Lowery Cruthers (S/F)

Lowery
Lowery Cruthers (2015)

Lowery Cruthers is an American computer systems technician formerly employed by International Genetic Technologies, a subsidiary of Masrani Global Corporation. He currently works as an intelligence operative for the U.S. CIA Dangerous Species Division.

Name

The first name Lowery was originally a surname, and is of Irish origin. It is an alternate spelling of the name Lavery, which comes from the Gaelic Ó Labhradha, meaning “descendants of Labhradha.” People with this surname descend from Labhradh, the father of Monagh chief Etru; since Lowery is in this particular case a given name, it does not indicate ancestry.

Cruthers is an uncommon last name most often seen in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and Scotland. It may be related to the Scottish surname Carruthers, which originates from the Carruthers region of Dumfriesshire.

Lowery Cruthers’s first and last names are both very uncommon, and both are most likely alternate versions of other names. They reference a lineage and historic county respectively, and while they give no insight into Cruthers as a person, they suggest that he may have some distant Scottish or possibly Gaelic ancestry.

Biography
Early life

Cruthers’s date and place of birth are unknown, but the actor chosen to portray him was born in 1978. This may give a rough estimate of Cruthers’s date of birth.

When he was young, his father divorced and left his mother. Cruthers was primarily raised by his mother until the age of thirteen, at which point his mother remarried. Cruthers’s stepfather was named Carl; according to Cruthers himself, he considered Carl to be more of a father figure than his biological father had ever been.

In 1995, popular lecturer and mathematician Dr. Ian Malcolm claimed on a television interview that International Genetic Technologies, Inc. had performed de-extinction on the remote Costa Rican island of Isla Nublar for a theme park called Jurassic Park. Sometime between then and 1997, he published a book entitled God Creates Dinosaurs in which he further explained his outlandish claims. Malcolm was widely discredited as a fraud, but some people did believe him. Conspiracy theories abounded surrounding Malcolm and InGen; the young Cruthers became fascinated with the idea of Jurassic Park and likely investigated the conspiracy theories for himself at the time.

The game changed in 1997. InGen CEO Peter Ludlow announced the opening of a real Jurassic Park in San Diego, California. During this early-morning press conference, the freighter S.S. Venture collided with the InGen waterfront complex; the investigation of the crash accidentally released a male Tyrannosaurus rex into the city outskirts. This vindicated Dr. Malcolm, revealing that he was telling the truth: Jurassic Park, and de-extinction of the dinosaurs, were real after all. Cruthers eventually purchased God Creates Dinosaurs and was an avid fan of Dr. Malcolm as well as Jurassic Park itself.

InGen was purchased by Masrani Global Corporation in 1998, and four years later, in 2002, Masrani Global’s CEO Simon Masrani announced that the company would be restarting the Jurassic Park project under a new name: Jurassic World. This was announced through a viral marketing campaign before a television interview confirmed it as fact. Jurassic World was scheduled to open in 2005.

I.T. career

Cruthers began a career in computer science after college, gaining skills as an informatician and becoming an information technology professional. He began working at Jurassic World as his first out-of-college job, probably sometime after it opened on May 30, 2005. Prior to its opening, the operation was highly guarded and only accessible to a select few. Cruthers was tasked with facilitating management in the park, communicating information and instructions between different operations branches and remotely controlling various computerized systems at the behest of his superiors. He was directly overseen by Claire Dearing, the park’s Senior Assets Manager and Operations Manager.

At some point as an adult, Cruthers got a tattoo on his left forearm, which appears to feature architecture. Not much else is known about it at this time.

Working in the command center’s control room, Cruthers was privy to all the goings-on in the park, and used his position to glean as much information about the old Park as he could. Little was told to the public about Jurassic Park, and not even the new InGen employees were given much more than an overview: the old Park had been planned by InGen’s founder John Hammond, but never opened due to a mysterious incident of sabotage during a tour involving Dr. Malcolm, paleontologists Dr. Alan Grant and Dr. Ellie Sattler, and others. Several deaths had occurred, which ensured that the Park lost its chance to open. After the failed attempt to open the Park in San Diego, and the passing of Hammond, the company was bought by Simon Masrani’s corporation and rechristened Jurassic World. Some employees had access to slightly more information, such as the name of the employee who sabotaged the old Park: a programmer named Dennis Nedry, who had been bribed by InGen’s corporate rival BioSyn to steal trade secrets.

At Jurassic World, Cruthers eventually became the lead technician in the control room, and thus an indispensable part of park operations. This allowed him to get away with things that his superiors frowned upon; he openly opposed the park’s corporate partnerships, believing that the park should operate entirely on its own profits as to remain untainted by the outside world. He also preferred the aesthetics of Jurassic Park over those of Jurassic World, despite Jurassic Park being a financial disaster that had led to several deaths. Cruthers was not shy about his idolization of Dr. Ian Malcolm, a known critic of genetic engineering and of InGen. He irked his superiors and coworkers in other ways; his workstation was messier than company policy recommended, including both work materials and personal possessions such as plastic dinosaurs, and his coworkers found him an off-putting combination of overly friendly and overly snarky. Perhaps for these reasons, Cruthers got along better with the local Tun-Si tribespeople who inhabited a reserve on the island. Rather than living in the Americana-style hotel provided for Jurassic World’s staff, Cruthers lived on the reserve with the Tun-Si, who maintained their traditional ways. This would have been a major change for Cruthers, who was used to living a high-tech lifestyle and now lived without modern amenities such as air conditioning.

