Warning: SPOILERS for Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous Season 4.
The Spinosaurus returned in Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous season 4 but the apex predator was disappointingly underutilized. In Camp Cretaceous season 4, Darius (Paul-Mikel Williams), Brooklynn (Jenna Ortega), Kenji (Ryan Potter), Sammy (Raini Rodriguez), Ben (Sean Giambrone), and Yasmina (Kausar Mohammed) finally escaped Jurassic World only to be marooned on a new island owned by Mantah Corp. The teenagers find themselves having to rescue the dinosaurs Mantah Corp bred as part of their plot to create a fight club of prehistoric creatures to amuse their wealthy clientele.
The Spinosaurus debuted in Jurassic Park III as the film’s main dinosaur antagonist and it changed the Jurassic franchise. Prior to Jurassic Park III, predator dinosaurs like the T-Rex were just misunderstood animals while the Velociraptors served as the true villains among the prehistoric creatures. In Jurassic Park III, the Spinosaurus killed a T-Rex immediately upon its introduction, signaling a shift that the super predator was now the true villain to be feared by the humans on Isla Sorna, led by Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill). The Spinosaurus didn’t die in Jurassic Park 3 and was left behind on Isla Sorna but its impact resulted in the Jurassic franchise creating even scarier hybrid dinosaur villains. Jurassic World introduced the Indominus Rex, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom created the Indoraptor, and Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous season 3 debuted the Scorpios Rex.
Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous‘ teenagers discovered that Mantah Corp has their own Spinosaurus in season 4. The finned super predator lives in the desert biome, one of four environments engineered by Mantah Corp as settings for their planned dinosaur super fights. Since there was no Spinosaurus in Jurassic World on Isla Nublar, Darius and his friends have never seen one in the flesh and they were understandably terrified and ran for their lives. But while it was a treat to see a full-blooded Spinosaurus again since it killed a T-Rex in Jurassic Park III, the massive carnivore’s appearances in Camp Cretaceous season 4 still amounted to disappointment since the creature ended up as a minor dinosaur character who didn’t do anything of note besides scaring the teenagers.
Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous‘ young heroes learned that Mantah Corp used stolen DNA samples to genetically engineer their own hybrid dinos for their planned fight club. Mantah Corp spliced together different dinos and bred them to survive in specific environments. Therefore, Mantah Corp’s Spinosaurus isn’t the same one from Jurassic Park III, as this killer dino was specifically bred to thrive in Mantah Corp’s island’s desert biome. The Spinosaurus also seems to share the desert with another prehistoric Mantah Corp creation—a saber-toothed tiger—although the Spinosaurus hasn’t caught and made a meal out of the big cat.
The cast of Camp Cretaceous saved and befriended dinosaurs like a pair of infant Sinoteratops they named Angel and Rebel, and a baby brachiosaurus that Ben named Firecracker. There are also two T-Rexes and a Stegosaurus who played prominent roles in season 4. The Spinosaurus being included among Mantah Corp’s menagerie was a pleasant surprise, but it was still a letdown how little the creature has to do in the course of the story. The fact that the Spinosaurus doesn’t fight or kill anything and is even unable to catch six teenagers also robs the super predator of some of its menace. Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous season 4 ends on a cliffhanger that signals the young campers’ nightmare on Mantah Corp island will continue, so the Spinosaurus may have been introduced to play a bigger role in Camp Cretaceous season 5.
Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous Season 4 is streaming on Netflix.
Key Release Dates
Jurassic World Dominion
Release Date:2022-06-10
