Jurassic World Dominion (2022): Cast, Plot and Ending Explained

The full plot of Jurassic World Dominion follows two groups of heroes from a Malta black market to the Biosyn sanctuary in the Dolomites, ending with a locust cure and an international dinosaur sanctuary.

Owen and Claire track illegal breeding sites while they protect Maisie, and when Maisie and Beta are taken the pair follow the trail. Franklin Webb, now working with the CIA, helps the group get into a dinosaur black market in Malta. A raid led by Barry Sembène's team turns into chaos as animals break loose, and the heroes learn that Maisie and Beta were taken to the Biosyn site.

Meanwhile, Ellie and Alan push on with the locust investigation. Ian Malcolm, who now works for Biosyn, helps expose chief executive Lewis Dodgson, who has made Henry Wu modify the locusts so he can control the world's food supply. Wu admits that Maisie was created from Charlotte Lockwood's DNA, and that her genes could be used to create something that stops the locusts.

A Quetzalcoatlus attack brings down Kayla Watts' plane, and Owen, Claire and Kayla survive on their own before they reunite. Inside the Biosyn complex the heroes find a locust sample, but Dodgson tries to destroy the evidence by burning the locusts. Some escape and start a wildfire. The group is chased by a Giganotosaurus, and Dodgson is killed by a Dilophosaurus while he flees. Owen recovers Beta, and the group escapes by helicopter while the Giganotosaurus fights Rexy the T. rex.

Ellie and Alan reconcile and testify against Biosyn, Wu releases a locust that spreads the fix and ends the swarms, and the Biosyn valley becomes an international dinosaur sanctuary.

The ending of Jurassic World Dominion settles three things at once: the locust crisis, Biosyn's fate and the question of where dinosaurs are allowed to live. What follows is my reading of what the film shows, with some production context from the record.

The locust threat ends because Henry Wu releases a locust carrying the counter-agent, which spreads the fix through the swarms. That fix exists only because Maisie was created from Charlotte Lockwood's DNA, and Wu admits her genes could be used to stop the locusts. In my opinion, that is the film's neatest idea: the girl Owen and Claire have been hiding in a mountain cabin becomes the key to saving the food supply. It also gives Wu, who has appeared in Jurassic Park (1993), jurassic world 2015 and jurassic world fallen kingdom, a final act of repair after years as the saga's recurring geneticist.

Biosyn does not escape either. Dodgson's plan to burn the evidence backfires when escaped locusts start a wildfire, and the Giganotosaurus chase through the burning complex ends with Rexy the T. rex stepping in to fight it while the group flies out by helicopter. Dodgson himself is killed by a Dilophosaurus, and it is a nice piece of craft that the animal has no CGI model, because it was an animatronic built by the team under John Nolan. Ellie and Alan then testify against the company, and the United Nations makes the Biosyn valley an international sanctuary. It could be argued that this is a tidy reversal, since the valley Biosyn ran as its own sanctuary ends up under international protection instead.

The human ending is smaller. Ellie and Alan repair their relationship, and Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum share the screen for the first time since 1993, so the reunion is as much the film's closing gesture as the plot payoff. Owen, Claire and Maisie are shown living as a family while dinosaurs and people share the world.

The scale of the film matters here. Box Office Mojo lists a $465 million budget, the highest of the seven main films, and the worldwide gross of just over $1 billion is well below what both jurassic world 2015 and jurassic world fallen kingdom earned. Paradoxically, jurassic world rebirth opens five years after Dominion with a different picture: most of Earth has become too hostile for the revived dinosaurs, and they survive mainly in zones near the equator. Perhaps Dominion's coexistence is best read as a hopeful close to this trilogy rather than a forecast, since the next film does not treat it as settled.