At some point during his career at Jurassic World, Cruthers developed a crush on his coworker Vivian Krill. He was aware that she had a boyfriend, but since she did not talk about him very frequently, Cruthers assumed that she would be available.

Park profits began to plateau in the early 2010s, which the Board of Directors had predicted in 2008. A solution had already been devised: whenever new attractions had opened, attendance increased for a period of time. The Board unanimously decided that using genetic engineering to create the park’s most novel attraction yet would create a large enough boost in ticket sales to counteract the decreasing return on investments. Simon Masrani and Claire Dearing signed off on the Board’s proposal to allow lead genetic biologist Dr. Henry Wu engineer their park’s new attraction. Over the next four years, Dr. Wu worked to perfect a new genus of theropod dinosaur to fulfill this purpose, using gene splicing techniques to create an animal that had never before existed. As the senior technician in the control room, Cruthers would probably have been aware of these events.

The hybrid animal, which InGen named Indominus rex, hatched in 2012; only one survived, and it was planned to go on exhibit in early 2016. Cruthers opposed this plan, believing that animals with minimal modification would be successful enough to keep the park turning a profit indefinitely.

Throughout his career, Cruthers continued to learn about the old Park. In late 2015, he purchased a Jurassic Park tee shirt that had been recovered from the Visitors’ Centre off eBay for US $150, wearing it at work for the first time on December 22 to show it off. He apparently wore the shirt as a conversation starter, being fully aware that his coworkers (particularly Dearing) would find it distasteful; he was instructed not to wear it again and stated that he had not been planning on it.

2015 incident

On December 22, 2015, Dearing negotiated a business partnership between Verizon Wireless and InGen to sponsor the upcoming Indominus exhibit. This was particularly lamented by Cruthers, as it combined his two least favorite aspects of Jurassic World’s operations: artificial hybrid genera and corporate sponsorship. He took the opportunity to praise the old Park and its “real” animals, making sure to show off his Jurassic Park tee shirt and quote Dr. Ian Malcolm in Dearing’s presence. Dearing left the control room to meet Simon Masrani in JW001 at the command center helipad, flying north to Paddock 11 to introduce him to the Indominus for the first time.

Later that afternoon, Cruthers and Krill were contacted by Dearing via cell phone with a request to locate the Indominus via its subdermal RFID tracking implant. Fearing an escape, they located the animal, but found that it was still inside Paddock 11 as intended. Cruthers was initially confused as to what was going on, but soon spotted three employees within the paddock. Panic ensued as Krill warned Paddock 11’s supervisor Nick Letting of the danger. The employees fled, but Letting opened the main paddock gates when he realized the dinosaur was blocking the access door. Simon Masrani instructed Cruthers to shut the paddock gates to prevent an escape, but Cruthers hesitated since this would trap the employees inside with the hostile animal. He did shut the gates, and his hesitation allowed animal behaviorist Owen Grady to escape the paddock: unfortunately, the Indominus also reached the gates in time and escaped, killing Letting and leaving Grady as the only survivor.

The control room quickly became the focal point of the ensuing incident. Masrani instructed the park’s Asset Containment Unit to quietly recapture the animal without alerting the tourists, while Grady blamed Dearing for allowing the animal to escape. His outburst led to him disturbing Cruthers’s work station, though he was unaware that Cruthers’s hesitation to close the paddock gates had helped the escape. Dearing and Masrani coordinated the effort to recapture the Indominus with Cruthers and Krill acting in their usual role as communications. By reviewing surveillance footage from the infrared scanners at Paddock 11, Cruthers discovered that the Indominus had reduced its body temperature to ambient levels; this rendered it invisible to infrared-reading technology. As ACU tracked the animal, they discovered its tracking implant had been clawed out after it began delivering electric shocks; the Indominus was also found to be capable of camouflage, another biological trait that Masrani, Dearing, and other upper management were unaware of. Cruthers was unable to save the ACU personnel sent after the animal; many of them died in the attempt to capture it, and this escalation of the incident resulted in a Real World evacuation scenario being declared in the park. All attractions north of the valley were closed, visitors being concentrated in Sector 3.

Masrani departed the control room to confront Dr. Wu about the unexpected biological traits in the hybrid animal. Dearing, learning that her nephews Zach and Gray Mitchell were unaccounted for, had Cruthers locate a wayward gyrosphere in the valley which she presumed was the one controlled by her nephews. She took Grady to recover the boys, leaving Cruthers in charge of the control room for the time being. The remains of Gyrosphere 07 were located just north of the Sector 4-5 boundary’s security wall, farther south than the ACU attack had been; Cruthers realized that the attacks were taking place farther south each time, and Krill hypothesized that the animal was being drawn southward by the combined body heat of over twenty thousand visitors in Sector 3. Masrani had returned by that time; he was joined shortly after by the Head of InGen Security Vic Hoskins, who proposed using the Velociraptor specimens from the I.B.R.I.S. project to hunt the Indominus. Masrani forbade this, instead vowing to hunt the animal himself; he departed the command center with two ACU personnel in JW001, having armed it.

