While the science fiction genre has been intrinsically linked to TV, many of the most recognizable sci-fi shows of all time contain some element of fantasy. Franchises like Star Trek, Doctor Who, The Twilight Zone,and The X-Files still include genuine scientific principles; however, it’s hard to consider them to be “hard sci-fi” when there are so many fantasy elements that are inherent to the premise. “Hard sci-fi” is a difficult genre to crack, as any narrative that relies upon its predictive qualities risks being out of touch if real life catches up too quickly. However, Alex Garland’s brilliant science fiction miniseries Devstells a universal story about the search for the afterlife, and it frames its story within a recognizable version of reality.
What Is ‘Devs’ About?
Devs follows the young software engineer Lily Chan (Sonoya Mizuno), who works alongside her boyfriend Sergei Pavlov (Karl Glusman) at a mysterious software company known as “Amaya.” While not much distinguishes “Amaya” from other Silicon Valley companies, little is known about the organization’s enigmatic founder and CEO, Forest (Nick Offerman in a rare dramatic performance). Lily’s curiosity about Amaya turns into rage when Sergei is killed on his first day at work, and Amaya refuses to release any concrete details regarding his death. As she pries deeper into the company’s origins, she realizes that Forest has grander ambitions about conquering death. The loss of Sergei, as tragic as it is, was just one insignificant moment of collateral damage in Forest’s elaborate scheme.
Collider Exclusive · Sci-Fi Personality Quiz Which Sci-Fi Hero Are You Most Like? Paul Atreides · Captain Kirk · Princess Leia · Ellen Ripley · Max Rockatansky
Five iconic heroes. Five completely different ways of facing an impossible universe. One of them shares your instincts, your values, and your particular way of refusing to back down. Eight questions will tell you which one.
🏜️Paul Atreides
🖖Capt. Kirk
✊Princess Leia
🔦Ellen Ripley
🔥Max Rockatansky
01
How do you lead when the stakes couldn’t be higher? The way you lead under pressure is the most honest thing about you.
02
What is your greatest strength in a crisis? The quality that keeps you alive when everything else fails.
03
What is the thing you’d sacrifice everything else for? Your deepest motivation is your truest compass.
04
How do you relate to the people around you? Who you are to others under pressure is who you really are.
05
You’re facing a threat that no one else believes is real. What do you do? How you respond when you’re the only one who sees it defines everything.
06
What has your heroism cost you personally? Every hero pays. The question is what — and whether they’d pay it again.
07
How do you feel about the rules of the world you’re in? Every hero has a relationship with the system. What’s yours?
08
When everything is on the line, what keeps you going? The answer is the most honest thing about you.
Your Hero Has Been Identified Your Sci-Fi Hero Is…
Your answers point to the iconic sci-fi hero who shares your instincts, your values, and your particular way of facing the impossible.
Arrakis · Dune
Paul Atreides
You carry a weight most people would crumble under — the knowledge of what you’re capable of, and the burden of what you might have to become.
You see further ahead than others and you plan accordingly, even when the vision frightens you.
You are driven by loyalty to your people and a sense of destiny you didn’t ask for but can’t escape.
Paul Atreides is not simply a hero — he is someone who understands the cost of power and chooses to bear it anyway.
That gravity, that willingness to carry what others won’t, is exactly you.
USS Enterprise · Star Trek
Captain Kirk
You lead with instinct, warmth, and an absolute refusal to accept a no-win scenario — because you’ve always believed there’s a third option nobody else has thought of yet.
You take the mission seriously without ever taking yourself too seriously.
Your crew would follow you anywhere, not because you demand it, but because you’ve earned it.
Kirk’s genius isn’t tactical — it’s human. He reads people, bends rules with purpose, and wills outcomes into existence through sheer conviction.
That combination of warmth, audacity, and relentless optimism is unmistakably yours.
The Rebellion · Star Wars
Princess Leia
You are the kind of person who holds the line when everyone else is losing faith — not because you’re fearless, but because giving up simply isn’t something you’re capable of.
You lead through conviction. Your voice carries because your belief is unshakeable.
You gave up everything ordinary the moment you chose the cause, and you’ve never looked back.
Leia is not a supporting character in her own story — she is the moral centre of the entire rebellion.
That same fierce, principled, unbreakable core is what defines you.
The Nostromo · Alien
Ellen Ripley
You are not reckless, not grandiose, and not particularly interested in being anyone’s hero — you just refuse to stop when it matters.
You see threats clearly, you document the truth even when no one listens, and when the time comes you handle it yourself.
Ripley’s heroism is earned, not performed. She doesn’t have a speech — she has a flamethrower and a plan.
You share her composure under the worst possible pressure, and her refusal to pretend the monster isn’t there.
