WARNING: Contains SPOILERS for Jurassic World: Dominion!
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom has the franchise's biggest twist which carried on to Jurassic World: Dominion: Maisie Lockwood is a clone - and it's set up with some very carefully placed clues; here's the Maisie Lockwood clone twist explained. When it comes to genetic meddling, the main reveal of Jurassic World 2 is a second hybrid dinosaur, the Indoraptor. An advancement on the Indominous Rex from Jurassic World, the Indoraptor is a sleek, refined, killing machine, and a combination of various dinosaur genetics. Since Jurassic Park in 1993, we've seen the InGen technology advance at an extraordinary rate; cloning dinosaurs and recreating an extinct species was one thing, but to produce a hybrid dinosaur as deadly and powerful as the Indoraptor is quite another. However, that isn't InGen's most remarkable achievement.
That is Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon) and the Maisie Lockwood clone twist. A small, pleasant girl of around 10, Maisie is the granddaughter of Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell), the former silent partner of Dr. John Hammond. In Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, the biggest twist is the revelation that Maisie is not actually his granddaughter at all, but a clone of his dead daughter. The Maisie Lockwood clone twist plays a huge role in Jurassic World: Dominion, where its revealed that she isn't a clone, but rather, an asexual reproduction of Dr. Charlotte Lockwood. But while the news might come as a shock, Jurassic World 2 is actually littered with clues that you may have missed.
The Horrifying Twist Explained: Maisie is a Clone
Let's start by looking at how the Maisie Lockwood clone twist came to be. It's stated in Jurassic World 2 that Lockwood's daughter died in a car accident decades prior, so presumably, he and his team extracted her DNA at some point. Maisie is about 10, and as a fully functioning human being with no complications, it's likely she wasn't the first attempt. Lockwood mentions that he and John Hammond parted ways over this debate, showing how long Maisie has been worked on and raising the question of how the process links to the dinosaurs: which came first?
What's so curious, there, is why Maisie was created. In Jurassic World 2, it seems as though she is a one-off; recreated to make an old man happy in the latter stages of his life. It's strange, though, that if InGen had the technology capable of cloning a human, they didn't use it on a wider basis. Unlike Jurassic World's genetically modified dinosaurs, this could have a major impact on science, medicine, and the world at large. Jurassic World 3 only piggybacked off the Maisie Lockwood clone twist by making it even more complicated.
All The Maisie Twist Clues Hidden In Jurassic World 2
Clues to Maisie's origin are littered throughout Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, starting with Dr. Ian Malcolm's (Jeff Goldblum) words of warning during the Congressional hearing. When stating that he thinks the dinosaurs should be allowed to go extinct again, Malcolm says that in dabbling with cloning and bringing creatures to life, humans have tried to overpower death. While they might not have conquered it fully yet, Maisie's existence is proof that death is no longer an obstacle; especially to the beholder. Humans now have control over the creation of life, therefore death actually means very little.
Maisie herself has no clue that she is a clone until Jurassic World 3. All those around her have been in on the secret, it seems, and happy to go along with the lie. Her nanny, Iris, was nanny to Lockwood's daughter as well, and both she and Lockwood are evasive when the naturally curious Maisie asks questions. We see a photograph of Lockwood's daughter, looking identical to Maisie, which he keeps hidden in his notes; the extraordinary likeness between mother and daughter is yet another clue to Maisie's true heritage. The discussion of the car crash that supposedly killed Lockwood's daughter is also notable for its curious telling; Maisie doesn't remember, dismissed as her being too young, but it's actually because she wasn't really there.
The shared origin of Maisie and the dinosaurs is teased out too. Watch the girl carefully during Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and you'll realize how closely her mannerisms - particularly her head movements and inquisitive nature - seem to resemble Blue. Both are intelligent, both can empathize, and both very quickly form close bonds with Owen Grady (Chris Pratt), who trained Blue from birth and immediately takes Maisie under his wing. But there's another creature determined to get to both Blue and Maisie, and that is the Indoraptor. The Indoraptor has been trained to kill anything that its master demands, yet it instinctively goes for Maisie; the creature is obsessed with her to the point that it stalks her and terrorizes her before going in for the kill.
Jurassic World Dominion Built On The Clone Twist
The Masie Lockwood clone twist was only made more disappointing in Jurassic World: Dominion, when Maisie's origins are revealed further. Jurassic World 3 sees transgenetic locusts being used by Dr. Lewis Dodgson and Biosyn to control the world's food population. After being kidnapped by mercenaries and brought to Biosyn, Maisie Lockwood encounters Dr. Henry Wu. In a conversation, Wu tells Maisie that his former colleague Dr. Charlotte Lockwood (Benjamin Lockwood's deceased daughter) used her own DNA to replicate and asexually give birth to Maisie. Wu reveals that she did this to make sure that Maisie would not inherit the fatal disease that Charlotte had.
With the Maisie Lockwood clone twist finally explained in full, Jurassic World 3 goes on to add yet another twist. Accompanying Maisie on her journey is the asexually reproduced dinosaur named Beta. Dr. Henry Wu goes on to tell Maisie that her and Beta's DNA could be the key to creating a pathogen that would halt the spread of the transgenic locusts. In Jurassic World: Dominion's ending, Wu is successful in creating the pathogen, and he infects a host locust with it. The locusts are all gradually infected and die out. While audiences knew as soon as the Maisie Lockwood clone twist was introduced that it would have to come up in the last movie of the Jurassic World trilogy, adding on yet another twist completely subverted expectations — and that may not have been for the better.
The Maisie Clone Plot Payoff In Jurassic World 3 Wasn't Well Received
The Maisie Lockwood clone twist wasn't received well by audiences and critics alike, souring both Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and Jurassic World: Dominion. The Maisie Lockwood clone twist seemed haphazardly injected into the franchise, and all of a sudden, movies about dinosaurs switched to movies about human cloning. The Jurassic World series leaned into the scientific aspect more heavily than its predecessor, creating new types of dangerous dinosaur hybrids for expensive CGI chase scenes. While the Jurassic World trilogy certainly deepened the lore of its parent series, the Maisie Lockwood clone twist felt nothing if not out of place.
Dominion in particular relied heavily on Maisie's genetics and position, changing the threat from dinosaurs roaming free to transgenic locusts eating the world's food supply. Fallen Kingdom took a sharp left with the Maisie Lockwood clone twist, and then Dominion decided to take the baton and run far off in the opposite direction than the series should've gone. All in all, it was a twist that seemed wholly unnecessary in a series about dinosaurs being reintroduced to the current time period. It's unclear why Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom decided to introduce the Maisie Lockwood clone twist, and it's even less clear why Jurassic World: Dominion chose to rely so much on it.