Hoskins observed alongside Cruthers as the Indominus was pursued eastward across the island, heading from the Visitors’ Centre ruins through the valley and toward the Aviary. Cruthers was distressed to see the animal break in, though Hoskins appeared excited by the chaos. Pterosaurs were frightened out from their home by the invader, with several Pteranodons interpreting JW001 as a territorial rival and attacking. This caused the helicopter to crash, and the resulting explosion frightened the remaining animals out from the Aviary. Masrani died in the explosion. The control room had little time to mourn as the agitated pterosaurs flocked westward, then wheeled to the south and headed directly for the Jurassic World Lagoon in the middle of Sector 3. Scores of visitors, staff, and animals were injured or killed in the feeding frenzy that took place, and a recovery from the incident became impossible.

Hoskins brought InGen Security in to commandeer the control room, relieving the normal staff from duty and sending them to the East Dock for evacuation. Cruthers enacted a plan to act as resistance against the Security takeover of Jurassic World and assist Dearing remotely. His first act was to warn Dearing about Hoskins’s plan to commandeer I.B.R.I.S. next, using the raptors to hunt down the Indominus. With Masrani dead, there was no one to stop him from enacting the plan.

Most of Hoskins’s Security personnel left the control room to assist with evacuating sensitive materials off the island and prepare for the hunt. The remaining control room employees also evacuated; Krill asked whether Cruthers would becoming, but in an effort to impress her he vowed to stay behind to help Dearing. He moved to kiss Krill, who rejected his advances by confirming that she was in a serious relationship; they settled for an awkward hug instead.

Hoskins remained in the control room to observe the mission. The hunt began during the night, with the raptors rapidly tracking the Indominus into Sector 5 and locating it; the plan backfired dramatically when the Indominus established communication with the raptors, leading to a skirmish between InGen Security and the animals. Numerous Security personnel and one of the raptors died in the fight, and Hoskins realized that his plan had failed. Hoskins left the control room to prepare for evacuation, leaving Cruthers alone.

With only the park’s security cameras providing him with information, Cruthers would have witnessed Dearing, Grady, and the Mitchell boys flee the raptor paddock in an MVU and head back toward Sector 3. He would have witnessed the Indominus approach from the north, nearing Main Street. Grady, Dearing, and the Mitchells entered the Innovation Center ahead of their pursuers, heading to the lab where Hoskins and InGen had begun evacuation of Dr. Wu’s specimens. Hoskins’s soldiers left, but Hoskins himself did not; Grady, Dearing and the Mitchells were shortly thereafter pursued out by one of the raptors, leading to a confrontation outside. The raptors turned on their new leader, which slaughtered all but one of them; Grady sheltered the boys while Dearing fled down a maintenance alley.

Dearing contacted Cruthers directly via radio, knowing he was the only loyal employee left in the command center. She instructed him to open the Paddock 9 gates, the maintenance vehicle entrance to T. rex Kingdom. Cruthers initially balked at this suggestion, but complied when Dearing insulted his manhood; he entered the four-digit code and opened the gates. This allowed the park’s oldest tyrannosaur out of her paddock and onto Main Street, where she challenged the Indominus to territorial combat; the fight ended with the tyrannosaur (and the last surviving raptor, an individual named Blue) forcing the Indominus to the edge of the Jurassic World Lagoon. There, she was ambushed by the park’s Mosasaurus and was drowned. The surviving dinosaurs retreated into the forest, leaving Sector 3 temporarily safe. Cruthers, knowing that Jurassic World would never reopen after such a catastrophe, shut the control room down and packed his belongings to leave. He was evacuated off the island along with the remaining tourists and staff.

After the incident

The next three years were politically tumultuous, as the balance of power in the United States and abroad shifted drastically. In 2017, Dearing founded the Dinosaur Protection Group, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the safety and health of de-extinct animals. Later that year, Isla Nublar’s Mount Sibo showed the first signs of activity in hundreds of years; by the end of 2017, volcanologists determined that a dramatic eruption was increasingly likely. While the DPG lobbied for the animals to be relocated to safety, both government and corporate opinions were against them, as were prominent public figures such as Dr. Ian Malcolm. This would have put Cruthers in conflict between his love of Jurassic Park’s legacy and his respect for Dr. Malcolm’s opinion; his ultimate decision on the controversy has not yet been voiced.

On June 22, 2018, the United States Senate finally announced its non-action policy regarding Mount Sibo; both it and Masrani Global were committed to taking no action and allowing the dinosaurs to die in the disaster. Mount Sibo actually erupted the following day, marking the end of Isla Nublar’s unique ecosystem. Despite this, some de-extinct animals did survive; along with the mosasaur and pterosaurs, which fled the island, a number of dinosaurs were released into the wild on June 24 from the private estate of John Hammond’s former business partner Benjamin Lockwood. Dearing and Grady were involved with this incident, which had centered around a black-market auction attended by international criminals interested in purchasing de-extinct animals for biomedical and personal use. Several animals had actually been sold, as had DNA samples.

