WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Devs, now streaming on FX on Hulu.
In Alex Garland's Devs, many assumed the series' title was short for developers as it focused on digital programmers building a temporal algorithm that allowed Forest's (Nick Offerman) tech company, Amaya, to dive into the past and predict the future. It's called quantum computing in the show but in the finale, fans realize the project's title actually has a deeper meaning.
When Lily (Sonoya Mizuno) meets Forest at the lab, she's disenfranchised from all the death in her life and feels like she has no free will or identity. As Forest explains that choice is indeed an illusion, he reveals his team's true name for the project isn't Devs, it's Deus, as the 'v' is Roman, alluding to similarities as well counter-statements to Alex Garland's other acclaimed sci-fi piece, Ex Machina.
Ex Machina is a 2014 sci-fi flick Garland wrote and directed that focused on Domhnall Gleeson's Caleb, a programmer at a tech company that specializes in human data and search engines. It turns out the CEO, Nathan (Oscar Isaac), ia collecting info on human identity as part of a secret project where he is building artificial intelligences and robots that can't be differentiated from humans.
The film focuses on Caleb testing to see if these bots can be integrated into mankind, and, as it progresses, it is clear they can replace people in the next step of evolution. Basically, it is Nathan using tech and science to play God, which is where Devs' Forest cuts a similar figure, but with him the complex is a bit different because he's not playing God; he's making a god.
"I had it in my head that there was a companion piece to Ex Machina," Garland confirms to Rolling Stone after the finale, "If Ex Machina is about a man who is trying to act as if he’s God via technology and science, I thought there’s a companion story, which is about people not trying to act as if they’re God, but trying to create God."
Forest accepts reality cannot be changed or altered because it's a series of dominoes that must topple over, which is why he believes in determinism. He's not about plucking Amaya from the timeline or recreating her after his daughter's death; he simply wants the perfect simulation to be created so his mind can be reunited with his family. The code is God and Forest is just a tool, or as Lily thinks, a slave to it. He's not a substitute for any higher being like Nathan tries to be.
Forest comes off like a messiah meant for digital resurrection. This is what spurs Lily to shoot him in the future predicted by Deus, and it's the same narcissism and ego which cause Caleb to turn on Nathan. Rather than helping the A.I. like Caleb does, Lily's her free will turns Forest into a false prophet. This breaks the 'father' that Deus represents, as it will not be able to predict the rules of the universe anymore. Her "original sin" gives her a semblance of identity, rewarding and saving humans in a sadistic manner through immortality in the digital realm.
In Ex Machina's case, Caleb's free will punishes mankind when Alicia Vikander's Ava betrays him and leaves him for dead. Nathan's killed too, so she escapes into the real world, dooming humanity to save them from themselves.
However, in both properties viewers see the "deus ex machina" is always meant to heal. After all, the term means a plot device that saves the day and brings light to hopeless situations. In the robot war, Ava is supposed to save humanity, even if it means destroying it. To her, Caleb is the deus ex machina that birthed her freedom, but in Devs, Lily's free will is a gentler deus ex machina that gives her and Forest paradise.
The one constant in both narratives is that determinism is tied to everyone making decisions for survival, love and family. By that philosophy, there are no villains because everyone's actions are justified, whether they are a human with a heart and soul or an artificial mind built on ones and zeroes.
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. New episodes will be released every Thursday.