After the idea was heavily teased in Fallen Kingdom, it's possible the upcoming Jurassic World: Dominion will finally confirm Maisie Lockwood is a human-dinosaur hybrid. One of the core themes of the Jurassic Park/World franchise since the beginning has been the danger of humanity meddling with the power of creation, and where it may lead them. Building upon this concept, the first Jurassic World movie introduced the Indominus Rex, a hybrid dinosaur created from the DNA of other species, as well as creatures like the cuttlefish and tree frogs. In doing so, the film seemingly opened the gates to even more radical forms of genetic tampering (and not just involving dinosaurs and their closest relatives, either).
Its sequel, Fallen Kingdom, continued to develop this thread by introducing the Indoraptor, a weaponized hybrid dinosaur produced using Indominus Rex and Velociraptor DNA. The film's leads were able to kill the creature before it or any other dinosaurs could be taken away by the customers at a black market auction held in Lockwood Manor, but in doing so endangered the lives of the dinos of Isla Nublar (who were being held in cages in the mansion's lower levels) by accidentally exposing them to a hydrogen cyanide gas leak. Rather than leaving them to die a slow and agonizing death, the creatures were instead set free into the world by young Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon), thusly paving the way for the events of Dominion.
Maisie herself was something of an enigma for much of Fallen Kingdom, and it was clear from the get-go there was more to her than meets the eye. Sure enough, the movie eventually revealed her to be a human clone, which was part of the reason why she sympathized with the dinosaurs of Isla Nublar (which are clones like her) and chose to save them, despite knowing the risks of doing so. But does Maisie have another connection to the creatures that even she is unaware of?
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom's Human Clone Explained
When Fallen Kingdom picks up, former Jurassic World operations manager Claire Dearing has become an activist, and is now fighting to protect the since-abandoned park's dinosaurs from an impending volcanic explosion on Isla Nublar. When the U.S. Senates votes against saving the creatures, Claire is summoned to a meeting with Sir Benjamin Lockwood, InGen founder and Jurassic Park creator John Hammond's former partner. Upon arriving at his massive estate in California, she gets a quick glimpse of Maisie, who herself is still under the impression she is Lockwood's granddaughter.
Noticeably, Lockwood dances around the specifics of his past with Hammond during his encounter with Claire, and avoids explaining what it was that led to them going their separate ways so many years earlier. Even after that, whenever Fallen Kingdom returns to the events unfolding at Lockwood Manor, there are hints Lockwood is hiding something from Maisie (in particular, a mysterious photo), despite her best efforts to uncover the truth. Of course, after she discovers Lockwood's assistant, Eli Mills, is planning to sell the dinosaurs of Isla Nunblar on the black market, Maisie pushes said mystery to the back of her mind.
Eventually, after killing the sickly Lockwood and seizing control of his company, it's Mills who finally reveals the truth: Maisie is really a clone of Lockwood's deceased daughter, and it was Lockwood's decision to use their newfound cloning technology for this purpose that drove the wedge between him and Hammond in the first place. This in turn begs the as-yet unanswered question of whether Maisie is actually a hybrid, and possibly even has some dinosaur DNA in her own genetic code.
Jurassic Park Franchise Has Almost Used Dinosaur-Human Hybrids Before
The idea of human-dinosaur hybrids has yet to be used in either the Jurassic Park or Jurassic World movies, though it's come up before during their development. In the unproduced script drafts for Jurassic Park IV by John Sayles (who drew from the earlier screenplay by William Monahan), there was a subplot involving hybrid creatures that were created using a blend of dinosaur, human, and canine DNA, in the hopes of producing hybrid human-dinos intelligent enough to follow commands. Years after the script was developed and then abandoned in the early 2000s, concept artist Carlos Huante even revealed some of the possible designs he came up with for the human-dino hybrids (though ILM denied the artwork was official).