Cruthers may have been in limited contact with people involved in the events of the late 2010s and early 2020s, but his full extent of involvement is unknown. According to interviews with Jake Johnson during production of Jurassic World: Dominion, he was planned to reprise his role, and he suggested that Lowery Cruthers would have become braver, “cooler” man after witnessing dinosaur attacks, with fashion changes such as longer hair and tattoos. However, his role in the film was cut in mid-2021.

Skills
Computer technology

Cruthers was hired to work in Jurassic World’s state-of-the-art control room after he graduated college, and so from then until 2015 would have had the opportunity to learn and work with the most advanced computer systems in the world. Jurassic World had cutting-edge machines provided by Masrani Global subsidiaries such as International Genetic Technologies, Mascom Network, and Tatsuo Technology; the park was always on the forefront of technological innovation due to being an intersecting point for multiple Masrani properties. Cruthers had the privilege to use software and hardware accessible to only a handful of people in the entire world, and by 2015 had mastered the use of all Jurassic World’s control room had to offer. While some aspects of park operations were beyond the scope of his job, there was little that could happen on Isla Nublar without his notice.

Cruthers primarily works with software, but in the course of his job would have probably had to perform hardware maintenance on the park’s systems as well as troubleshoot physical problems with park technology. He probably has a thorough understanding of hardware as well as software due to the nature of his work.

Knowledge of dinosaurs

Although Cruthers is fascinated by dinosaurs and de-extinction, they are not actually his area of expertise. He is not a biologist, and merely has curiosity regarding these creatures. However, he does understand their needs in captivity, having worked for years to keep Jurassic World’s animals safe, content, and healthy. This has given him a sense of empathy for the animals in the park that his superior Claire Dearing lacked at the time. Dearing’s job tended to reduce the animals to statistics, as she did not work directly with them and was more involved with the park’s finances, management, and guest satisfaction. Cruthers, on the other hand, would see the animals’ biometrics and health information as reported by the RFID implants. When an animal was behaving abnormally, it was part of his job to determine why in order to give ACU or the paleo-vets as much preliminary information as possible. To Cruthers, understanding the animals was just as vital as understanding the computer systems that made Jurassic World work.

Social skills

Cruthers has a surprising amount of confidence in himself, but still manages to have relatively few friends on account of his cynical and sarcastic manner. He appears to be attempting to channel the popular Dr. Ian Malcolm, but does not succeed at being quite as naturally charismatic. Part of this is his looks, but a greater part is the company he chooses to surround himself with and the circumstances they find themselves in. He has a hipsterish fascination with Jurassic Park and de-extinction, which some of his coworkers at Jurassic World found distasteful; he was very much enamored with the idea of the original Park because of its simplicity despite the fact that it failed in an incident involving multiple deaths. Distracted by a sense of nostalgia, Cruthers could not understand that realistically a theme park would need to expand its sources of income as time went on. Since he was generally surrounded by people who worked at Jurassic World and wanted the park to continue to flourish, his disregard for the realities of running the park grated on them.

In addition, Cruthers has some trouble with reading other people as well as presenting his own intentions with others. This was exemplified in his relationship with his coworker Vivian Krill; he harbored romantic feelings for her, despite knowing that she had a boyfriend. He incorrectly assumed that because Krill did not talk about him much, she would be available and possibly interested in him, but did not make his feelings known to her until the day of the 2015 incident. He did so by moving in to kiss her, an effort which she rejected, explaining that the real reason she didn’t frequently talk about her boyfriend was because she does not bring up her personal life at work. Even before this, Cruthers had often talked about his own personal life to Krill and failed to notice her complete disinterest. Krill did not dislike Cruthers, but she had no interest in being more than work acquaintances, a fact which Cruthers was completely oblivious to.

Physical ability

Cruthers does not usually engage in strenuous physical work, since the types of jobs he pursues involve him remaining in a control room or office environment. Cruthers is visually impaired, requiring corrective lenses; since he wears eyeglasses while working with computer screens, he is probably farsighted rather than nearsighted.

Views
On de-extinction

Part of Cruthers’s fascination with the history of Jurassic Park is a supportive approach toward the practice of de-extinction. Cruthers considers the resurrection of extinct organisms to be a largely positive thing, since it both benefits from and encourages cutting-edge scientific research and can contribute to society’s appreciation for the diversity of the natural world. To this end, he supports the keeping of de-extinct animals in captivity. Cruthers is known to become frustrated when others lose interest in de-extinct species, since he himself has remained enthralled by this science and its products since his boyhood. His love for de-extinct animals is one of the driving forces behind his opposition to the artificial synthesis of new species, since this is often seen as a “replacement” for the process of de-extinction. Cruthers’s positive view of this scientific field is one of his major disagreements with his idol, Dr. Ian Malcolm.

