The end is here, and the Nublar Six are there to witness it.

The series finale does the sensible thing and drops the focus back to the Nublar Six instead of the ever so slightly tired sprinting to keep pace with the movie. The evacuation is still central, and there’s still a lot of action, but fundamentally this is a story about six brilliant young people who’ve been through more than they ever should and what they do to deal with that. In fact, deeper, it’s a story about six trauma victims doing the right thing despite and because of their trauma, and in that way it feels profoundly 2025.

In and amongst all that there’s more of Ben struggling to live. We’ve had three episodes of this at this point and the show is in severe danger of the law of diminishing returns being broken. It isn’t, and that’s for two reasons. The show’s heart and sincerity powers it through these moments, and the ending here locks that emotion into the action. The ending here, with the gang using Gia’s car to escape as they’re pursued by dinosaurs actually feels high stakes. The show also cleverly ramps this up still further, with the gang being saved by a very very old friend of the franchise and even then, Ben being far from out of the woods. Oddly, that’s also the problem. The writers have talked a lot about how the original plan was for Ben to die, and while that may (or may not) be what happens, the show’s back fifteen minutes feels like it’s playing this out just a little too much.

That being said, this is a very good ending for the series and one that takes it back to core principles. There’s a moment of real sweetness and bravery here that reminds you just how sweet this show is and just how much it’s excelled at what the movies often struggled with.

Verdict: If you’ve never seen it, it’s worth the ride, if nothing else for consistently doing more interesting things with dinosaurs than at least three of the movies it spun off from. 8/10

Alasdair Stuart