Jurassic World Dominion is full of everything fans have come to expect from the Jurassic franchise: dinosaurs, science gone horribly wrong, and characters attempting to survive being horribly mauled and eaten. It also attempts to wrap up the stories of the characters in the Jurassic World films and the original Jurassic Park film with a pair of storylines that eventually intertwine. One of these storylines kicks off the film and involves Blue, the Velociraptor that Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) has trained.
Editor's Note: The following contains spoilers for Jurassic World Dominion.
It turns out that Blue has been able to asexually reproduce due to the monitor lizard DNA within her system, and has given birth to a daughter named Beta. Blue and Beta live in the wilderness near the cabin where Grady lives with Claire Deering (Bryce Dallas Howard) and Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon). Maisie connects with Beta: much like Blue, she's a genetic anomaly — a human clone of the daughter of Jurassic Park's co-founder, Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell). Naturally, this means that various parties are hunting Maisie, and soon she and Beta are abducted by mercenaries working for Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott), the CEO of BioSyn.
You'd think that would prompt Grady to bring Blue along to save Maisie, but that doesn't happen. Instead, he and Claire embark on a globetrotting journey to find their surrogate daughter, gathering help from allies including ace pilot Kayla Watts (DeWanda Wise) and Dodgson's aide, Ramsay Cole (Mamoudou Athie). And of course, there's the original Jurassic Park trio of Drs. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), Alan Grant (Sam Neill), and Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum). While there are plenty of returning human characters, it feels incomplete without Blue, as she's been a major part of the Jurassic World franchise. In the first film, she helped take down the Indominus Rex and then she even saved Grady's life during Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Here, she only appears in the first act and the second-to-last scene where she's reunited with Beta. It's rather jarring to see the Velociraptor sidelined, but then again, this is a film that seems to be more interested in giant locusts than dinosaurs.
Beta doesn't fare much better. She spends nearly the entire second act locked in a cage as Dr. Henry Wu (B.D. Wong) believes that she and Maisie are the key to stopping the locust plague that BioSyn has unleashed upon the world. While Wu's speech makes Maisie and Beta seem like the Most Important People And/Or Dinosaurs In The World, it effectively reduces them to little more than MacGuffins. Maisie eventually escapes the lab she's locked in with Beta, encountering Sattler and Grant along the way. Beta's rescue ends up becoming part of the film's final climax, as Grady attempts to rescue her and bring her back to Blue. He even tells Grant that he promised Blue that he's bring her daughter back to her. While it's understandable what co-writer/director Colin Trevorrow was going for — trying to draw parallels between Beta/Blue and Grady/Maisie — it falls flat because Blue is absent for so much of the film.
Ultimately, if you're looking for Blue to have an epic battle similar to her role in the first two Jurassic World films, you may be disappointed. However, it's fairly clear that if there are future Jurassic films, Beta will take the place of her mother as the film franchise's "good" dinosaur. And with Dominion racking up a massive $142 million opening weekend, it won't be a surprise if Universal greenlights a sequel — and Blue and/or Beta return.
Read more about Jurassic World Dominion:
With 'Jurassic Park' and 'Jaws,' Steven Spielberg Perfected The Slow-Burn Action Film
'Jurassic World Dominion': What Happens to Sattler, Malcolm and Grant?
‘Jurassic World Dominion’ Review: Please, God, Let This Franchise Go Extinct