Jurassic World Dominion & Chaos Theory’s Connection Explained

As audiences wait for the next chapter of the Jurassic World‘s ongoing story with Gareth Edward’s Jurassic World Rebirth (in theaters July 2), there’s actually more canon mythology and storytelling getting revealed currently. This week, DreamWorks Animation’s Jurassic World: Chaos Theory dropped its third season, and for the first time ever, the animated series interwove its narrative right into one of the franchise’s feature films. 

While Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous unfolded on Isla Nublar in the shadow of the events that happened on the island during Jurassic World and in the aftermath of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Chaos Theory‘s Season 3 episodes are set smack in the action of Jurassic World Dominion (now available from Universal Home Entertainment). It puts the “The Nublar Six” — Darius (Paul-Mikél Williams), Kenji (Ryan Potter), Brooklynn (Kiersten Kelly), Yaz (Kausar Mohammed), Ben (Sean Giambrone), and Sammy (Raini Rodriguez) — in the Malta dinosaur black market with three of the characters from the film-verse. 

SYFY WIRE caught up with Jurassic World: Chaos Theory executive producer/co-showrunner Scott Kreamer to find out how the series backwards-engineered its storytelling right into Dominion. 

Colin Trevorrow gave his approval to introduce Jurassic World Dominion characters to Chaos Theory

As the creatives began developing Jurassic World: Chaos Theory, Kreamer said they pitched several characters to integrate into their storyline: Soyona Santos / The Broker (Dichen Lachman), Barry Sembène (voiced by Evan Michael Lee) and the return of Lewis Dodgson (Adam Harrington), who first appeared in Camp Cretaceous. What was different about their pitch was the writer’s intention to actually insert their “Nublar Six” into the events of Dominion. 

“When we break the season, Colin Trevorrow is in the room for a minute of one day and we got his blessing on all of this, as he wrote Dominion,” Kreamer explains. Since animation needs a long-lead time for production, they were able to watch early cuts of Dominion to adjust and tweak their storylines as needed to adjust their scripts for Chaos Theory. 

“This was sort of the inverse of Camp Cretaceous, where we start here and kind of broaden out,” Kreamer says. “So, we watched [Dominion] a lot, and a lot of this was just [lead writer] Bethany Armstrong Johnson, me, and the writers, just digging in. Like, what does that mean when Santos in the movie tells Lewis Dodgson, ‘I wasn’t crazy about how it went last time…’ What could that mean?”

Speaking of which, Chaos Theory gives us a lot more Dodgson, which paints the billionaire Biosyn owner as less befuddled and far more ruthless when it comes to getting the dinos he wants, by any means possible, often through the unethical manipulations of The Broker. 

Kreamer says they had a lot of fun getting to expand upon actor Campbell Scott’s scenes to flesh out his relationship with The Broker, especially. “Basically how we characterized him in Camp Cretaceous is we had a wardrobe fitting photo and a couple lines of dialog that were recorded, and that’s all we had,” he chuckled. “For this, Colin and Campbell expanded the character. It just gave us a lot more to play with, so that was really fun to do. They play with his absent-mindedness a little, and the comedy of him too. But at the end of the day. This is not a good guy. He’s got his eye on the bottom line and everything else kind of reminds me a little bit of the world as it right now.”

Giving Jurassic World Dominion‘s Malta black market a lot more real estate in Chaos Theory

In Chaos Theory Season 3 episodes “No Escape” and “Active Pursuit,” the animated series narrative snaps into the Dominion narrative in Malta. Brooklynn’s assistant position to Santos puts her and the Handler with her Atrociraptors in Malta during the sequence where Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) and Gwen (Bryce Dallas Howard) arrive to try and find their kidnapped adopted daughter, Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon). In the scene where Santos is in front of her truck full of dinos and gets ambushed by Barry and French Intelligence agents, the Chaos Theory characters are revealed to be inside, behind the dino boxes. 

Later, Darius, Yaz, and Ben find their way into the black market right before the ambush, and then in the market’s cellar after all hell breaks loose. For Chaos Theory, the animators rebuild the black market, including the dinosaur species, seen in the movie. 

“That was my team of mad genius problem solvers,” Kreamer said. “Art director John-Paul Balmet, our lighting and composite supervisor Eric T. Hawkins, and also this amazing designer named Augusto Barranco, they made that black market out of so many things that were reused assets that we had lying around from different places.”

Kreamer said it was a huge endeavor to match the market and the dinos within their much smaller show, but they knew the payoff would be worth it. “When we first pitched the idea to our hub team and to our animation studio, they’re like, ‘No. This is crazy.’ Then Bethany and I go to production and design, and say, ‘Well, we kind of need this set. What can we do?'”

He said they miraculously figured it out. “It’s crazy what they did. Big props to JP and Augusto and Hawk for matching the lighting and really just giving it that 500 percent. It’s a team effort in trying to pull this thing off that we have no business pulling off.”

When asked about his favorite moments from the sequence, Kreamer recalled, “The little scene of the Dimorphodon flying by with the scooter. I was very, very excited that we managed to get that in there because everybody knows that scene from Dominion.”

Jurassic World Dominion is now available from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment. Jurassic World Rebirth hits theaters everywhere July 2.