Owen Grady is an American animal behaviorist formerly employed by the United States Navy and the Security Division of International Genetic Technologies. He is best known for his employment at InGen Security, where he was the lead animal trainer on the I.B.R.I.S. Project between 2012 and the closure of Jurassic World on December 22, 2015. He currently works for the United States Fish and Wildlife Service in de-extinct animal management programs. Because of his employment experiences, Grady is considered a specialist in the behavior of intelligent animals and one of the leading experts on Velociraptor antirrhopus.
Grady currently lives in rural Northern California, near the Sierra Nevada mountains in a cabin which he built himself. He lives with his life partner Claire Dearing, and his adopted daughter Maisie Lockwood.
Name
The name Owen is commonly the anglicized version of the Welsh patronymic Owain, related to the name Eugene (meaning “noble-born”). It may also originate from the French name Ouen. It is frequently used as a surname, and in the case of the Welsh origin, was exclusively a surname for a long period of time beginning during the reign of Henry VIII.
Grady is a surname of Irish origin, derived from the word gráda meaning “noble.”
This combination of names suggests that Owen Grady’s ancestry is strongly based in the western United Kingdom, particularly Wales and Ireland. Both his first and last names have connotations of nobility, hinting at the more serious traits Grady possesses beneath his outward presentation and personality.
Biography
Early life
According to the Jurassic World script, Grady was 34 years old as of December 22-23, 2015, placing his date of birth between December 24, 1980 and December 21, 1981. His vehicle registration sticker in 2015 was a June sticker, though in 2022 he used an August sticker; either he registered early in 2014, or was falsifying his birth date in 2021. In either case, his birthday falls during the summer. Grady’s accent and demeanor imply that he grew up in the American South or Midwest; the mobile game Jurassic World: The Game explicitly identifies the South as his home. The game also suggests that he is close with an unnamed uncle, but makes no mention of his parents.
In 1997, when Grady would have been fifteen or sixteen, an incident occurred in San Diego, California in which, to the world’s shock, a live bull Tyrannosaurus rex appeared in the city. This revealed that de-extinction had been successfully accomplished by International Genetic Technologies, Inc., bringing back organisms that had become extinct millions of years in the past. Originally, these organisms were intended to feature in a theme park called Jurassic Park, which had failed behind closed doors in 1993; some years later, InGen would be bought out and used to rebuild the park as Jurassic World.
Navy career
Grady joined the United States Navy during the Iraq War. Most of the details about this period of his career come from L/M canon and other sources from outside the films, and therefore are subject to canon review by Universal Studios at any time. However, as they are currently the primary source of information about Grady’s career as a sailor, they are used herein.
In 2000 at the age of eighteen or nineteen, Grady joined the United States Navy, where he served continuously until 2003. He worked in the Marine Mammal Program, training animals such as bottlenose dolphins (genus Tursiops) for military use. He specifically was employed in the team MK 9, which also trained sea lions and made use of other marine animals such as whales, sharks, and seals. Over his three years in the Navy, he was stationed at harbors around the world; his personal favorite station was Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, on account of the piña coladas he enjoyed while there.
Grady attained the title of First Lieutenant. This meant that, on his ship, he was the officer in command of the deck department and was in charge of line handling while the ship was mooring.
During his career with the Navy, Grady became acquainted with Barry Sembène as they trained together. While the details of how they met are undisclosed, it is likely that Sembène was involved with the French Navy at the time. Grady and Sembène became friends and remained in touch.
A notable U.S. military operation occurred on July 20, 2001 on the southern beach of Isla Sorna in which the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps extracted five civilians from the island, including celebrity paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant. It is unknown whether Grady or any of his close companions were involved with this operation.
Slightly more information about Grady’s naval career is given in the soft-canon Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom Survival Guide, which includes a brief summary of his involvement in classified animal projects: “Grady is a former naval officer. During his time in the navy, he worked in many covert animal training programs, including [REDACTED][REDACTED], and giant [REDACTED], as well as [REDACTED][REDACTED], and genetically modified [REDACTED] with razor-sharp teeth.” The redacted portions were blacked out by Grady himself, with the apology “Sorry, Claire. It’s classified.”