A number of the ideas from the Jurassic Park IV script were later revisited and re-imagined for Jurassic World, including the concept of hybrid dinosaurs (e.g. the Indominus Rex), and a human who trains Velociraptors to follow their commands (Nick Harris, who served as very loose inspiration for the Owen Grady character). By comparison, the idea of human-dinosaur hybrids has yet to surface in the trilogy, no doubt in part because it's a major leap forward and would require far more setup than the Jurassic Park IV screenplay had to offer. However, as has been pointed out before, this is where the Maisie storyline could come into play. In fact, it seems Fallen Kingdom may've even foreshadowed such a development.
How Fallen Kingdom's Child Clone Could Be A Human-Dino Hybrid
In an article written shortly after Fallen Kingdom's release in June 2018, Medium's Rhett Wilkinson laid out all the details in the film that hint at Maisie potentially being a human-dinosaur hybrid. For starters, the character is introduced with a musical cue previously used for dinosaurs, and she arguably behaves a bit like one while trying to avoid being spotted by Claire in their first encounter. She also seems to have a stronger connection to the dinosaurs and empathizes with them in ways the other humans in the franchise don't, even before she knows she's a clone like them. There's also the fact that Claire and Owen end up becoming her caretakers by the end of the movie, having previously looked after dinosaurs up until then. In fact, Maisie only hooks up with them to begin with because she recognizes Owen from the videos of him training Velociraptors. Could it be she trusts him on some instinctive level that even she doesn't fully understand?
Obviously, none of this is hard proof that Maisie is a human-dino hybrid. Considering how much of Fallen Kingdom is spent building up to the twist involving Maisie's backstory, these "clues" might've simply been the film's ways of alluding to her being a clone (albeit, a human one) like the dinosaurs. It was similarly important for the movie to setup Maisie's decision to set the dinosaurs of Isla Nublar free at the very end by establishing her strong affinity for the creatures earlier on, lest her choice seem out of character or come across as being contrived. As the Medium article acknowledges, there's nothing that makes it explicitly clear Maisie has dinosaur DNA in Fallen Kingdom either, even when the camera noticeably lingers on her eyes as she watches the dinosaurs escape into the night (as though to figuratively nudge viewers in the right direction).
On top of all that, Jurassic World series co-writer Colin Trevorrow (who also directed the first movie and is back at the helm for Dominion) has said the third installment won't feature any new hybrid dinosaurs, and instead expressed a desire to take a "back to basics" approach with the trilogy finale. Of course, he might've been referring to hybrid monsters like the Indominus Rex and Indoraptor, as opposed to Maisie, who looks and (at a passing glance) behaves like a regular human child, regardless of the truth about her genes. Further, based on Trevorrow's comments, it seems safe to assume if Maisie is a human-dino hybrid, she isn't suddenly going to develop distinctly dino-like features in Dominion, making all the harder to say what is and isn't true about her lineage.
What Human-Dino Hybrids Would Mean For Jurassic World 3
As far out as the theory of Maisie being a human-dino hybrid is (or, really, the mere thought of human-dino hybrids being an actual thing in this franchise), it's also a legitimate possibility. Both the Jurassic Park films and especially the Jurassic World movies have been all about (to paraphrase Dr. Ian Malcolm) life finding a way to move forward, and in Dominion the story will focus specifically on humans and dinosaurs trying to coexist together without one wiping out the other. It's unclear how the movie will resolve itself, but the introduction of human-dino hybrids would certainly add a fascinating wrinkle to the plot. It could even be the key to allowing dinosaurs to stick around and not having to go extinct (again), providing humanity with some kind of third option for resolving the situation.
More than that, the middling response to Fallen Kingdom (everything but the ending, that is) makes it clear audiences are tired of the same old formula, and are ready for Dominion to really mix things up from the previous Jurassic Park/World movies. Human-dino hybrids would not only be a major game-changer, it could also be the next evolution of the franchise, transforming the series from a straightforward battle between humanity and dinosaurs into something greater and more complicated. With longtime producer Frank Marshall having expressed a desire to keep making Jurassic films after Dominion, it might even be the kick in the pants the property needs to gain a new lease on life once the Jurassic World storyline is over and resolved. Like any bold move, though, there's a risk of it blowing up in the franchise's face, so it'll be all the more interesting to see how everything ultimately plays out.
