Gerald was just the tallest guy on the savanna. Agility: forty-eight. Then a lightning strike changed the proteins in his muscles, and now he runs faster than anything alive. The cheetah has noticed.

Nobody had ever beaten the cheetah. Nobody had ever even tried. Sunday, on the river plain, from the baobab to the water, Gerald finds out how fast he really is.

Race day. Twenty seconds in, the cheetah is fading and Gerald is closing. Then the cheetah does something nobody on the savanna has ever seen.

The morning after the race, Gerald can't get up. Doc the tortoise explains what the lightning really did to his muscles, and how long he can keep it up.

The cheetah wants a rematch: a hundred metres, his kind of race. Doc says don't. Gerald runs anyway.

The river is dry and there's smoke on the horizon every morning. Sixty kilometres, then forty, then thirty. Gerald trains with Doc to last longer than ten minutes before the fire comes.

That night the fire comes. From up at his height, Gerald sees it first. The herd can't outrun it, so he has to get everyone across the water, and he only has ten minutes.

The season one finale. Gerald's legs are going, and two animals are still on the wrong side of the river. Then someone nobody expected comes back.