Devs (1.6) Episode Recap - Answers, Grief, and More Questions

Something that I have largely overlooked throughout each of these episode recaps of Devs until this point is the role that grief plays in the show. Obviously, it’s the primary driving force for Forest’s work. However, the strength of such a force has been almost understated somehow – at least in these recaps. It clicked in this episode though. Grief is not just about losing something or someone. It is the necessary reorientation that occurs in the aftermath of loss.

This episode largely centered around two parallel conversations happening simultaneously. Lily and Jamie go to Forest’s house to get answers. Lily is the one who needs the answers though, so Katie sits down with her to answer any of her questions. Here is where we learn a litany of important components of the story. One, Katie and Forest are together. In a quite endearing moment at the end of the episode, they both state they are fairly deeply in like with one another. Two, that image we keep seeing of Lily’s death at Devs? Apparently, that is where the projections stop. It’s where the laws of the universe are thrown out of balance. Determinism no longer reigns and randomness has its day. As if this show was not cryptic enough, we have to reckon with whatever this means. The biggest unknown is revealed in this episode, which leads to yet another unknown. This one none of the characters know about either. We – just like Lily, Jamie, Forest, and Katie – are biding our time till the end of the world as we know it (which for all intents and purposes feels like it hits real life on the nose a bit too much in a different way).

All of the important plot points and the questions each of them raises – such as, what is going to get Lily to Devs in the first place? Is Kenton going rogue? What the hell happens when the laws of the universe are no longer applicable? - aside, it is none of those moments I find myself drawn too. As Katie and Lily discuss the details of Sergei’s death and the work at Devs, Jamie and Forest have a conversation outside. Eventually, the conversation turns to loss and grief. Jamie talks about how he has never come to grips with his loss of Lily. In that conversation with Forest, he plainly states his loss as “losing the girl and the future you thought you had.” It is that second phrase that drew my attention. It’s not new. In essentially every show that involves a break-up of two people in love, the break-up inherently alters the path of both people in the relationship. You do not just lose the companionship with the other person, you lose the future. You lose time that you were once certain existed. And now you are left to grapple with what remains of that time. What will fill that void now. But that’s not true of just relationships, and that is what Forest hints at in the midst of the conversation. It is grief. When Jamie tries to talk about his loss not comparing to Forest’s loss, Forest talks him back from that point. Of course, it’s not the same, Jamie is mourning a different loss. But it is nonetheless a loss that changed the course of his life. That is what Devs captures so beautifully. Not just the moments when our lives change, but how we deal with those changes. Jamie never truly mourned. He never let go of Lily. Forest has done the same with Amaya. Time will tell where their paths head, but grief and grappling with loss informs who they are and what they do every step of the way – even if that way is already determined.