Devs – Season 1 Episode 7 Recap & Review

A Predetermined Destiny

After last week’s game of frisbee and an hour of drama that confirmed the roguish Kenton is the only antagonist of the series, Devs delivers a decent enough penultimate episode but one that ultimately only serves to strengthen what we already know. It’s a shame because this is a show that could be great but some of the stifled dialogue and interesting ideas are ultimately sidelined in favour of this predetermined timeline that loses any sort of tension or excitement that could be created.

Episode 7 of Devs begins with Lily and Jamie in bed together talking about mundane things, including the dishwasher and getting a cat. At the same time, Forest and Katie begin their day, with the familiar multiple instances of Forest and his daughter playing out again in the street.

Back at Devs, the group look upon their marvelous project and realize it’s finally finished. Stewart speaks up on behalf of the team and talks about this “box” with infinite possibilities. One of those possibilities happens to be the machine predicting the future, which the group see as the algorithm predicts their every move a split second before it actually plays out.

Jamie and Lily discuss the prediction surrounding her going to Devs and in order to defy that, she decides to hang out in the apartment with Jamie. At the same time, Lyndon and Katie discuss the project and what happens next for her. As Katie talks about Lyndon balancing on the edge of the railings, she does just that after they discuss the predetermined nature of this reality. As we soon see, Lyndon was always meant to fall off the edge of the dam and land in a crumpled heap on the ground.

Back at Devs, Stewart confronts Forest and questions him about the project. He tells the creator that he made the system work on the same design principles Lyndon thought of, rather than using Forest’s version. While Forest stews in this revelation, Kenton arrives at Lily’s apartment and shoots Jamie in cold blood. Lily tries to outsmart him but it’s too much, he chokes her out until the homeless man from outside arrives and saves the day, killing Kenton.

In the aftermath of this, he tells Lily to go and sit on the couch and admits he had orders to watch and protect Sergei. When that failed, he made it his mission to protect Lily. Unfortunately his choice to kill Kenton has now put them on a different path (or tram line, if you will) and changed their fortune. In this respect, Lily was always meant to go to Devs no matter what she did today but had she decided to go earlier, would it still have played out in the same way? And would Jamie still have died?

Back at Devs, Forest and Katie sit together and watch cavemen carving paintings on the wall. He questions how nothing could change for so long, with the current trend of the world changing every few months or so, thanks in part to the digitalised nature of our reality. Discussing what comes next for Lily, they talk about the predetermined events of the night and wait for Lily to make her move.

And make her move she does. After making some final changes to the apartment, Lily heads off to Devs just like she was always supposed to. At the entrance, she runs into Stewart who questions just who she is and tells her to turn around and leave as that place is not good for her. Unfortunately, Lily has come too far and she can’t turn around now. Instead, Stewart helps her into the elevator as she prepares for the final conflict ahead, which is where we leave the episode.

Although there’s some interesting ideas presented around the fabric of our reality and whether everything is predetermined or not, these sort of questions have been asked before in previous films, including The Matrix with The Oracle. In this serialized form though, there’s a profound lack of tension given we already know Lily goes to Devs and that means this week’s scuffle with Kenton would always play out with her being saved.

The series itself hasn’t always hit the heights those earlier episodes promised it may be, and last week in particular was pretty disappointing. If you’ve made it this far though, no doubt you’ll be tuning in next week to find out how this plays out in the end.