Devs episode 7 Review

During the sixth episode of Devs Lily learned from Katie that everything is perfectly deterministic. If you use enough computing power, or in this case a quantum computer of sorts, you can obtain a clear vision of the future, and of our pasts. You can go back in time 30.000 years to observe pre-historic humans drawing cave paintings – which is something Forest and Katie do to pass the time. And so Lily discovers she had no choice in any of tragic events that happened so far. However Katie also tells her that they can only see into the future unto a certain date. And that date happens to be less than 24 hours from now. Devs episode 7 thus deals with the utterly deterministic futures of the principle characters.

Lyndon and ‘that whole thing’

At Forest’s home he and Katie discuss what will become the days events, something they will continue to do throughout the episode. Katie is preparing to leave when Forest reminds her that Lyndon is in her car. Describing what will be as ‘that whole thing’. What ends up happening is that Katie drives Lyndon to a dam. Katie makes a deal. If Lyndon balances herself on the railing she can come back to work for Amaya. By doing this Lyndon will have shown her belief in the many-worlds theory – the opposite of determinism. If she doesn’t, then she only beliefs in determinism. Lyndon achieves a moment of epiphany as she understands the consequences of work at Devs. A little while later we see her fall to her death.

Back at the home of Lily we see her and Jamie getting their life back together. There is a touching scene in which Jamie is preparing breakfast and finds a mug with Lily’s and Sergei’s on it. He must wondering how fate intervened to bring the two of them back together. Lily tells Jamie about what Katie told her. They agree to try and bend fate by hanging out in her apartment for the remainder of the day. However, fate intervenes in the way of Kenton, who no doubt has become paranoid after the events of episode 6. He breaks into the Lily’s home and shoots Jamie in cold blood. He attempts to kill Lily as well but Kenton is in turn strangled by Pete, the homeless man. Pete reveals himself to be a Russian operative.

Back to Amaya

After this bout of violence Pete tries to help Lily by giving her suggestions. The dead bodies are hard to explain, especially if the authorities want to pressure Lily about any information she may have on Amaya’s Devs team. He suggests she could either contact the CIA, but she will be interrogated for years to come, or she could flee to Hong Kong. The viewer knows that somehow Lily will have to go to Amaya that evening. It isn’t long before Lily determines this herself, after saying goodbye to Jamie and taking Kenton’s gun.

Once at Amaya Lily discovers Stewart. That these two characters have not met before is a shame, but it was not to be. He acts as a veritable Charon by guiding Lily over the magnetically levitated bridge. But he does warn her to turn around. Of course Lily has no choice, if she does turn around everything that happened will have been in vain. I am reminded of a scene at the beginning of episode 4. Back then Forest tells Katie that Lily will die in two days. I hope that will not come to pass, but I also have to consider that all four remaining characters that know the ‘secret’ are in one place. If Lily dies, they will probably all die. Devs has managed to play with audience expectations perfectly in this episode, just as it did in episode 6. Alex Garland has made managed to make it exciting to watch a story in which several characters already known everything that is going happen.

A final opinion on Devs episode 7

If there is one takeaway from this episode, and Devs on the whole is that determinism sucks. Neither Forest nor Katie were able to prevent any of the tragic events that have so far unfolded. This episode hammered that in pretty hard with two dreadful deaths that came right after we saw them at their happiest. Forest and Katie knew the future, what would happen to Jamie and Lyndon, and were powerless to intervene because they could only see a future in which they would not help. I think this is the point of the show. Whatever happens in the final episode will ensure nobody will know the whole future. Tragedy will continue to exist, but people will not be despondent over the fact there was nothing they could do. Instead they will be despondent over the fact they didn’t do anything. This was my review of Devs episode 7. I hope you enjoyed it. Don’t forget to return for the finale next week.