1x03 A Cold Death

[8.5/10] My favorite episode yet! (I know we’re only three episodes in, but still!) I love how this episode constantly changes your perspective. It initially makes you feel bad for the poor wooly mammoth that’s separated from its herd and slowing down in the bitter cold. You want help and relief for the poor creature and then...it’s attacked by our heroes.

That makes things really conflicted, because you know that spear and Fang need to survive, and that they’re as separate as anyone out here. But it’s still pathos-ridden (and thrilling) when they go toe-to-toe with the patchy, missing-tusked mastodon and slowly take it down. The sadness of it is added to by Spear’s near-reverence for the creature, not wanting to cause it more pain in its final moments but still hunger-bound to finally take out the life reflected in its eyes.

What follows is sweet and sad, as Spear and Fang work together to make use of what they can from the mammoth’s caras. Their fur attire to protect them in the cold, their bone and tusk sled full of meat, and their curling up together in the show makes you feel for them just as much, communicating the way in which everyone’s just trying to survive out here.

Then they find a blessed ave, and we get a tragic memory of Spear hunting with his child, recalling once again what he’s lost and cannot fully mourn amid the constant need for survival out in this world. You feel for Spear in that moment, since every episode has featured him still grieving the loss of his children.

Then the rest of the mammoths attack, and you feel for them too! There’s something so sad when they surround the corpse of their fallen brother and clearly feel the loss themselves. It’s frightening when they knock into the cave, trying to avenge the member of their tribe and take down the killers who ended his life. But you feel for both sides. You feel the need on both sides of that equation, and it makes the skirmish harrowing all around.

I couldn’t help but flinch when Fang gets caught between two charging mastodons. It’s terrifying seeing Spear scamper around beneath giant four-legged stomps that threaten to crush him. The ensuing fight is the best of the series so far, full of emotion and visual virtuosity all around.

But I like what happens next even more. The whole thing is resolved when Spear gives up the fallen mammoth’s tooth to its mother(?). There’s a sense of the two of them as kindred spirits, parents who’ve both suffered the loss of their children and need some kind of closure or completeness to be able to move on from such devastation.

We see that for the mammoths. There’s power in the group of them swaying and almost chanting around their fallen brother’s dead body. There’s pathos in its parent caressing its tusk during the makeshift ceremony. It’s heightened by the knowledge the modern day elephants really do seem to mourn their lost compatriots, helping communicate the feeling that this community has lost one of their own and is paying tribute to them, honoring them, as part of this ritual.

It’s striking how a wordless episode manages to convey so much emotion and feeling, without turning either side of a bloody battle into heroes or villains. I can only hope that Primal manages to maintain this level of virtuosity throughout.