Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous‘ second season followed neatly on from the first and indicated that the producers have already planned a full story arc for our young survivors. In the rookie outing, they crossed the park in the hope of reaching the evacuation boats, only to find they’d left without them and had been stranded on the island. The recently released second season then saw them coming to terms with this, figuring out how to live safely alongside the dinosaurs and squaring off against big game hunters who’d come to score some trophies.
The run ended with the kids discovering a secret genetic experiment held in cryostasis. Codenamed E750, the creature escapes from its confinement and is likely to be a major factor in the third season. Right now, we don’t know how long Camp Cretaceous will go on for, though there’s a built-in deadline for it ending as Isla Nublar is destined to be destroyed by the time of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.
Producer Colin Trevorrow recently dropped some hints as to where the show is going in its next season in an interview with Comicbook.com, and teased the following:
“What’s exciting is that this show has an opportunity for, I think, more than it may seem at this moment. The work that the writers have done and how we planned out where this can go… by the time we’re able to tell the story we want to tell, it really will become a tangent in its own right. These characters will have taken on an adventure that will be so different from anything any of the characters in the films have experienced. I think it’ll just take on value as it goes along, if we’re able to keep telling the story.”
He went on to say that this story will flesh out the Jurassic universe beyond the movies and that these characters could play a pivotal role in future events, explaining:
“There is a larger story being told. By the end of season two, you can see that these kids are uncovering a mystery and a conspiracy that’s going to really send them into a much more dangerous world than they ever imagined. But what I love about season two is how even at the end, when they have realized that it’s possible for other people to get here, it almost makes it that much more painful for them that they’re still stranded. What I love about the end is that they take it on themselves. They’re not going to wait for anyone to help them anymore. It’s a bunch of kids who are going to band together, not just to survive, but to proactively find a way to rescue themselves.”
Trevorrow is returning to direct 2022’s Jurassic World: Dominion, which will conclude the trilogy of movies that began with 2015’s Jurassic World. That’ll show society reacting to dinosaurs on the mainland settling into a new ecosystem (something teased in the excellent short Battle at Big Rock). The sequel is set to reunite original Jurassic Park stars Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, and plot elements from Camp Cretaceous may well prove important given Trevorrow’s involvement in both projects.
Universal has also clarified that while Dominion might be the finale in a trilogy, it’s certainly not the end of the Jurassic franchise. There’s still a lot of box office potential in those genetically engineered dinosaurs and they’re teasing that it’s merely “the start of a new era.” In the meantime, I’m looking forward to the third season of Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous, which I hope is confirmed very soon.