Full spoilers follow for Primal Season 3, Episode 8, “The River of Life,” which is available on Adult Swim now and debuts on HBO Max on March 2.
Zombie Spear’s seen this before, back when he was still alive. Specifically in the Season 1 episode “Rage of the Ape-Men,” where he was forced to fight an array of, well, raging ape-men, while also imbibing a mysterious liquid which turned him into something more akin to an Incredible Spear-Hulk. And while the players are different this time around, the rules are the same: Kill or be killed.
When “The River of Life” began and all those creepy, pale-faced figures emerged above the fighting pit, I figured we were in for another slaughter situation (“Rage of the Ape-Men” is one of the most violent episodes of Primal ever, which is saying something). But when Spear defeats his first opponent and then is basically crowned as the reigning champ (and maybe new leader?) of this band of creatures, I realized that it makes sense that this would become a strange new place of comfort – or at the very least respite – for him. After all, the villagers in Mira’s home have rejected him, despite how he saved a bunch of them, so to bring back the Frankenstein monster comparison once more, Spear is landing at a place where he could begin to “love dead… hate living.”
