Posted in: Adult Swim, TV | Tagged: Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal, primal

Genndy Tartakovsky's Primal Season 3 Premiere Set for January 11th

Genndy Tartakovsky's Primal returns to Adult Swim to kick off Season 3 on Sunday, January 11th. Here's a new look at what's ahead...

Genndy Tartakovsky (Samurai Jack, Unicorn: Warriors Eternal, Heist Safari) kept his promise from over the summer in a very big way when he teased that we should be hearing more about the third season of Genndy Tartakovsky's Primal later this year. After the jaw-dropping teaser released during New York Comic Con dropped the ten-ton news that Spear would be back (in zombie form), it was revealed that January 2026 would be the return month for the award-winning animated series. Along with the release of a key art poster and new preview images, we now know that Genndy Tartakovsky's Primal Season 3 will premiere on Sunday, January 11th (11:30 pm ET/PT, the following day on HBO Max).

Combining artistry and pulse-pounding action, the first two seasons followed Spear as he formed an unlikely bond with an almost extinct dinosaur and later made the ultimate sacrifice after a final standoff turned fatal. The third season opens with a shocking twist that resurrects Spear in a new form—stripped of memory and humanity—and forces him to roam a brutal, untamed world as a shadow of his former self. As Spear battles savage landscapes and deadly foes, faint echoes of his past begin to stir, leading him toward an emotional and explosive reunion that will test the limits of survival.

Genndy Tartakovsky's Primal Season 3: Previous Thoughts

With the animated series set to return in January 2026, the teaser offered a look at Zombie Spear in action in some pretty brutal and horrific ways. With the series taking such a dramatic turn, should fans assume it's not set in the same universe as the first two seasons? "No, no. What's great about it is it flows right to the next. So it's in the same world, same everything," Tartakovsky shared with EW. "There's dinosaur and man, then there's different civilizations, and then now there's this thing happening. I imagine this world has a lot of different parts, and some parts aren't discovered. Some people don't go into other parts because they know [not to]. So it's this f***ed up world that's really crazy, and now we've entered this part, but you feel like it's the same show. It's amped up and the story's crazy, but it feels like you're watching a 'Primal' episode. It's not a reboot, it's none of those things."

Teaming once again with animation studio Studio La Cachette, Tartakovsky didn't hold back expressing his excitement and pride in how the season is coming together during this past summer's Annecy International Animation Festival. "It's a new level. Everything that we did in the first season, we upped a bit in the second season, and the third season is even more. I can't say anything without giving everything away, but it's just more, and it's shocking, and it's unstoppable. At some point, you're like, 'I can't believe I'm watching this.' Quality-wise, animation-wise, story-wise, emotionally, I don't want to oversell it, but rarely have I been proud of a project like this," he shared. "At the end of the day, we'll have these 30 episodes, and thinking back to 'Dexter' and 'Powerpuff Girls' and even 'Samurai Jack,' how much our quality wavered just because of the process and everything, this is just so solid. And to have 30 solid, incredible [episodes] for a modest budget, I'm really proud of it."

Adult Swim's Genndy Tartakovsky's Primal is created by Tartakovsky with art direction from Scott Wills (The Ren & Stimpy Show, Samurai Jack) and music composition from Tyler Bates (Guardians of the Galaxy, Samurai Jack, Unicorn: Warriors Eternal) and Joanne Higginbottom (Salem, Samurai Jack, Unicorn: Warriors Eternal) and sound effects design from Joel Valentine (Samurai Jack, Big City Greens, Unicorn: Warriors Eternal).

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