If you’d shaped your expectations for Scavengers Reign, which first aired in October 2023 on HBO Max, by its trailer, you would be forgiven for thinking the show a sci-fi horror in the vein of Alien: the story of an afflicted crew desperately fighting not to lose their space freighter in a struggle with alien creatures, amid a fast-paced adventure heavy on direct confrontation.

That promotional strategy speaks to how rare it is to find science fiction of the type to which this animated, twelve-episode series actually belongs: patient, introspective, and filled with uncanny beauty on a world of rich floral and faunal ecosystems, where humans are the aliens and need to learn to fit in with their wondrous (if also dangerous) surroundings.

The creators built this standalone series off their 2016 short film, Scavengers, and in the interim Joseph Bennett and Charles Huettner studied the wealth of seemingly “alien” life and ecosystems right here on Earth to create their planet, Vesta. It is filled with species that dwarf its motley crew of scattered survivors as they try to make sense of what caused their space freighter, Demeter, to go into crisis—and to understand how, if at all, they can get back to the vessel to save the rest of the humans in its cryo beds. The result is a show not holding back for a season two: Bennett and Huettner let all their characters undergo full narrative arcs that arrive at satisfying conclusions, against a backdrop so rich that viewers might want to rewatch the series just to take in all the species designs and ecosystem storylines playing out around our silly little humans.

We open on the aforementioned Planet Vesta, with three clusters of survivors many weeks out from a disaster that caused the Demeter’s escape pods to eject. By now, some of their number have learned how to manage in their new local environments. Some have done so quite confidently, in fact, which suggests a level of xenobiology survival training that has allowed them to intuit how non-Terran ecosystems function, and to dip into whatever parts of their local environments might serve their needs best. This is the kind of advanced “Scouts” training one would expect for a far-flung spacefaring society, but it’s certainly not something we see much of in the genre.

Although the creatures the crew encounter, as they hike toward the downed Demeter, offer a poignant reminder of the fragility of life and are filled with symbolism that makes death and struggle an important part of rebirth, what matters more is what they, the aliens here, have brought to this hauntingly beautiful world in sync with itself. What preconceptions do they carry, what unfinished business, and how will these emotions and memories impact how they move with each other and through their landscapes? Are they “toxic” to Vesta?

One pairing, Ursula and Sam, is quite fortunate: the botanist and the captain can pair their excellent skill sets to bring the Demeter down gently while also traversing multiple landscapes. But Sam is still burning with fury over what happened on the Demeter in the first place, and both struggle to work well with others all the time. In an ecosystem filled with different forms of symbiosis—some parasitic, others not—what will their “form” be, in the end?

Another pairing involves a woman, Azi, who preferred solo life on the Demeter, and who treated others functionally. Here, though, Azi is joined by the helper bot Levi, who is experiencing sentient growth thanks to a fungal entity in the local environment. Azi needs Levi to survive—but is that all life is about? Or is there room to learn to care for and honour beings on different journeys? Can she find a way to survive that doesn’t mean reducing those around her to parts?

The third escape pod contains misery. Kamen’s survival craft was stuck high in a tree in a way that didn’t allow him to leave it for weeks, let alone to try to connect with the surrounding world, until an animal finally broke in and gave him a panicked, much-delayed way out. The series only gradually informs us of each character’s past aboard the Demeter, but, from the beginning, as we watch Kamen withered in his “cell,” it’s clear that this character bears a deep burden from past events. Consumed by his work, he hurt people he loved—and now, when he does get out, he finds exactly the wrong part of the local wildlife to grow alongside: a species that forms telekinetic bonds with other creatures to put them to work. This species isn’t usually as violent as one specimen becomes with Kamen—but then again, it’s never had the opportunity to yoke such an angry, miserable, psychologically volatile fellow creature before.

Over the course of the series, a distress call will be answered by another kind of human “ecosystem”: a tight-knit and no-nonsense trio that lives by hard rules to survive in an outer cosmos that is rarely kind. When they touch down on Vesta to scavenge in their own way, the question becomes whether or not their rugged survivalism is actually the best way to get by. Do the perils of Planet Vesta necessitate treating life in a “do or die” fashion? Must one make all other lives secondary to one’s own needs? Or does nature offer more intricate opportunities to find one’s niche, and to live in a more supportive unity with other fragile life-forms around us?

Along the patient way of this series, which unfolds with a Studio Ghibli-esque richness to its animated worldbuilding, we witness many horrors that earn the show its mature tone—but also overhear many gentle conversations and reflections from the humans who are working their way through these challenging new landscapes. None of these dialogues tries to solve the mysteries of the universe, but all speak to some of the quiet aches and wonderings we humans take with us even into worlds filled with beings that already seem to know everything they need to know to get by.

In the original short film, the protagonist survives her experience in an alien (to her) ecosystem and, arriving back on Earth, looks with the same sense of wonder at all the quotidian sites of everyday living that she recently held for the creatures of a distant world. Her experience in an alien environment has taught her to better appreciate the marvels of every ecosystem in which we move—not just the ones we might dream up, or bear witness to, on far-away stars.

This series ends differently, but with no less of a feeling that we have always been surrounded by the estranging and wonderful. Sometimes our circumstances—our jobs, our artificial environments, and the ways they isolate us from one another—can lead us to forget the greater systems to which we all belong. The work of science fiction like Scavengers Reign isn’t to scare us with the unknown; it’s to remind us that, even when everything around us seems “alien,” it’s never too late to cultivate a renewed sense of “coming home.”