Devs (1.7) Episode Recap: A Poem as All of It Nears A Finale

In the most intense episode of Devs thus far, the focus is on death. From Stewart’s monologue to Jamie, Kenton, and Lyndon’s fates, it truly has become the only inevitably on this show. Which feels like an important acknowledgement on its own. Devs is a show driven largely by the ambitions of its most powerful character. A character who has repeatedly insisted that each event that occurs across all life forms can be boiled down to an equation, that existence is computational. Though Forest refuses to see it, he is missing parts of his equation. That is what this episode is about. Unpacking the notions of determinism through spotlighting the only certainty we have in this life: death. For all its large reveals (and there were plenty, I absolutely did not see the Pete reveal coming), that is what this episode came down to. No matter how much we try to calculate life and reduce it to parts of an equation, there is only ever one outcome for us all.

In the midst of this week’s episode of Devs, Stewart has a monologue on that very topic. In it, he muses on death and its inevitably. At the end of the monologue, Forest walks up to him. Stewart challenges him to guess whose work he was reciting. Forest refuses to guess. When Katie meets with Forest later on, she mentions that Stewart is in the tunnel reciting Shakespeare. Forest chuckles and acknowledges it was Shakespeare. Except they are wrong. Stewart is not reciting Shakespeare. It is from a poem called Aubade from Philip Larkin. The most important part of this interaction is a confirmation of Stewart’s charge against Forest. That he has no understanding or appreciation for the past and its impact. It is Stewart’s way of challenging Forest and Katie’s reduction of existence down to an equation.

Each character has a dramatically different death in this episode. Katie talks Lyndon into killing himself as an act of faith to the multi-verse theory he introduced into Devs’ work. Kenton shoots Jamie as he is going to bring Lily breakfast. Finally, Pete strangles Kenton. That leaves at least one death that we know of in the series finale next week though. Arguably the most pivotal (and certainly most devastating) death Devs has saved for last. How does that change your experience knowing the death is going to come? It’s a question I have been hammering since I watched this last episode. What is a life lived if you already know how you are going to live it? If there are no questions, no uncertainties. Just as Lyndon states why he never wanted to know the future, “While I have the illusion of free will, I have the illusion of free will.” I do not know if there is an answer to the question. I don’t think Devs does either. Or at least it does not attempt to give us an answer. Which is precisely why this episode felt so pivotal. It revealed enormous truths about the world of Devs and mysteries we have been waiting to have answered come to fruition. It also laid bare the only way it could answer that question. Just as the Devs projection can only carry Forest and Katie’s ability to see into the future so far, our ability to understand how our lives are shaped by forces outside of our control is vastly limited. The answer appears unknowable. Which means that the journey toward life’s only inevitably is all that we have after working all day, getting half-drunk at night, and waking at four to soundless dark.

Philip Larken’s Aubade in its entirety:

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.

Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.

In time the curtain-edges will grow light.

Till then I see what’s really always there:

Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,

Making all thought impossible but how

And where and when I shall myself die.

Arid interrogation: yet the dread

Of dying, and being dead,

Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse

—The good not done, the love not given, time

Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because

An only life can take so long to climb

Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;

But at the total emptiness for ever,

The sure extinction that we travel to

And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,

Not to be anywhere,

And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid

No trick dispels. Religion used to try,

That vast moth-eaten musical brocade

Created to pretend we never die,

And specious stuff that says No rational being

Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing

That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,

No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,

Nothing to love or link with,

The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,

A small unfocused blur, a standing chill

That slows each impulse down to indecision.

Most things may never happen: this one will,

And realisation of it rages out

In furnace-fear when we are caught without

People or drink. Courage is no good:

It means not scaring others. Being brave

Lets no one off the grave.

Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.

It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,

Have always known, know that we can’t escape,

Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.

Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring

In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring

Intricate rented world begins to rouse.

The sky is white as clay, with no sun.

Work has to be done.

Postmen like doctors go from house to house.