Persian Gulf incident and court-martialing
During the Iraq War, trained dolphins were often used to locate underwater mines in areas such as the Persian Gulf in order to clear the way for American naval operations. MK 9 was utilized in this way during an incident in 2003, during which a dolphin was mistaken for an enemy ship or torpedo on radar and nearly fired upon. Grady was present and witnessed this incident and the last-minute decision that saved their dolphin from friendly fire.
This incident brought MK 9 under scrutiny from the U.S. government, with the team being recalled to the United States immediately. An investigation was conducted, though the questioning was deliberately structured to discredit the team; Grady has stated that he suspects the upcoming U.S. presidential election, and the government’s preference of drones over military animals, played a role in this. The next day, MK 9 was ordered to cease all activities and disband. This put the team’s animals in a perilous situation; since they had been raised in captivity, they could not survive in the wild, and the U.S. Navy was no longer going to provide for them.
To make matters worse, the American television news began running stories that same day about supposedly “defective” dolphins endangering missions. Grady again suspected the government interfering to hasten the dissolution of MK 9, specifically the National Security Council leaking the relevant information to major news outlets. Grady’s captain believed that having a former MK 9 member testify on television would help their cause, though it would certainly end with that person falling out of favor with the U.S. Navy. Grady volunteered to do so, knowing that the dolphins had little hope of quality life if he did not. He appeared on television stating that the Marine Mammal Program would be phased out by 2017 in favor of drones, and personally took the dolphins into his care.
Grady’s captain connected him with Masrani Global Corporation, which funded the safe relocation of the dolphins in exchange for Grady’s promise that he could be contracted by the corporation’s subsidiary International Genetic Technologies. He likely caught the attention of the Head of Security, Vic Hoskins, who had also served in the U.S. Armed Forces and opposed the government’s favoritism of drones. The conclusion of this contract meant that Grady would no longer be a sailor in the U.S. Navy, though he has since stated that he considers his three years of service to have been a waste of time.
The U.S. Navy staged a court-martial for Grady to explain his sudden removal from the military; while he was not actually suspected or convicted of any wrongdoing, this was still put on his permanent record and he was discharged from the Navy.
Involvement in I.B.R.I.S.
Beginning in 2012, InGen’s Security Division began conducting an experimental project titled the Integrated Behavioral Raptor Intelligence Study, headed by Vic Hoskins. Grady (who would turn thirty-one that summer) was hired on to work as an animal trainer due to his background with MK 9, reporting to Hoskins directly. The program was intended to test the intelligence of deinonychosaurian theropod dinosaurs to better understand their cognition and social behaviors, the intent being to eventually integrate them into the Jurassic World theme park on Isla Nublar.
Grady moved to Isla Nublar to participate in the project, inhabiting a bungalow near a pond in the eastern part of the island. The first animals involved with I.B.R.I.S. failed or were rejected due to unpredictable aggressive behaviors; instead, InGen’s senior geneticist Dr. Henry Wu engineered a new breed of Velociraptor that was hoped to be more suitable. At least two different groups of raptors, along with other theropods, were hatched; ultimately, four survivors were selected to participate in the I.B.R.I.S. project. Grady was present for all of them when they hatched, ensuring that they would imprint on him. The eldest was named Blue, followed by Delta, Echo, and Charlie.
These four raptors were introduced to one another at a young age, allowing the bonds of sisterhood to form and for a social hierarchy to develop naturally. Grady acted as a paternal figure. Blue quickly established herself as the pride’s beta, subordinate only to Grady, due to her physical strength, intelligence, and empathy. Charlie became Blue’s favorite and most loyal sister, while Delta and Echo shared a place at the bottom of the hierarchy. Grady maintained a video log of the raptors for IBRIS, tracking their development and progress in the training program. By Day 176, Blue had begun showing signs of exceptional empathy and was considered by Grady to be the most promising of the four raptors.
