La Brea Season 3 Episode 1 Review: Sierra
When it comes to season premieres, La Brea Season 3 Episode 1, “Sierra,” can be labeled as a solid start. There are dinosaur fights, auroras, time travel, and a clearing baby.
Considering La Brea Season 3 will be the final season, it looks like the show is doing everything in its power to deliver high-quality episodes, great storylines, and a resolution to what started with that sinkhole in 2021.
Hopefully, whatever happens on these next few episodes will help us understand more about the auroras and the sinkholes and safely deliver our favorite characters back home.
One thing that must be highlighted from La Brea Season 3 is the quality of the special effects.
When the show first premiered back in 2021, most of the prehistoric animals that would show up on every episode did not seem believable at all. The quality of the special effects made the storyline seem rushed and unbelievable, even in a world where people end up in 10,000 B.C.
With dinosaurs showing up, we wondered if they would look as real as possible or if they’d be an obvious product of CGI. After La Brea Season 3 Episode 1, “Sierra,” we can happily say the dinosaurs look as close to what we believe they used to look as possible.
The fight between the two dinosaurs in the clearing could have been a scene from a Jurassic Park movie, delivering everything dinosaur fanatics look for when bringing this creature to life.
However, this dinosaur fight sadly means the disappearance of the clearing, of the home all these people had been able to build since falling into 10,000 B.C.
This feels symbolic. Their home is destroyed during the last season of the show when their stories are coming to an end.
It feels like La Brea is always paralleling events from previous episodes to remind viewers of how everything started and what each character’s goal is.
This time around it feels like we can parallel Gavin having flashbacks to a particular moment in time to the visions he was having before landing in 10,000 B.C.
In both instances, he didn’t have all the information. When he had visions, he didn’t know what he was seeing or what it meant. Now, there are pieces of his memory missing, and he doesn’t know what these flashbacks are trying to tell him either.
Unlike with his visions, he asks for Levi’s help to understand what it means. Luckily, this leads to Sierra — another important piece of the story as she connects the people from the clearing, Gavin’s family, and Petra.
However, as happy as we are for this revelation, there are still several questions unanswered. What was Gavin doing with Petra’s mom? Who are the people in the military base?
When Levi and Petra are taken, Levi’s blurry vision helps hide who really took them. It looks like the people from the base, but we won’t know until that is (hopefully) revealed in upcoming episodes.
For a show about time travel, sinkholes, and prehistoric creatures, La Brea has been very consistent in its storytelling. La Brea Season 3 Episode 1, “Sierra,” written by David Appelbaum and directed by Ron Underwood, sticks to this pattern.
One storyline that has proven this consistency is Lucas’s. He evolved from a heroin dealer to leader of the clearing and father-to-be. It is thanks to these two new titles that he has stepped up and changed his attitude.
His speech has completely transformed, and he is focusing on giving everyone around him hope. For him, it is clear that hope has come in the form of the baby he and Veronica are expecting.
Lucas’s idea of hope and believing in it parallels to Gavin’s idea that family is everything. While Gavin came to 10,000 B.C. to save his family, Lucas is trying to make 10,000 B.C. as safe as possible for his.
The season premiere proves it wouldn’t be La Brea without twists and turns or auroras pulling people into different time periods. While the show starts with Gavin needing to find Eve, it has thrown some other characters into the list of people they must find.
On the one hand, we have Josh and Riley. These two characters seem to constantly find themselves jumping between time periods. It is a mystery where they will land this time around, but hopefully it will help save Riley’s life.
On the other hand, we have Ty landing back in 2021 before the original sinkhole. Will he take the opportunity to go through the sinkhole again? Or will he use it to bring everyone else home?
Hopefully, this season of La Brea delivers more answers than questions.
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What did you think of this episode of La Brea? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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La Brea airs Tuesdays at 9/8c on NBC.
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Lara Rosales
By day, Lara Rosales (she/her) is a solo mom by choice and a bilingual writer with a BA in Latin-American Literature known as a Media Relations Expert. By night, she is a TV enjoyer who used to host a podcast (Cats, Milfs & Lesbian Things). You can find her work published on Eulalie Magazine, Geek Girl Authority, W Spotlight, Collider, USA Wire, Mentors Collective, Instelite, Noodle, Dear Movies, Nicki Swift, and Flip Screened.