On genetic engineering

Although Cruthers strongly supports de-extinction, he is opposed to other aspects of genetic engineering because he sees them as competing with de-extinction for public and scientific attention as well as financial support. While every species brought back from extinction has necessarily been altered due to the decomposition of ancient DNA over time, the overall goal of de-extinction is in theory to reconstruct the genome with relatively few major alterations. In actual practice, this is hardly ever successful; nearly every prehistoric species resurrected through this process suffers notable alterations to its genetic and anatomical makeup. However, the goal of artificial species synthesis through hybridization is to create organisms that differ from those occurring in nature, so these alterations are not only tolerated but encouraged. Cruthers believes that this will ultimately replace de-extinction in terms of public interest and scientific research, which he finds unacceptable.

On chaos theory

Since he follows the teachings of Dr. Ian Malcolm, Cruthers believes in chaos theory, or the concept that the initial conditions of a complex system have far-reaching impacts on the outcomes of that system which are exceedingly difficult to predict with accuracy. Malcolm predicted that Jurassic Park would fail due to this unpredictability, since InGen could not account for every single variable in the park. The intersection of scientific innovation, human intentions, animal behavior, and natural events created a complicated system of interacting elements which Malcolm and his peers believed could not be controlled. Cruthers appears to have understood this concept to a decent degree, but rather than giving up hope that a de-extinction theme park and zoo could be managed, he applied these ideas of unpredictability in his work.

Cruthers opposed genetic hybridization as a means to create new species chiefly because of his fear that it would replace de-extinction, but through the lens of chaos theory, other objections to this process become apparent. Jurassic World operated on what Dr. Malcolm and other chaos theory researchers describe as the “edge of chaos,” a transitional phase between order and disorder where generalized predictions, but not specific predictions, can be accurate. At the edge of chaos, a system can be pushed into order or disorder by minor events: Cruthers described his messy workspace as this, but the description could just as easily apply to Jurassic World as a whole. The introduction of an organism created through genetic hybridization introduced a wide range of new and unpredictable variables to the park, and the escape and ensuing incident resulted directly from management’s inability to predict it. Cruthers understood this. While some of his coworkers fought to determine who should be blamed, Cruthers placed blame on all of Jurassic World’s senior staff since they all had a role to play in causing the incident and then focused on mitigating the damage. Cruthers himself was a variable causing the escape: his moment of hesitation in closing the Paddock 11 gates to save Grady’s life gave the Indominus just enough time to block the gates from closing and get out of its habitat. Cruthers’s small decision was actually the final straw in allowing the creature to breach containment.

Corporate and business views

Although he was himself a cog in the Masrani Global corporate machine, Cruthers showed a general distaste for capitalistic exploitation of nature and reckless consumerism. He opposed the creation of artificial genera in Jurassic World as well as the corporate sponsorship of attractions in the park, both of which were financially beneficial to the park’s existence. Cruthers’s dislike of corporate sponsorship extended beyond Jurassic World; he lamented the practice of having stadiums named after corporations, sarcastically claiming that corporations would one day have new genera of dinosaur named after them (whether or not he is aware of existing organisms whose scientific names reference corporations is unknown).

Cruthers is known for neglecting company policy, having attained a position of such value in Jurassic World that he could get away with this and keep his job. For example, he came to work on December 22, 2015 wearing a vintage Jurassic Park tee shirt recovered from the old Visitors’ Centre, despite that merchandise having been produced for an unopened attraction in which several people died. He appears to have worn it as a conversation starter, and to irk his superior Claire Dearing on purpose. Cruthers opposes other forms of the corporate environment, such as the dispassionate and impersonal approach to work it encourages; he regularly reminded his coworkers that the numbers and icons on their screens represented actual living animals rather than mere park assets.

Relationships
Family

Cruthers is known to have had a generally positive relationship with his stepfather, Carl. His biological father appears to have walked out on Cruthers and his mother during his childhood, with Carl entering the family when Cruthers was thirteen. According to Cruthers, Carl was his first real father figure.

Simon Masrani

During his career at Jurassic World, Cruthers became acquainted with the CEO of Masrani Global Corporation, Simon Masrani. While most of his earlier career is not known, Cruthers ascended the ranks at Jurassic World and by 2015 was the control room’s lead technician. In this position, he worked directly with the CEO when he was on Isla Nublar. Cruthers shared some views with his superior, such as his belief that they should pay respects to the history of Jurassic Park, but disagreed with him on many other points. Masrani was completely willing to bring corporate sponsors into Jurassic World to help the park financially, and allowed Dr. Henry Wu to bioengineer new forms of life to boost attendance. Cruthers saw these policies as a bastardization of what the park was originally intended to be, and was not shy about voicing this opinion. His status as a vital employee allowed him to argue with his superiors and even gloat at events he felt proved his point, but although he treated Masrani’s views as naive, he ultimately did respect the man. Likewise, though Cruthers’s sarcasm and cynicism wore thin, Masrani respected his employee’s skill and importance to park functions.