The raptors grew and matured quickly, relocating from the nursery to a research paddock located on the island’s eastern coast where they were guarded by InGen Security’s Asset Containment Unit. As they grew older, training them became more of a struggle, as did caring for them in general. At one point, Echo challenged Blue for the status of beta, but lost to her elder sister in a fight that left her with permanent damage to her jaw. Likewise, Blue began to challenge Grady for the position of alpha, and often led her sisters in escape attempts. Realizing that the pack dynamic was more complicated than InGen had anticipated, Grady requested help. On May 17, 2013, close to a year after the raptors hatched, he emailed Hoskins asking that his friend Barry Sembène be brought on board. Hoskins approved, and Sembène was contacted and flown in from France to join the project as an animal caretaker. Hoskins began working on an application for the raptors that year, intending to field-test them for military purposes and breed those that possessed the desired behaviors.
With Sembène’s help, the raptors were better managed. Grady used a clicker device to communicate commands to them, teaching them increasingly complex tasks. To reinforce his alpha status over Blue, he would feed her last during mealtimes. The raptors, despite Blue’s rebellious behaviors, responded well to his training methods and became quite obedient, though there were certain exercises they continued to struggle with. Nonetheless, they understood at least forty commands and responded correctly 73% of the time. Blue was still the key to maintaining authority; so long as she respected him, the other raptors would follow suit.
At some point during his employment at Jurassic World, Grady went on a date with the park’s Senior Assets Manager and Operations Manager, Claire Dearing. Though Dearing was not Grady’s direct supervisor, she did considerably outrank him in the company hierarchy. Their date did not go well; Dearing had printed an itinerary for the evening and refused to consume alcohol for dietary reasons, while Grady showed up in casual attire and had a far more relaxed idea of how the night should go. Aside from this, Grady is not known to have pursued any romantic relationships during his career at Jurassic World, nor did he establish many close friendships. However, he remained attracted to Dearing even if he was not romantically drawn to her any longer.
Hoskins continued to push for a field test, which Grady opposed. Grady’s opposition was not just due to his baggage regarding military animals; he understood that the raptors were not domesticated by any means, and were likely too intelligent to truly domesticate at all. If released into the wild, they could revert to their natural instincts and reject his authority. Sembène agreed with Grady, as did their company’s CEO Simon Masrani. With Masrani’s opposition to a field test or militarization of the animals, Grady’s fears were mostly put to rest.
In addition to the raptors, Grady was familiarized with the park’s other animals and frequently worked with them. He was only the primary trainer in the IBRIS program, but understood the needs of the other creatures. Due to his status, he was permitted access to animals that were not yet exhibited in the park, such as the Sinoceratops; one particular female Sinoceratops became especially fond of him after he fed it a head of lettuce.
By 2015, the raptors were still not ready for exhibition, despite the public’s interest in them. Some incidents occurred; a handler was mauled at some point late in the year, leading to InGen Security having to hire a new handler to replace them. Grady was widely respected by other InGen staff for his work with the supposedly-impossible raptors, which had been a problem for the company since they were first cloned in the early 1990s.
If the Jurassic World Employee Handbook is considered canon, then Grady assisted Dearing in penning a new updated version of the employee handbook sometime between 2012 and 2015, providing suggestions to improve the handbook’s information quality and accuracy.
2015 incident
December 22, 2015 began with a routine hunting training session at the research paddock, attended by guest researchers and InGen staff. A pig was released into the paddock for the raptors to chase down, and at Grady’s signal, the raptors halted the chase and allowed the prey to escape. This was lauded as a major success by Grady, Sembène, and Hoskins; during most of these sessions, the raptors ignored Grady’s command and killed their target. Hoskins continued to press for a field test, which both Grady and Sembène rejected again.
The pig used in the training session was accidentally released into the paddock while it was being removed, and a handler named Colby Boothman-Shepard attempted to recapture the animal before the raptors moved in. He was able to snare the pig from the overhead catwalk, but Echo pounced on the pig and became entangled with the snare as well. This caused Boothman-Shepard to be pulled from the catwalk and into the training yard, where the other three raptors turned on him. Grady entered the paddock and commanded the ACU staff on the paddock walls to hold their fire, placing himself in between the raptors and the employee. Boothman-Shepard was safely removed from the paddock while the raptors closed in on Grady, held back only by Blue’s hesitance at attacking him. Grady instructed Sembène to close the paddock gate; he did so despite his reservations. The gate had closed almost completely when Grady made a rolling dive underneath it. As soon as he made a move to flee, the raptors pounced, but were blocked as the gate closed. Grady had timed his escape down to the second so that the raptors would be unable to get underneath after him. Hoskins was duly impressed by Grady’s performance during this incident.
