Devs Mini-series Review

Devs (2020)
Mini-series - 8 episodes

Rent Devs on Amazon Video (paid link)
Created by: Alex Garland
Starring: Sonoya Mizuno, Nick Offerman, Jin Ha, Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Alison Pill, Zach Grenier
Rated: TV-MA
Watch the trailer

Plot
A computer engineer investigates the secretive development division in her company, which she believes is behind the disappearance of her boyfriend.

Verdict
While this starts with a mystery, it's the probing questions this considers that force you to continue thinking about it. Do we have free will or is everything predetermined? That has different implications for various characters, and throughout the season we look at what that means, the ramifications it has, and how a technological breakthrough could affect the world. It's a gripping season that balances science, plot, and characters effectively. This builds such a great story that I began to wonder if the conclusion could do the plot justice, but it completely does. This is strong from the first to the last episode.
Watch It.

Review
I enjoy Alex Garland's movies like Sunshine, Never Let Me Go, and Annihilation. I wondered what he could do with a television show. He adapts well. I love the music and use of montages. It's incredibly effective.

Sergei (Karl Glusman) presents his research to the founder of Amaya, Forest (Nick Offerman). Sergei can predict the movement of the simplest organisms. This gets him promoted to a secret team in the company, Devs. The Devs lab is insane. It's got concrete walls, a Faraday cage, it's vacuum sealed, and runs on quantum computers. Lily (Sonoya Mizuno) also works at Amaya, and she grows concerned when Sergei doesn't come home. His disappearance is what starts the plot as Lily is suspicious, but she's fighting a company with near limitless resources that can curtail or derail her investigation however they see fit.

Nick Offerman plays Forest

The Devs team has developed the ability to see history, with the goal of ultimately seeing the future. With how secretive this team is, you wonder what lengths Forest has gone to protect these secrets. With Lily investigating, that puts her in danger. The distance she goes to gather information has the potential to backfire.

While Forest has rules for the Devs team, he breaks them when it suits him. When they make a breakthrough where they can view a historical event clearly, Forest shoots it down as a party trick. His business is geared to providing the answer he wants, and that's not always the actual answer. The way to see the past and future clearly is to use a many worlds algorithm. Forest is certain, there is only one world and no choice in how things play out. That's the core of this series. Is choice an illusion and we act and react in a predetermined way or can we influence many outcomes? Despite Forest's complaints and his certainty of only one world, he uses the many worlds algorithm, again breaking his rules for his own ends to see an event from his past.

Sonoya Mizuno plays Lily

Even the show seems to indicate many worlds is the right interpretation. We see a sequence with many small permutations, but all of them end with the same result. Episode five is Forest's thesis. If he proves we don't have free will he's absolved of his guilt. If there is free will, he could have altered the outcome. We see the event and a version that disproves Forest's theory of a single world.

As gripping as this show is, I began to worry about the conclusion. This crafts such a dense and gripping story that it could easily falter. Thankfully this doesn't happen. This is amazing beginning to end.

Alison Pill plays Katie

Episode six is the confrontation between Lily and the Devs lead Katie (Alison Pill). Lily argues that events can be random, but can't provide convincing evidence despite the fact that the Devs team view into the future is limited. Lily is projected to go to the Devs lab, so she resolves to defy the future. The premise of the show is that all of this may have been fated from the start.

The final episode is intense. Can Lily defy fate? She vowed to avoid the Devs lab, but ends up there anyway. When you think maybe the world is predetermined, we get a curve ball. I suppose ultimately the discourse on one or many worlds is like time travel and Novikov's principle where time itself won't let you alter the timeline. Like Sergio's experiment in the first episode, he could only predict the future for a limited time before it becomes inaccurate. As far as Forest's main thesis that the world is immutable, the answers seems to be a mixture. Small permutations happen, but the ultimate result seems to be the same.