When it counts, you don’t flinch. That’s everything.
The Wasteland · Mad Max
Max Rockatansky
You have been through fire that would break most people — and what came out the other side is something the world underestimates at its peril.
You don’t ask for help, don’t need validation, and don’t wait for anyone to tell you the rules no longer apply.
Your loyalty, when it finally arrives, is absolute — but it’s earned in silence and tested in action, not in words.
Max is not a nihilist. He is someone who lost everything and found, against his will, that he still has something worth protecting.
That bruised, stubborn, ultimately human core is exactly yours.
While the premise initially seems like the setup for a sci-fi mystery, Sergei’s death is less important than what it reveals about Forest’s operation. However, losing such a pivotal character within the first episode of the series was important in establishing Lily as an engaging protagonist. Lily is worth investing in because she is coping with tragedy and does not have any personal ambitions that make her interested in Forest’s technology. The series uses her investigation to analyze the mourning process. Traditional logic would suggest that solving Sergei’s murder wouldn’t bring him back, but based on what Lily learns about Forest, that may not be the case. While exploring an evil corporation’s secret ambitions is a common trope within sci-fi stories, Devs’ focus on Silicon Valley makes it feel particularly timely.
Mizuno and Garland have worked together on ‘Ex Machina,’ ‘Annihilation,’ and after ‘Devs,’ a new mystery project.
Devs is also unique among hard science fiction shows because of its emotional frankness. While the characters are capable of brilliance, it’s not their abilities that define them. Although Lily’s investigation into Amaya and Forest’s Devs lab is interesting, she never feels like a stand-in figure for Garland to exercise his philosophies. Similar to the characters in Garland’s films Ex Machina and Annihilation, Lily is an audience avatar who has the same foundational knowledge that they do. While a hard sci-fi series like Westworld is guilty of thinking it’s smarter than the audience, Devs viewers are never out of step with Lily.
‘Devs’ Is Elevated Thanks to the Cast’s Brilliant Performances
Nick Offerman as Forest and Sonoya Mizuno in Lily Chan in DevsImage via FX
Devs hits home with its emotion thanks to Mizuno’s incredible performance. Throughout the series, Lily’s romance with her ex-boyfriend, Jaime (Jin Ha), forces her to contextualize her relationship with Sergei. Although the series deals with concepts like free will, determinism, and fulfillment, the concepts never feel academic because they directly affect Lily’s decisions. Romance and science fiction often go hand-in-hand, and Devs does a great job at showing how its extraordinary concepts affect Lily’s romantic decisions and relationships in her life. The emotional authenticity of these scenes only makes the sci-fi concepts feel more grounded.
The mystery at the heart of Devs reveals that Forest and Lily aren’t as dissimilar as they seem. The show’s fifth episode incorporates important elements of Forest’s backstory that show how the death of his daughter, Amaya (Amaya Mizuno-André), inspired him to search for scientific proof of the afterlife. Offerman does a great job of shrouding Forest in mystery up until this point in the series. Although at first his rude, defiant attitude just seems like a more serious version of Parks and Recreation’s Ron Swanson, his emotional coolness is due to the tragedy within his life. The show finds a beautiful way of showing how these two characters ultimately come together when they realize they have the same goal. This makes Devs unique because its characters aren’t strictly “heroes” or “villains”; they just have different ways of realizing the same goals.
‘Devs’ Puts an Interesting Spin on the Multiverse
Although Devs was a powerful show on its own, it could have benefited from a more expansive story, especially given how high-concept some of its ideas were. While even the greatest science fiction stories can struggle to define ideas that are best described in theory, the projection technology that Forest uses in Devs is able to visualize theoretical concepts. In particular, “Episode 5” depicts death and post-traumatic stress disorder by revealing how Amaya’s death gives Forest continued inspiration for his studies. Forest uses his technology to relive the last moments of his daughter’s life and imagines what he could have done differently.
Devs was also able to make use of the “multiverse” concept before it became cliché. Alternate realities can quickly become confusing, especially in a show with as much technical dialogue as Devs. However, Garland uses the multiverse to examine the power of personal choice. The series only shows different versions of events when it needs to focus on one of the key moments in Lily’s life. Each version of reality is so well-defined that the series never loses its sense of stakes. Even if the characters’ actions don’t have literal consequences, that doesn’t mean that their actions don’t have value. Although Devs is invested in the capabilities that technology has, it becomes a celebration of human achievement and why the best things in life are the most fleeting. It’s just a pity that the show was just one season. Moving the story beyond just Forest and Lily could have allowed the show to show how beneficial or detrimental this type of technology could have been. There was a wealth of potential stories to pull from this world, but perhaps it’s better that it ended on its own terms.
