Scavengers Reign, a sci-fi show like no other, now gets a second shot at life on Netflix

polygon.com:

The streaming era operates via a cold and opaque calculus. Many shows unceremoniously premiere with limited promotion, only to face swift cancellation with an equal lack of fanfare. With no real numbers and a few dodgy reports available to the public and creators (now a little less dodgy, thanks to the WGA strike), a show’s fate can feel like a cosmic joke, with no rhyme or reason to why some soldier on and some never get the chance to find an audience. Scavengers Reign, the stunning animated series that debuted on Max last year, found its number was up when the streamer canceled it earlier this May. However, in a rare moment of clarity, there is a way forward for the show: It just has to be a hit starting today, when it premieres on Netflix.

Its new summer home (Scavengers Reign is still available to stream on Max) is reportedly considering a season 2 renewal pending the show’s Netflix debut, though what a favorable run looks like isn’t terribly clear. Mostly, this is just an excuse to exercise a rare bit of streaming-era agency: Go check out Scavengers Reign, one of the very best shows of last year and the rare series that earns the superlative of “like nothing else on television,” simply by virtue of its stunning visual design.

Taking visual cues from European sci-fi artists like Moebius and Simon Roy, Scavengers Reign chronicles the aftermath of a disaster aboard spacecraft Demeter, following a handful of survivors that escaped to the alien world of Vesta Minor, a hauntingly beautiful and hostile world. Yet survival is only a secondary concern for show creators Joe Bennett and Charles Huettner. Instead, the pair use Scavengers Reign as an exercise in crafting a truly alien world, with all of the awe and horror that entails. As our reviewer wrote when the show premiered last fall:

Creature design and worldbuilding are one and the same in Scavengers Reign. Every animal, from the tiniest insect or docile herbivore to the most colossal and terrifying carnivore,