Later that afternoon, Grady was at his bungalow when he was approached by Dearing, who relayed a request from Simon Masrani for Grady to inspect Paddock 11. This paddock contained a genetically modified hybrid animal, the Indominus rex, which was intended to be introduced into a new park attraction relatively soon; Grady had been unaware of the hybrid’s existence and was disapproving of it when he learned. Still, he agreed to inspect the paddock. During their meeting, Grady acted openly flirtatious, though this appears to mostly have been an effort to irritate the more uptight and professional Dearing.
At Paddock 11, Grady criticized the isolated upbringing of the Indominus, though he admitted that introducing it to other animals might not be a good idea. Dearing attempted to draw out the Indominus by providing a steer carcass, but it did not show. The paddock supervisor Nicholas Letting performed a thermal scan of the paddock, which failed to detect the animal. Grady observed claw marks on the paddock’s forty-foot walls, leading to the immediate conclusion that the Indominus had escaped. Dearing left immediately for the control room where she would be able to track the animal via its RFID implant.
Grady assumed control of the situation at Paddock 11, despite not having been given instructions to investigate by Dearing. A worker named Nick Kilgore was sent into the paddock to investigate, joined shortly thereafter by Grady and Letting. They debated whether the animal could actually have scaled the wall. While investigating, Letting was alerted via radio by control room employee Vivian Krill that the Indominus had never actually left the paddock and was still inside. Grady attempted to lead Kilgore and Letting back to the access door, but it was blocked by the Indominus; Letting had spotted the creature first and ran toward the larger gates on the other side of the paddock. Grady and Kilgore followed him, but Kilgore was captured and torn apart. Letting succeeded in opening the paddock gates, which were remotely closed from the control room at the order of Simon Masrani. Grady managed to get out before the gate closed, but the Indominus also reached the gate in time and blocked it using its body. It then broke the gate off, Grady hiding under a crane truck to hide himself. Letting also took shelter, but was discovered and killed; Grady was helpless to save the man, but was able to disguise his own scent using gasoline to avoid detection. Once the Indominus had left the area, Grady headed south to the control room.
At the command center’s control room, he confronted Dearing, blaming her for allowing the animal to escape (though it was Grady’s decision to enter the paddock that actually resulted in the Indominus escaping). He claimed that the Indominus had marked up the paddock walls intentionally to lead its handlers into assuming it had climbed out, although this does credit the Indominus with a much more detailed understanding of human psychology and park operations than an animal in a cage could understandably have. Efforts to recapture the animal were already underway; Masrani had ordered a squadron of elite ACU members to track its RFID implant and subdue it with nonlethal weaponry. Grady was harshly critical of this plan, predicting that it would fail with casualties. The ACU squad located the implant, which had been torn out of the animal’s body; Grady concluded that the Indominus had removed the implant by remembering where it was put in, rather than in response to the electric shocks delivered when it approached the park’s boundaries.
Grady, along with Dearing, Masrani, and the control room staff, bore witness to the ACU squad’s skirmish with the Indominus, which left several troopers dead and at least one seriously wounded. It was Grady’s suggestion that they evacuate the island altogether, though Dearing and Masrani opposed this plan. They compromised by closing all facilities in Sectors 4, 5, and 6 in a Real World emergency scenario and bringing the tourists into Sectors 1, 2, and 3. Grady was frustrated with the park administration’s rejection of his more extreme plan, and was later seen getting into confrontations with park staff.
While he was confronting staff members at the Innovation Center over the ongoing events, he was contacted by Dearing with an urgent mission: Dearing’s nephews, Zach and Gray Mitchell, were still in the park; they had been at the Gyrosphere attraction when the Real World alert was issued and had not returned to the loading dock. With ACU and most of InGen Security busy with the emergency, no staff members had been available to help her locate the Mitchells. While Grady was still upset with her, and admonished her for not knowing her nephews’ exact ages, he readily agreed to help. He departed with her in Mercedes 05, heading north through Gallimimus Valley toward the signal identifying Gyrosphere 07 which the boys were using. Dearing attempted to reach her nephews via Zach’s cell phone, but the call went unanswered.