Masrani was unable to visit the island between 2012 and 2015 due to obligations in other areas of the company. He did not return to Isla Nublar until December 22, 2015 to see the Indominus, which Cruthers had already decried as a blow to Jurassic World’s authenticity. Masrani relied on Cruthers for information and communication as disaster after disaster unfolded over the course of the day, focusing his energy on dealing with the problems at hand rather than infighting like the other employees. Cruthers did not place blame on Masrani for the day’s events. After Masrani’s death that afternoon, Cruthers stayed behind on Isla Nublar rather than evacuate, helping to finish the job that Masrani had started and saving lives in the park.

Claire Dearing

Cruthers’s immediate supervisor in the Jurassic World control room was Claire Dearing, the park’s Operations Manager and Senior Assets Manager. The two often butted heads for various reasons, though they were still capable of working together efficiently enough. Dearing was fully devoted to the park’s best interest, ensuring that plans proposed by the CEO or the Board of Directors were implemented efficiently. She was in charge of negotiating the corporate partnerships that kept the park financially afloat, and her job required her to coordinate between many different aspects of park administration. Cruthers also coordinated these efforts, but he mostly did so remotely, only having direct interactions with his close coworkers. This allowed him to develop much more personable relationships with his coworkers than Dearing, who often came across as impersonal and distant. Cruthers showed a lack of appreciation for Dearing’s efforts in keeping the park’s finances stable, believing that corporate partnerships and advanced genetic engineering were not necessary for the park’s survival but suggesting no alternatives. Cruthers, it seems, blamed the public for gradually losing interest in the park’s older attractions rather than recognizing this as an inevitable reality.

During the 2015 incident, Cruthers and Dearing cooperated despite the combined stresses of the ongoing crises and their own interpersonal conflicts. He provided her with useful information for managing the disaster and mitigating loss of life, though she and Masrani both neglected to use the full force of park security immediately. Cruthers was not innocent in the incident either, having hesitated to close the Paddock 11 gates when Grady needed to escape and allowing Grady to place all the blame on Dearing for the incident. After Masrani’s death, Cruthers became the highest-ranking employee on the island to remain loyal to Dearing; most of Security began working against her as Vic Hoskins took control of the park. It was Cruthers who warned Dearing of Hoskins’s intention to commandeer I.B.R.I.S., which resulted in Owen Grady being able to participate in the ill-fated operation; without him, the consequences would surely have been worse. Cruthers was hesitant to comply with Dearing’s order to open the Paddock 9 gates that night, but he followed her orders after she insulted his manliness.

It is currently unknown if he kept in contact with Dearing after the incident.

2022

Sometime prior to 2022, Lowery joined the CIA’s Dangerous Species Division, assisting the organization with tracking and monitoring De-Extinct species.

Vivian Krill

One of Cruthers’s closest coworkers was communications technician Vivian Krill. They both worked relaying information between different branches of park operations, so they cooperated during the day-to-day running of Jurassic World. Cruthers developed romantic feelings for Krill during the course of their career, though he did not make his feelings known to her. She had a boyfriend at the time, but did not talk about her personal life very much with Cruthers; it appears that not only were his feelings unrequited, she did not seem interested in being friends with him in general. She kept their relationship professional.

During the 2015 incident, Krill did ask whether Cruthers was going to come with her to the evacuation boats, but he took the opportunity to try and impress her instead. Cruthers vowed to stay behind so that someone other than Vic Hoskins and his InGen Security contingent were able to help from the control room, and moved to kiss Krill; she rejected his advances and reminded him that she had a boyfriend. Cruthers actually had known about the boyfriend, but assumed that because Krill did not talk about him, his advances would be accepted. Instead, they awkwardly hugged and parted ways. It is not known if they have talked since the incident.

Tun-Si tribe

Rather than live in the residential hotel with the other employees, Cruthers opted to move into the Tun-Si reservation on Isla Nublar where he lived with the native people. He had close friends among them; a photo of himself and one of his friends was kept on his desk at work. Cruthers’s interest in Isla Nublar’s history likely fostered a positive relationship between himself and the island’s original human inhabitants, who could recount the island’s past farther back than any Westerner, and were probably appreciative of an outsider actually respecting their culture. Cruthers got along well enough with his Tun-Si friends to move in with them, even though their reserve was built in the traditional way and lacked modern amenities. Likewise, the Tun-Si trusted Cruthers enough to let him participate in their time-honored traditional lifestyle.

His residence in the reservation ended on December 22, 2015 due to the aftermath of the incident that occurred on that day. It is unknown if he remained in contact with his Tun-Si friends, who probably now live on the Costa Rican mainland.

Vic Hoskins

InGen’s Head of Security, Vic Hoskins, was not Cruthers’s direct superior or supervisor but did outrank him in the company hierarchy. Since he worked in communications, Cruthers likely assisted Hoskins on occasion; Hoskins would have needed to coordinate with ACU, the park rangers, and other Security staff across the island. Hoskins was not a commonly-seen face in the control room; some of the non-InGen security staff did not recognize him on sight. Cruthers did not appear fond of Hoskins, but Hoskins seems to have considered himself a welcome addition to Cruthers’s social circle and acted as though they were friends. Hoskins actually seems to have been aware of Cruthers’s distaste for him, but behaved like a “buddy” anyway, inviting himself into Cruthers’s personal space and helping himself to food and drink. Whether this was an effort to establish dominance, or to actually encourage Cruthers into the Security fold, is up for debate. Hoskins was one of the few higher-ranking officials at InGen who Cruthers did not make sarcastic remarks at or openly challenge, but this was out of fear rather than respect.

