Wicked Maze Runner: What WICKED Is and Whether It Is Good

In The Maze Runner (2014), the maze is WICKED's first test, and the film keeps the organization off screen until the very end. Thomas wakes in a lift with no memory and arrives in the Glade, where boys led by Alby have lived for three years while runners map walls that shift each night and Grievers hunt after dark.

When Thomas and Minho kill a Griever and reach a doorway in the maze wall, they find a lab full of dead scientists. A recorded message from WCKD explains that the boys were part of a test while a deadly disease spread. The audience therefore learns the organization's name and the setting of its experiment before it learns anything about its aim.

The rescue by armed soldiers at the end looks like safety. The film hints that it may not be, and that is the thread the sequel pulls.

In Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials (2015), WICKED first presents itself as a protector. Janson takes in the surviving Gladers and tells them his facility keeps them safe from the Cranks, people ruined by the infection. Thomas finds out that the place actually belongs to WCKD and that Ava Paige is still alive.

The group escapes into the Scorch, a burned and ruined desert, where the maze gives way to a new kind of danger. Winston is lost to the infection on the crossing. With Brenda and Jorge, the survivors reach the Right Arm, a resistance group in the mountains.

Teresa secretly passes the camp's location to WCKD. The raid that follows captures several Immunes, including Minho, Aris and Sonya, and kills Mary Cooper. Thomas ends the film vowing to kill Paige and get his friends back, which turns the series from survival into a fight against the organization.

In Maze Runner: The Death Cure (2018), the cure the organization has chased for two films turns out to lie in Thomas's blood, yet nothing on screen establishes that he is the only possible source. The film opens with Minho held in WCKD's research, and Thomas, Newt and Frypan head for the Last City, the organization's guarded home base, with Gally, believed dead, helping them get inside.

The rescue plan runs through Teresa, who now works for WCKD. On the roof of the burning headquarters she draws Thomas's blood so the cure can be made. Other Immunes are held in the building, and the film never says whether any of them could have served instead.

The cost is high. Newt, infected with the Flare, asks Thomas to end his life, Thomas refuses and Newt stabs himself. Janson kills Ava Paige and is in turn killed by the Cranks Thomas lets loose. Teresa dies when the headquarters collapses, and the survivors settle on a safe island, where Thomas finds Newt's note in his pendant. For the full account of the film, see maze runner the death cure.

In my opinion, the films present WICKED as a group whose goal is defensible and whose methods are not. The goal is a cure for a disease that is spreading across the world, and the third film shows Thomas's blood being taken so that a cure can be made. The methods are a maze that kills boys, a desert crossing, a raid on a resistance camp and the torture of Minho, and none of those is excused by the result.

It could be argued that the series stays honest by never letting WICKED win the debate. The Maze Runner (2014) shows a lab full of dead scientists and a recorded message, so the audience meets the organization through the wreckage of its experiment. Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials has Janson telling the Gladers that his facility keeps them safe, when it belongs to WCKD. Maze Runner: The Death Cure has Janson kill Ava Paige, so the person who defended the work never gets to finish her case.

So, is WCKD good or bad? Its purpose is good and its conduct is bad, and the films never resolve the tension. Teresa is the clearest sign, because she betrays the Right Arm for WCKD and then dies in the collapse of its headquarters, so the story lets her stand on both sides. If you want to see how the stages fit together, the Maze Runner timeline lays out the order of events.