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Surprise! A Jurassic World Fan Favorite Just Showed Up in Animated Spinoff
The Jurassic franchise's official film canon continues to expand in the parallel animated series.
**SPOILER WARNING!** Spoilers below for Season 2 of Jurassic World: Chaos Theory!**
If you're a Jurassic Park and Jurassic World stan, then you're likely aware that along with the most recent films, there's been an ongoing expansion of the official canon happening in Netflix's animated series Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous and its sequel Jurassic World: Chaos Theory.
Season 2 of Chaos Theory dropped October 15, and continues the more grown-up adventures of the "The Nublar Six" survivors — Darius (Paul-Mikél Williams), Kenji (Ryan Potter), Yaz (Kausar Mohammed), Ben (Sean Giambrone), Sammy (Raini Rodriguez) and Brooklynn (Kiersten Kelly) — who travel the globe to find out who is responsible for a dinosaur trafficking operation run by a shadowy figure known as the Broker.
Showrunner Scott Kreamer recently got on a Zoom with SYFY WIRE to discuss the reveal of a Jurassic World Dominion fan-favorite character who shows up this season, as well as a dinosaur surprise that ties into the Malta sequence in Dominion.
The Broker in Jurassic World: Chaos Theory Is Dichen Lachman's Soyona Santos from Dominon
During the Malta sequence in Dominion, when Owen (Chris Pratt) and Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) try to find a kidnapped Maise Lockwood at an underground dinosaur black market, Soyona Santos (Dichen Lachman) is introduced. She's an enigmatic but extremely savvy smuggler who retains her own pack of laser pointer trained Atrociraptors to attack her foes. Aside from collecting dinosaurs to sell to the highest bidder, Santos also does the dirty work of Biosyn's Dr. Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott).
In Season 2 of Chaos Theory, which happens before the events of Dominion, it's revealed that the Broker who tried to kill the Nublar Six — and got extremely close with Brooklynn — is none other than Soyona Santos.
Kreamer explained that when he and his team got a chance to see early cuts of Dominion, he and writer Bethany Armstrong Johnson were especially taken with the potential of Santos. "She's only in it for like 20 minutes, but she leaps off the screen," Kreamer said. "We both were like, 'If we can get her in the show, we've got to.' [Dominion director and Chaos Theory executive producer] Colin [Trevorrow] was down and even reached out [to Lachman]."
And so Lachman returned to voice Santos, who becomes an intimidating mentor to Brooklynn, who, determined to infiltrate and end the illegal global dinosaur trade, sticks with Santos.
"You don't always get the actual actor and she's just amazing," Kreamer said. "What a really kind, generous performer. She's just so great and so game. We recorded her from overseas. She was into it, pronouncing dinosaur names, and offering, 'If it helps your artists, I can record myself for some animation reference.' She really just elevated everything. And Colin had shared with us that he and Dichen had come up with a backstory for the character, and we incorporated some of that into the show."
Chaos Theory introduces important member of the Atrociraptors pack
As mentioned above, Santos has her own pack of trained attack Atrociraptors that she ships over to Malta where her henchman, Rainn Delacourt (Scott Haze), is meant to get them to Riyadh. However, the French intelligence sting led by agent Barry Sembène (Omar Sy) takes down the black market and disrupts Santos' plans, operation and even takes out her pack of four dinosaurs: Ghost, Tiger, Panthera and Red.
In the first season, Chaos Theory introduced a pack of three trained Atrociraptors — presumably Ghost, Panthera, and Tiger — that are in the possession of the frighteningly pale, whistle happy woman known as The Handler (Sumalee Montano). Her pack was hired by the Broker to take out the "Nublar Six," but was unsuccessful.
In Season 2, Red is officially introduced as a highly intelligent predator residing in one of Santos' secret dinosaur labs in Africa. It ends up stalking the Nublar's alongside a mutant Baryonyx. But just how it gets from Africa and merges with the Handler's pack of three remains a mystery by the end of the season.
"We always liked the idea of telling the origin story of this becoming a pack of Atrociraptors," Kreamer said of the series getting to explain the back story of the killer pack. "We definitely were hoping people would be wondering in Season 1, 'Where's Red?' Then, to get to give Red such a dramatic entrance into the show was pretty exciting. Again, Colin's in the room when we break the scenes, and he reads the scripts and the outlines and everything, so we definitely had his sign off on all of this."
Jurassic World Dominion is now available from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment.