In the valley, they encountered victims of the Indominus: a group of six Apatosaurus, the last of which was moments away from dying of its deep, bleeding lacerations. Grady initially tried to keep Dearing in the vehicle while he tended to the mortally-wounded animal, but she joined him anyway, helping to comfort the creature in its last moments. Grady noted that, while the sauropods had been slaughtered, none showed any signs of being fed upon, suggesting that the Indominus was killing out of enjoyment rather than hunger.
They continued north into Sector 5, locating the remains of Gyrosphere 07. A dislodged Indominus tooth and Zach’s cell phone, now broken, were recovered from the damaged vehicle. Dearing assumed the worst, but Grady located fresh shoe prints in the dirt along with huge theropod tracks leading away from the attack site. The tracks led to a waterfall, where it appeared that the boys had jumped; the dinosaur tracks turned and left rather than continuing the pursuit. Grady recommended that Dearing return to the control room, criticizing her attire as not suitable for fieldwork and her experience insufficient for a tracking operation. Dearing refused to be left out, and Grady begrudgingly allowed her to accompany him. In spite of himself, he found that he could respect her commitment, and began to empathize with her. They located a pile of Indominus dung and used it to disguise their scent while tracking the creature on foot through the forest.
During the search, the sound of a vehicle engine revving to life caught their attention, and they followed the sound to the decommissioned Visitors’ Centre in a restricted area of Sector 4. At the abandoned building, they found evidence that the boys had been there, and a 1992 Jeep Wrangler had been retrofitted with a new battery and driven out of the Centre’s garage; Grady was impressed that the boys had managed to get one of the old vehicles working again. The Indominus was also drawn to the Centre by the sound of the Jeep’s engine and investigated the garage. Grady and Dearing hid behind a Jeep, but were still spotted; while the dinosaur could not reach them due to the vehicle being in the way, it was able to tear open the roof and attack them from above. Grady fled the building, moving to help Dearing descend the outer stairs, but she neglected to take his hand and sprinted past. He followed, the Indominus behind them.
They were saved as a helicopter flew overhead, and they were informed by control room technician Lowery Cruthers that it was JW001 piloted by Simon Masrani himself. Masrani had come around to Grady’s way of thinking, strapping a machine gun to his corporate helicopter in an effort to hunt down and kill the Indominus. Grady and Dearing took an all-terrain vehicle to follow and observe Masrani’s attempt. The chase led them across the central valley and northeast to the Aviary, where the Indominus rammed its way through the building walls. The helicopter hovered outside and was shortly thereafter attacked by several Pteranodons, which had been disturbed out from their home by the Indominus. The pterosaurs caused damage to JW001 which made it impossible for Masrani to regain control, and the helicopter crashed into the Aviary’s dome. The nature of the crash made it clear that Masrani could not have survived.
The explosion caused by the crash drove the Indominus out of the Aviary, retreating into Sector 5 and going into hiding. It also frightened the pterosaurs of the Aviary, both the large territorial Pteranodon and the smaller reactive Dimorphodon, which fled the building through the damaged sections and flocked southwest. Grady led Dearing into the trees to avoid being targeted by the stressed animals, which had entered a frantic, frenzied state.
With the release of the pterosaurs, Jurassic World now faced a far larger problem that was much more difficult to contain. The pterosaurs originally fled to the west, but arced toward the south as they passed over the valley. Seeking an environment where they felt safe and comfortable, they headed for the Jurassic World Lagoon, which put the tourists on Main Street directly in their path. Grady and Dearing headed south to get there first, arriving to assist ACU with mobilizing and confronting the escaped animals. While Dearing sought out her nephews, Grady took up arms and helped ACU tranquilize pterosaurs as they flocked over Sector 3. During the battle, he was tackled by a Dimorphodon, which was fought off by Dearing and given a lethal dose of tranquilizer. Grady, shocked that Dearing would shed her professional demeanor to protect him, impulsively kissed her, and she returned it once she got over the initial surprise.