Their relationship took a turn for the worse during the 2015 incident, in which the escaped Indominus was used by Hoskins as an excuse to perform InGen Security exercises with I.B.R.I.S. raptor specimens. Cruthers, like most of the employees, opposed this plan, but relied on the authority of Simon Masrani to prevent it. When Masrani died in an attempt to kill the Indominus, Hoskins and InGen Security strongarmed the control room employees out to be evacuated, using the tragedy as an open door to take control of the park’s resources. Cruthers stayed behind so that Dearing would still have a loyal supporter in the control room, which Hoskins allowed. Although Cruthers considered Hoskins an enemy, Hoskins did not feel the same way; Hoskins never considered any of the other park employees as his foes, but as obstacles that would disappear once they came around to his way of thinking. He seems to have honestly believed that Cruthers, and the other employees, would realize that his efforts were what InGen and the United States truly needed in order to maintain their superiority, a view that he held until his death during the incident.

Owen Grady

Cruthers’s counterpart in Security in terms of authority, Owen Grady was an animal behaviorist in Jurassic World answering to Vic Hoskins in the same way Cruthers answered to Claire Dearing. Despite Grady’s sometime romantic relationship with Dearing, he and Cruthers did not often work together; Grady was almost exclusively used in the field and rarely came into the control room. In fact, Grady did not have authorization to enter the control room. Nonetheless, both Grady and Cruthers agreed on moral questions surrounding the creation of artificial hybrid genera, though for differing reasons.

During the 2015 incident, it was Cruthers who discovered that the Indominus was in Paddock 11, and he who discovered Grady’s unauthorized in-paddock inspection. Were it not for his close attention, Grady may not have survived. Cruthers’s hesitance to shut the Paddock 11 gates also saved Grady’s life, though it permitted the Indominus to escape.

The two men did not interact much during the incident, though Cruthers was caught in the crossfire between Dearing and Grady a few times. Grady’s ire was chiefly directed at Dearing, who he blamed for the incident despite her minimal involvement in the animal’s escape. At one point, he lashed out in frustration when InGen did not listen to his warning to close the park immediately, and swept Cruthers’s plastic dinosaurs off his desk. Other than this, Grady did not spend any part of the incident in the control room, and so was only remotely connected to Cruthers, who was mostly speaking to Dearing. Hoskins’s commandeering of I.B.R.I.S. was revealed to Dearing, and thus Grady, by means of Cruthers, who had remained behind during the evacuation as to ensure that someone in the control room was still loyal to Dearing. This allowed Grady to take part in Hoskins’s ill-advised raptor hunt; without his involvement, it is highly likely that even more carnage would have taken place that night.

Other Jurassic World employees

Most of Cruthers’s working relationships remain unknown, but he appears to have kept a small and close social circle at work. His fascination with Jurassic Park would suggest that he would be interested in knowing InGen’s longtime chief geneticist, Dr. Henry Wu, but there is currently no evidence that they knew one another. In L/M canon, Cruthers and Wu are familiar with each other, and Cruthers frequently assists in the setup and maintenance of laboratory computers and software. L/M canon also shows Cruthers having romantic feelings for administrative assistant Zara Young, but this is chiefly due to the absence of Vivian Krill from the mobile canon. In the film canon, they are not confirmed to have known each other, but they are both fans of Dr. Ian Malcolm’s book God Creates Dinosaurs; this and their shared relationship to Claire Dearing means it is not impossible that they knew one another before the incident of 2015. It is also not impossible for Cruthers to have harbored romantic feelings for both women, though as of 2015 Young was engaged and therefore not looking for a new relationship.

Cruthers would have had at least a tangential relationship to most of the employees in the park, as he facilitated communication between all aspects of park operations and management. He held mistrust for InGen Security peacekeepers, though he worked with the park rangers and Asset Containment Unit without issue. His source of mistrust toward other parts of InGen Security were tied to his dislike for Vic Hoskins, the head of that department, and his ambitions to increase the use of military animals using InGen technology.

InGen animals

Since he was a boy, Cruthers was fascinated by the rumors of de-extinction that were eventually proven true in 1997. The main focus of de-extinction is, of course, the dinosaurs. Although they are genetically modified as a necessity, they still sparked in Cruthers the wonder that dinosaurs tend to evoke, and he longed to see them one day. Of course, since not one but two incarnations of Jurassic Park failed before they could be opened, Cruthers could never go there. He finally got his chance when Jurassic World opened in 2005; he applied for a job there straight out of college, and began his career on Isla Nublar.

