of this is how one survivor Kamen becomes joined with a telepathic parasite. This creature which starts off small gorges itself on Kamen’s rage, despair and depression as well as the animals he kills to feed it.
As a result the little alien grows to become a monstrous predator that terrorizes and threatens to destroy the other survivors.
The beast seems to develop an endless appetite to consume and dominate. This is potentially fed by Kamen’s own alienated and status-obsessed psychology.
Right towards the end of the season we see the remaining survivors have used Vesta’s plant life to create an arboretum and gardens in the wreckage of the Demeter. They seem pretty content with their new lives and more aligned with the natural world around them.
Given all this why then don’t we think Scavenger’s Reign is solarpunk?
Going back to our deep-dive “What is solarpunk, one thing or many?” it comes back to the key question of why this genre matters? Is it just green-tinged aesthetics or something with greater potential than that?
Solarpunk isn’t just any media with an ecological theme. If it was things like Fern Gully, Avatar and even Bio Dome could count.
For us the main promise of solarpunk is to inspire people to take action to make a deliciously sustainable world possible.
For it to do that it needs to depict a desirable future. As lovely as the final images of the crew having turned their cargo ship into a growing space are, it’s not really a very attractive situation for them.
If one rogue survivor hadn’t made off with the ship’s escape shuttle on her own, the rest would have used it to get off the planet.
Scavenger’s Reign goes alongside things like post-apocalyptic cli-fi in our sun of solarpunk definitions. Something that shares elements with but is not really solarpunk.
Having said this, we massively recommend seeing it. Not since the outstanding Moonhaven have we seen something as fresh, creative and exciting as this show. The sheer imagination manifested in depicting the world and powerful storytelling in terms of the characters journeys makes it worth watching alone.
There is apparently a question mark over this show’s future. By watching it on Netflix and encouraging others to do so you can help this brilliantly creative and intelligent sci-fi gets more seasons.
This will help prepare the ground for potential solarpunk series trying to do something different too. Like ones we are working on, but more about that in the future.
Scavenger’s Reign is available to watch on Netflix now.
Have you seen Scavenger’s Reign? What did you think of it? Do you believe it actually is solarpunk? Are there any other TV shows you think can help make the case for solarpunk series to be made? Let us know in the comments.
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See you in the sunshine,
Alex Holland
Founder, SolarPunk Stories