Recovering the Mitchell boys and retreating to safety from both the pterosaurs and the panicked crowds of tourists, Grady and Dearing learned from Cruthers that Hoskins had commandeered the control room with a force of InGen soldiers in the wake of Masrani’s death. Hoskins finally had the opportunity to field-test the IBRIS raptors, pitting them against the Indominus. Furious, Grady planned to confront Hoskins. Dearing went with him for support, refusing to leave her nephews and bringing them along.
The four of them took MVU-12 northeast from the boardwalk toward the raptor paddock, arriving there after nightfall. Joined by Sembène, Grady and Dearing confronted Hoskins about his plan to use the raptors to track down the Indominus. Ultimately, though, they were outmatched, with the InGen soldiers backing up Hoskins. Grady’s choice was between leading a mission he opposed or allowing Hoskins full control. Ultimately he chose to lead the mission with Sembène at his side, briefing the soldiers on how the mission would play out and giving the hybrid’s scent to the raptors. They would track it down as he had taught them to do within their paddock, but this time in a much more expansive environment than they had ever done before.
Grady and Sembène observed as the raptors were turned loose, instantly dashing into the jungle in pursuit of a scent to match the one they had been given. Grady followed on his motorcycle, with Sembène and the InGen soldiers not far behind. The raptors tracked the Indominus into Sector 5, slowing down once they had closed in on it. Grady had expected them to set up a kill zone, herding their target into a place where it could be easily dispatched; however, the raptors made no such effort, instead responding to its vocalizations. Grady and Sembène, along with the soldiers, watched as the two species established a form of communication with one another; Grady realized that the genetic modifications of the Indominus included Velociraptor DNA, specifically that related to the communication centers of its brain. With an aggressively independent creature able to communicate with his raptors (who themselves had often tried to escape), Grady’s worst fears were realized: the raptors had a means to liberate themselves.
Hoskins ordered his soldiers to open fire, causing the raptors and the Indominus to flee in confusion. Where the raptors had been questioning Grady’s authority, they now viewed the soldiers as enemies, and Grady quickly assumed that they would now obey the Indominus. A pitched battle took place in the forest and multiple soldiers were killed. The raptors had been trained around humans their entire lives, and their thorough understanding of human tactics and strategy now worked against InGen. Grady located Charlie in a field of elephant grass, feeding on a soldier she had killed; despite the raptors’ change of allegiance, Charlie showed signs of still being friendly toward her father figure. A projectile explosive was launched from behind, and before Grady could take any action, Charlie was struck directly and killed. Grady was knocked back, but was far enough from the explosion to avoid serious injury.
Charlie’s death drove Blue into a rage, and Grady witnessed her charge Sembène and trap him in a hollow log. To save his friend, Grady got Blue’s attention by revving his motorcycle, and the furious raptor chased after him. He drove past the raptor paddock, where MVU-12 was no longer parked; he raced down the transport road leading between the research area and Main Street to catch up. He evaded Blue, who was struck against a tree while attacking MVU-12 and regrouped with her sisters and the Indominus in the forest. Grady caught up with the MVU and drove alongside Dearing to reach Main Street, sheltering within the Hammond Creation Lab via the Innovation Center.
However, the lab had already been evacuated, with even Dr. Wu’s private laboratory left open as InGen personnel removed supplies and frozen embryos. They encountered Hoskins, who explained that Dr. Wu was working with InGen Security to design superior military animals using genetic engineering. Like the raptors, Hoskins had planned for the Indominus to be a military animal and not a park attraction, which was why Dr. Wu had designed it to be as resilient and intelligent as it was. While the Indominus had been a failure, it laid out the groundwork for future iterations that were smaller and more manageable, more suited to social behavior, and capable of being taught to respond to commands: in a word, more like the Velociraptors. While Hoskins discussed this and the InGen soldiers completed removing the lab’s contents, Delta ambushed them, killing Hoskins and herding Grady and his companions out of the Innovation Center.
