Primal Theory: And the 500-lb Smilodon In The Room

 



UPDATED 8/12/22
I got to watch what was supposed to be the huge reveal on Primal. I waited a bit to watch it on my birthday today, and---

What?
It really WAS a big surprise, right from the very first frame. You'll know from the start why they needed to not show anything.
Only it was completely different kind of surprise we were expecting, and everyone seems to feel the same way.
It reminded me of the philosophy Joe Kubert used to talk about that lay behind the comic book Tor. I have already compared primal to Kubert's caveman hero for obvious reasons. Kubert would always talk from the panel about modern man's civilization is a veneer. Given the right circumstances, we can easily revert to the primal. Particularly if our survival is threatened. Something similar happens en masse in movies like Frank Darabont's The Mist.
The whole idea behind both Tor and Primal.
POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD
It was certainly a surprised that Charles Darwin was actually in this (yes, I do think "Charles" was really him), especially with the chart of the finches and all.
It just had no big reveal I kept expecting, about the nature of Primal's world. The only twist was that Charles's primal theory was proven correct. There wasn't even a clue.
Or was there?
There is a huge smilodon mounted in the room wear the Victorian scientists are conversing. I'd normally assume it's just a statue or a fake taxidermy job. It could not possibly be the real thing--could it? I had a suspicion here that maybe this IS still Spear and Fang's world, or that their world exists in this time. If real Vikings and Celts share Spear and Fang's world--could Victorians somehow also exist somewhere? That's a stretch. Or is there something more mind -bending going on? Are Time safaris real in this reality, and did someone actually shoot that smilodon and have it stuffed? The scientists aren't discussing time travel, or the existence of a lost continent discovered above the arctic circle or somewhere.
Doubtful. It DID say 1890 at the start, and I assume it is supposed to be THIS 1890.
Or did they place the one cue to Spear's world in plain sight? The used the head of the sabertooth for this episode's picture. Maybe for a reason.
I'm hearing right now that some people were thinking that the mental patient was actually Spear. I thought exactly the same thing, only I did NOT think (like them) that therefore Spear was just imagining he was a Neanderthal, and they were just messing with us this whole time, and everything was fake. I was thinking maybe they snatched Spear out of a time warp, or there was something really mind-bending going on.
But, yes, thank the lord they didn't take the Ambrose Bierce "Incident at Owl Creek" way out.

UPDATE: The Omni viewer published yesterday a post on youtube, this post where he discusses where the stuffed smilodon might have come from:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJBwtffqJSQ

Primal could still very well be set in a lost world, in the present (more or less). There are indeed certain lost worlds in fiction that include not just primitive men and beasts, but higher civilizations as well. Two of the best examples there of are the Savage Land of Ka-Zar (Marvel), and Mike Grell's Skartaris, the lost world of the Warlord (DC). Both lands contain civilizations descended from Atlantean colonists. There are other levels of civilizations as well, that came about once Atlantean civilization fell into ruin, like the barbarian hordes of the savage land and Skartarian steppes. However, the Savage Land is actually much too small, according to the map, to accomodate all of its civilizations and races. It's located on the penninsula, and is relatively tiny. Skartaris is Pellucidaran in scope, and could indeed.

Spear and Fang's world is not Pellucidar or Skartaris-like, as there is both day and night. It is, however, apparently much vaster than previously hinted at. We're in a new land now, filled not only with creatures from al ages, but higher civilizations as well. Most likely it's located somewhere above the artic circle, a hyperborean type place, that would be vast enough to hold all this.

There is a real world account of a young man who went to the north pole with his father, circa, the 1800s, where he claimed to have found a lost world, perhaps in the hollow earth, inhabited by giant humans and huge elephants )some kind of mammoth). The man was committed to an asylum by his uncle after hearing the wild tale.

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