Warning! SPOILERS for Jurassic World Dominion.
Jurassic World Dominion's Maisie plot is a major retcon. 2015's Jurassic World was a phenomenal success, grossing $1.67 billion in the global box office and launching a trilogy that, according to writer and producer Colin Trevorrow, had always been carefully planned out. The overall direction became clear in 2018's Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, which ended with dinosaurs released into the wild. No longer were the prehistoric creatures contained in a park.
Trevorrow claims he's always had the end of the Jurassic World saga figured out. In one interview back in 2017, he remembered telling Steven Spielberg "This is the beginning. Here is the middle. And here’s the end of the end." In his view, the success or failure of a trilogy rests on how carefully it's been plotted out, and how the narrative flows from one film to the next. "It needs to be thought through on that level," he insisted. "It can’t be arbitrary, especially if we want to turn this into a character-based franchise with people who you lean in to follow what they’re going to do."
All that makes it quite curious, therefore, that there's actually a very visible - and, indeed, character-based - retcon in Jurassic World Dominion. One major character in Jurassic World Dominion sees her entire backstory rewritten, an explicit change of direction that's even commented upon by others in the film. It's easy to see why writers Trevorrow and Emily Carmichael made the decision, but unfortunately it doesn't quite work.
Maisie's Clone Origin In Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
Played by Isabella Sermon, Maisie Lockwood was introduced in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom as a clone of Benjamin Lockwood's dead daughter. It established that Lockwood's daughter died in a car accident. Grief-stricken and unable to process her loss, Lockwood had her cloned from DNA samples he must have taken sometime before her death. Genetic engineering had always been central to the Jurassic Park franchise, and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom's human cloning was a logical extension of it. What's more, Maisie's very existence seemed to fulfil the prophetic warning of Dr. Ian Malcolm, that in dabbling with cloning humans have attempted to conquer death itself.
Dominion's Retcon: Maisie Was Cloned By Charlotte, Not Her Grandfather
Jurassic World Dominion completely rewrites Maisie's backstory. She was not created by Benjamin Lockwood at all but rather by his daughter Charlotte, a brilliant geneticist in her own right. She suffered from a rare genetic disorder that would ultimately kill her, although it's unclear whether she knew it. There are contradictory comments in different scenes. Charlotte was the one who figured out human cloning, and - desperate for a daughter - she created Maisie and implanted the embryo within her own womb. In a very real sense, Maisie is indeed Charlotte's daughter.
The end of Jurassic World Dominion hangs on the fact Charlotte successfully rewrote every strand of Maisie's DNA to erase her own genetic disorder, thus ensuring Maisie would not share her premature death. She did this after Maisie's birth, when she was just a child, a feat of genetic engineering that's unsurpassed even in a franchise that has spliced ancient dinosaur DNA with that of other creatures. Maisie can be confident her mother loved her, simply because of the lengths she went to in order to keep her alive.
Does Jurassic World Dominion's Maisie Retcon Work?
Jurassic World Dominion's Maisie retcon is understandable, because it inserts a very positive theme into the film. The idea that Maisie was truly loved by her mother, and that ultimately it would be a mother's love that saved the world. Studies of Maisie's DNA proved the key to ending the locust threat. Unfortunately this particular Jurassic World retcon doesn't quite work, simply because it clashes with a lot of the signposting in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. There, one of the major clues Maisie was a clone was the fact Lockwood and her nanny avoided giving her any idea exactly when her mother had died, a hint the two had never actually shared a relationship at all. Those clones are now retconned as misdirection.
The greater problem is that Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom established a strange connection between Maisie and the dinosaurs, with the child sharing an affinity for the creatures that went beyond their shared origins. This was even visible in physical mannerisms, with Maisie's head movements deliberately evocative of Owen's pet raptor Blue. The script of Jurassic World Dominion doesn't really know what to do with this idea, occasionally acknowledging it in scenes where Maisie was able to calm Blue's baby, but otherwise forgetting it. All in all, the retcon doesn't quite work.