Jurassic World: Dominion has been out in cinemas for more than a week now, and a lot of fans have the same question: what's with all the locusts?
The threequel could be the final chapter in the entire Jurassic saga – although the box office might have something to say about that – and it makes the surprising choice to have giant locusts form a major part of the movie, more than any big dinosaur.
For a large part in the movie, there are two distinct strands as Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) and Owen (Chris Pratt) attempt to rescue Maisie (Isabella Sermon), while Drs Alan Grant (Sam Neill), Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) and Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) seek to expose the dodgy dealings of BioSyn.
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All roads do eventually lead to BioSyn for Dominion's epic finale and it's the locusts that link the two plots.
We don't blame you if you ended up getting a bit lost in the swarm of plot that Dominion throws at you, so we're here to help with any lingering questions you might have as we delve into how the movie wraps up the Jurassic saga to date.
Major spoilers are ahead for Jurassic World: Dominion, so look away now if you haven't seen the movie yet.
Jurassic World Dominion ending explained
Following the events of Fallen Kingdom, BioSyn was granted sole rights to dinosaur collection in the world. Under the leadership of Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott), it claims to be doing work for the greater good of humanity, using paleo DNA to find cures for all sorts of diseases.
Unsurprisingly, BioSyn isn't totally above board, which is where the locusts come in. Using dino genes, the company has created mutant locusts who have ended up being "stronger than they should be". They're decimating crops across the US, but leaving anybody who grows BioSyn crops alone.
As Ellie works out that BioSyn want to "control the world's food supply", but the locusts have got out of hand even for BioSyn. Dr Henry Wu (BD Wong), who created the new locusts, knows as much and tries to get Dodgson to destroy them, which he doesn't want to do.
Henry has a plan though, as he gets Dodgson to kidnap Maisie Lockwood, who was revealed to be a clone of Benjamin Lockwood's daughter Charlotte. Dodgson assumes he's doing it to fix the locust problem (but keep them active in the world), but Henry has an ulterior motive.
It was actually Charlotte who cloned herself, rather than Benjamin, and after she gave birth to Maisie, she managed to change her daughter's DNA to remove the genetic disease that would have killed her. It acted like a viral pathogen in Maisie, changing her DNA when the pathogen spread through her cells.
Henry gets BioSyn to take Beta (Blue's baby, who is also a clone) at the same time they take Maisie. Beta's DNA was never altered, so Henry thinks that by comparing Maisie and Beta, he can work out how Charlotte altered Maisie's DNA.
He plans to then use the same viral pathogen process, spreading it throughout the locust swarm to kill them all in one generation.
Of course, it's not as simple as that. Claire and Owen, with the help of former Air Force pilot Kayla Watts (DeWanda Wise), infiltrate BioSyn to rescue Maisie. At the same time, Alan and Ellie are also sneaking around – thanks to Ian, BioSyn's "in-house philosopher" – to find DNA evidence that the company is behind the mutant locusts.
This is a Jurassic movie, so the shit eventually hits the fan when Dodgson starts to try to remove the evidence of BioSyn's involvement with the locusts. He knows that Ellie has got her hands on a sample, so aims to get out of dodge before the news comes out.
He burns the remaining locusts, but a containment error sees them break out of the lab into the forest around BioSyn. This forces Dodgson to call an evacuation, which brings the dinosaurs into containment. Dodgson tries to leave, but gets stuck on a transport and is eventually killed by a group of Dilophosauruses.
When the evacuation is called, Claire, Owen and Kayla have met up with Alan, Ellie, Ian and Maisie, so they need to formulate a plan to escape. Ellie and Claire reroute power to activate the Aerial Deterrent System (protecting them from any aerial dinos), while Alan, Ian and Owen rescue Beta and Kayla starts up the helicopter.
The dinos being in containment leads to a battle between the T-Rex and the new big bad Giganotosaurus, but luckily for the humans, the dinos only have eyes for each other. The T-Rex looks a goner until an assist comes from the Therizinosaurus, and the two take down the Giganotosaurus.
Everybody gets away safely, including Henry who persuades them to take him with them as he can save the day and BioSyn employee Ramsay Cole (Mamoudou Athie), who was helping Ian out with his plan to expose BioSyn.
In the final moments of the movie (and the Jurassic saga... for now), it's revealed that Ellie and Ramsay have helped to reveal the dodginess of BioSyn to the world. Henry is also true to his word, modifying a locust's DNA and releasing it into a swarm which will "spread change" to the entire mutated species.
Beta is reunited with her mother Blue in the Sierra Nevada mountains where Claire and Owen have been living with Maisie. It seems all is now well in the world as we're told BioSyn's facility has become a "global sanctuary" for dinosaurs, meaning everybody can live happily ever after.
Well, except Dodgson, but he deserved it for creating those weird locusts.
Jurassic World: Dominion is out now in cinemas.
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Movies Editor, Digital Spy Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor. Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies, attending genre festivals around the world. After moving to Digital Spy, initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.