When the park first opened, it had only a few species, but the roster increased with the ensuing years until dozens of species inhabited the island. Cruthers, from the control room, monitored their movements, behavior, and health; the information he managed using the animals’ RFID tracking implants was vitally important to Jurassic World’s paleoveterinarians and Asset Containment Unit, as well as to the animals themselves. If a creature was sick, distressed, or roaming outside of its designated zone, Cruthers and his coworkers were responsible for reporting the anomaly and facilitating a quick and appropriate response. Some animals were more problematic than others; the Triceratops were known to become aggressive during adolescence, and the implants in the Pachycephalosaurus would sometimes short out during the dinosaurs’ dominance displays. Cruthers appears to have been fascinated by all types of de-extinct life, having plastic dinosaur toys of a variety of species on his desk at his workspace. However, he did not support the artificial creation of hybrid genera, believing that these animals which never existed in nature were inferior to those that, despite sometimes quite heavy genetic modification, were based on real species.

Cruthers became a vital part of managing the 2015 incident from the control room. He was first tasked with locating the missing Indominus, which he found still within Paddock 11 where it was supposed to be. Unfortunately, this was not the case for long, as the animal breached containment due to an unauthorized in-paddock inspection taking place at the time. Cruthers tracked the escapee as it fled southward, eventually losing track of it when it clawed out its RFID implant.

From that point on, the Indominus could only be tracked via surveillance camera and by the effects it had on other aspects of the park. Throughout the day, one Ankylosaurus and six Apatosaurus fell prey to the Indominus as it killed for enjoyment and thrill. The animal broke into the Aviary during an attempt to recapture it, causing the Pteranodons and Dimorphodons to escape. More deaths took place and control over the park was lost, to Cruthers’s horror. InGen Security commandeered the park and I.B.R.I.S. to utilize the four Velociraptors in an effort to hunt the Indominus, which Cruthers opposed but could not stop; three of the raptors died in the resulting conflict.

Finally, Cruthers was the one to release the park’s old Tyrannosaurus from captivity at the behest of Claire Dearing, though he did not agree with her decision. A territorial clash with the Indominus resulted, and the hybrid animal was forced to the edge of the Jurassic World Lagoon where the Mosasaurus ambushed and killed it. With the park’s indefinite closure cemented at that point, Cruthers deactivated the invisible fences on the island, allowing the animals to roam free once the tourists, staff, and residents were evacuated from Isla Nublar.

He did not publicly voice any opinion regarding the Mount Sibo controversy during the next three years. It has been suggested that witnessing the events in 2015 changed him, and that he now takes on a tougher persona.

Dr. Ian Malcolm

The public first learned that de-extinction might have happened through the testimony of popular chaos theory lecturer Dr. Ian Malcolm, who in 1995 claimed that InGen had cloned dinosaurs on the remote Isla Nublar. While his claims were considered a hoax until the San Diego incident of 1997, many people still believed he was telling the truth. Cruthers was a young boy when these events took place, and they shaped his interest in dinosaurs, de-extinction, and Jurassic Park for life.

Cruthers’s career, personality, and beliefs are heavily influenced by Dr. Malcolm, particularly his lectures and books on chaos theory. Cruthers does not have as detailed an understanding as Malcolm, but firmly subscribes to Malcolm’s interpretation of chaos theory. However, he does not agree with Malcolm on all points. While Malcolm believes that de-extinct animals should be treated humanely, he does not endorse their creation in the first place and was always firmly opposed to the existence of any de-extinction theme park. Cruthers, on the other hand, found the allure of Jurassic Park irresistible and took the first opportunity to work in Jurassic World he got. Although he does not take the same stance as Malcolm on this issue, Cruthers still highly respects Malcolm’s works and as of 2015 prominently displayed a copy of God Creates Dinosaurs at his workspace.

Portrayal

Lowery Cruthers is portrayed by Jake Johnson. He is not based on any character from Michael Crichton‘s novels, but is rather an original creation for the Jurassic World trilogy.

The character of Lowery Cruthers was based on the Jurassic Park fandom, particularly elements of the fandom who have enshrined the first film and oppose new additions to the franchise. Cruthers is a more affectionate parody, but nonetheless, his favoritism of the original Park over Jurassic World is based on older fans and amateur film critics predicting that 2015’s Jurassic World would fail at the box office. Cruthers has been highly criticized by the audiences he is intended to parody; critics of the Jurassic World trilogy and its first film in particular tend to feel personally attacked by it, leading to large amounts of hatred toward the character of Cruthers. He has also been described as being too obvious of a parody, even if his behaviors in the film are justifiable.

However, not all fans oppose the character; in fact, many were disappointed that he would not return in 2018’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, though he was originally planned to appear. Jake Johnson is said to have declined to return due to the pay rate, with Justice Smith appearing as the new character Franklin Webb in his place. Johnson was again planned to reprise his role as Cruthers for 2021’s Jurassic World: Dominion and this time voiced enthusiasm about returning. Unfortunately due to the COVID-19 pandemic, he was unable to film his scene, which was probably fairly small as removing it was not a major issue for the film. It was announced in mid-2021 (after the film’s release date had been pushed to 2022) that his character had been cut from the story entirely.

In an alternate take, Lowery Cruthers and Vivian Krill did actually kiss. This was changed by film director Colin Trevorrow, who established a one-kiss rule for the film.