DEVS gives and taketh it away. A lesson in what comes next for Humanity
Sci-Fi mini-series from Alex Garland explores: when we die, how legacies go on and the damnation of the present by the past.
If you were able to be with the one you loved after they were gone from this world, would you? Resoundingly, that answer is yes. Yes, yes, of course, you would try at the very least to be with them again. Because what is Death, but the finale of our finite course in the world we know into the unknown. The obscurity of the Afterlife is ad-nauseam why people live good lives, ensuring in final moments, the biblical promise of reunification with loved ones. But, what if you could have more? What would you do to be with the ones you love?
FX TV mini-series ‘DEVS,’ in a special partnership with Hulu, attempts to answer these questions. It spans eight episodes each lasting less than an hour. ‘DEVS’ lays bare foundations of quantum mechanics, and asks: Is the Universe deterministic, a Multiverse or is it another beast entirely?
DEVS is the latest oracle from writers' rooms’ across streaming and media formats to tell the age-old tale of God, Machine, and Man. Joining heavy-hitting Sci-Fi masterpieces like Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, Westworld, Fringe, X Files, the list could go on and on Infinitum —where science meets God and beyond. ‘DEVS’ tells its tale using the narrative of a team of genius technicians working under the cold, calculated, and brilliant Katie (Alison Pill) at a secret location within the campus of the fictional tech-giant, Amaya, Forest’s (Nick Offerman) company, named for his deceased daughter.
A monolithic likeness of Amaya hovers lifeless over the campus. Obsessions with the beloved daughter, lost too soon, is the reason for the existence of Devs. The ghost of Offerman’s dead daughter haunts the narrative. Not only that but her image is plastered all over the company; branded, pictured everywhere in the backdrop. A sea of tragedy, a never-ending reminder of what Offerman’s character lost. Spread between episodes his backstory explores how far one can go for love lost.
‘DEVS’ opens on Lily Chan (Sonoya Mizuno) and boyfriend Sergei (Karl Glusman) waking from sleep in San Francisco. Following the young techs to work on what is a huge day for Glusman. As it’s the day in which he’s accepted to Devs, the top-secret program on the campus. He and his team demonstrate predictive AI in the interview with Offerman and his right-hand, Pill.
Glusman nails the interview, and the next day he heads to Devs with Offerman. A surreal location on the campus surrounded by rabid security and a graveyard of golden time-travel touchstones. The ‘office’ for DEVS consists of a machine built within a Faraday cage, blocking electromagnetic fields, airtight. The entrance into the Devs lab is dramatic, even a tad romantic looking more like an exotic jewelry box than a Silicon Valley secret department. Glusman is introduced to co-workers, Lyndon (Cailee Spaeny), and Stewart (Stephen McKinley Henderson). He’s told to sit, observe code. No other instruction, just start reading. What each Devs tech does is unclear. They are working on parts of a whole without knowledge of what the finished product will be. Putting together a puzzle without the final image.
Not long into the first episode, Glusman goes missing. We soon learn he is ‘taken care of,’ using the precedent from epic masterpieces like HBO’s Game of Thrones. Famous, for eliminating characters even as we were meeting them, ‘DEVS’ too gets rid of one of the main characters immediately. It picks up speed in the second episode as the mystery unravels for Mizuno.
She teams up with an ex, Jamie (Jin Ha), to find out what happened to Glusman. He never returns home. And the morning after, Mizuno forces Ha on a thrilling chase. Unraveling an encrypted phone message, the two are led back to the beginning, Devs. Running from security, themselves, the future — Mizuno, and Ha do their best to survive the eight episodes.
Through Shakespearean and Homeric storytelling of Spaeny and Henderson parallel to Mizuno and Ha, it is revealed that Glusman is not the man anyone thought he was. Mizuno, determined to be wrong about the man she loves takes on Offerman, Amaya, and Devs in a battle of wit, histories, and biblical allegory.
Narrative twists and turns are easily picked up on a second watch of the series. But it is hardly necessary. Small, circular in nature, details prove, as one of my favorite songs says: “Dying is just another way to leave the ones we love.”
Shows like ‘DEVS,’ surreal sci-fi liturgies — tiptoeing around mental exercise in free-will — might be the antithesis getting us through the darkest timeline. The static beliefs of the individual characters are not quite self-evident, in this show, and much like the aforementioned legacy shows, ‘DEVS’ suspends belief in incremental time. ‘DEVS’ dissects slowly and progressively with the precision of a surgeon what humans think they have; control, over our destinies, over our loved ones, and ultimately over the way, our lives will play out. In under eight hours, this show dispels that myth and leaves you praying it is wrong.
