WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Devs, now streaming on FX on Hulu.
In just two episodes, Alex Garland's Devs has proven to already be as cryptic and thought-provoking as his other work. He's tapped into A.I. in Ex Machina and dissected religion, science and their impact on humanity in Annihilation, and now he's wading deep into the waters of quantum coding.
With Forest (Nick Offerman) and his Amaya tech company working on a secret project, all we know so far is they're willing to kill programmers involved to keep the details under wraps, and it has to do with time-travel. But as they stay under the radar, one employee, Lily (Sonoya Mizuno), is adamant on exposing the cover-up and this leads to an Ocean's Eleven-like heist, that while successful, puts her at further risk.
Lily's keen on the truth as the programmer who was murdered after working just one day at the Devs lab was her boyfriend, Sergei (Karl Glusman). Granted, he was a Russian spy, Lily knows it's more than just a battle of world powers and national security, as she's an encryption engineer at the company. She's taken time off, though, with Forest, who orchestrated the death, faking sympathy and compassion.
In the third episode, Lily returns but she's clearly fractured. As her psyche's broken and she's not fit for work, Lily's supervisor Anya (Aimee Mullins) holds a meeting over her mental health. Lily's best friend, Jen (Linnea Berthelsen) joins in, and they're taken aback when Lily talks about the Russian-American cyberwar. They start to think she's insane and when they take a break, Jen drops the bomb that Lily was diagnosed with schizophrenia years ago. At this point, it's unclear if Jen's working for the Russians, but she's trying to discredit Lily.
Aimee escalates it up the corporate ladder and a meeting is held with Forest's security chief, Kenton (Zach Grenier) because he's the one who has footage of Sergei's suicide on company grounds. Clearly, Forest wants him doing damage control so they'll know how to position Lily on the chessboard. More so, Forest doesn't want Kenton killing her, especially after Russia contacted her about Sergei's death. It's just too much heat coming way too fast, endangering his project, and Forest knows the American government is trying to find an excuse to raid.
Later, Kenton is freaked out when Lily bursts into a rant about spies and war, and when Jen tries to calm her down, she leaves the office. Lily then heads out onto the ledge and Kenton rushes to meet her as he doesn't know if she'll jump. She claims to just want air and they talk it out. However, the ruse is shockingly revealed because Lily is putting on an Oscar-like performance. It's all been set up so Jen can have unfettered access to Kenton's computer, having written code to hack Amaya's surveillance system, which only he and Forest can tap into. Lily and Kenton leave on a somewhat peaceful note, but the damage has been done because as an unsuspecting Kenton heads back, Jen's already stolen the data.
And it's the smoking gun Lily needs as Sergei's death means a lot to Jen as they were friends too. When Lily takes the footage to her ex, Jamie (Jin Ha), another hacker, the truth emerges -- the footage was doctored and Sergei setting himself on flames is all VFX. The ball's in their court as the series flashes back to Kenton staging the suicide, with Lily knowing she and her crew are now in deep waters.
The first two episodes of DEVS, entirely written, directed, and edited by Alex Garland, is streaming on FX on Hulu. It stars Nick Offerman, Alison Pill, Sonoya Mizuno, Jin Ha, Zach Grenier, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Karl Glusman and Cailee Spaeny. A new episode arrives each Thursday.