Outside of the Center they were ambushed by Blue, while Delta and Echo cornered them to prevent escape to the sides. Grady, disappointed that his relationship to the raptors should end this way, appealed to Blue’s empathic side by lowering his rifle and removing her harness. Blue came to realize that, while the Indominus was far more powerful, Grady offered familial love that made him an inherently superior leader. The Indominus caught up with the raptors, now having nearly reached its ultimate goal: the hotel complex and the thousands of vulnerable tourists packed inside. Blue was given a kill order by the Indominus, but defied it; she was slapped into a concrete storefront for her act, which appeared to kill her. Delta and Echo followed suit in defying the Indominus, and at Grady’s command, they launched into battle to avenge their sister and protect their father figure. On the sidelines, Grady offered support by shooting at the hybrid’s armored flanks while the raptors bit and tore at its body.
Dearing suddenly fled from the Jurassic Traders outpost where she and the Mitchell boys had been sheltering and into a maintenance alley, but Grady had no time to puzzle why she would abandon them. Instead, he dodged attacks from the Indominus as it overpowered his raptors, leaving him helpless to watch as it killed Echo and Delta both in turn. As the last line of defense the Mitchells had, Grady entered the gift shop to protect them as the Indominus laid siege to the small building.
The struggle was interrupted by a cacophony from outside, and Grady witnessed the park’s oldest theropod, a Tyrannosaurus rex, challenge the Indominus for the territory of Main Street. The two animals brawled fiercely, but the younger and stronger Indominus ultimately overpowered its older rival. Captivated by the fight, Grady and the Mitchells were almost crushed; Dearing screamed for them to run as the Indominus slammed its rival into the gift shop. For a moment, the Indominus was poised to be victorious, but was distracted by a raptor’s bark from down Main Street. Blue, who had been stunned but not killed, aggressively launched herself at the Indominus, clawing at its face while the tyrannosaur also found a second wind. Grady and the others no longer had any control over the outcome of this fight; the best they could do was stay out of the way. The three theropods fought their way down Main Street to the edge of the Lagoon, where the fencing was damaged and the park’s Mosasaurus was also alerted to the fight. This fourth combatant ambushed the Indominus, dragging it under and drowning it.
The tyrannosaur, establishing dominance over the territory, limped off into the forest to recover while Blue made to rejoin Grady. Despite her willingness to come with him, Grady dismissed her, and she took this opportunity to leave for the wilds of Isla Nublar.
Aftermath of the Jurassic World incident
By the morning of December 23, Jurassic World was (almost) fully evacuated. Grady accompanied Dearing to mainland Costa Rica, where the injured tourists were cared for at a makeshift hospital in an airplane hangar at Juan Santamaría International Airport. Along with Dearing, he ensured that the Mitchell boys were safely reunited with their parents. He also learned that Sembène had survived the incident in the jungle of Sector 5, having avoided the raptors and Indominus despite his wounds and been evacuated; Grady and Sembène were reunited. Grady and Dearing’s romantic attraction had been reinvigorated by the adrenaline of the incident, and they were seen leaving the airport together.
Grady, along with everyone else at Jurassic World, lost his job due to the incident. The park closed down indefinitely, and InGen was placed under extreme scrutiny. Grady and Dearing officially resumed a romantic relationship, traveling in Grady’s Airstream around the western United States. However, it was not long before the conditions that had prevented their relationship in the first place became problematic again. Grady did not let Dearing drive the van, which he explained as a kind of chivalry, but Dearing viewed as an attempt to take control of the relationship (and, by extent, her). Dearing also became involved in the political fallout of the Jurassic World incident, testifying in court in late December and beginning to advocate for the protection of the dinosaurs. While unconfirmed, this may have also been an issue for the staunchly apolitical Grady.
Eventually, they parted ways. Dearing temporarily moved in with her family in Wisconsin, while Grady continued traveling the country in his camper van. He became increasingly socially isolated, no longer even caring about Blue’s status. By 2018 he had purchased land near a lake between the Sierra Nevada and Cascade Range and began building a cabin by hand. In the meantime, controversy had begun to stir around Isla Nublar regarding a new issue; the island’s dormant volcano Mount Sibo was showing signs of activity, and volcanologists had discovered that its eruptive potential was far greater than had been assumed in the past. Were it to erupt, as seemed increasingly likely, the animals of Isla Nublar would face the possibility of extinction. Dearing and many animal rights activists supported the idea of rescuing the dinosaurs, while the U.S. government, numerous prominent civilians, and some non-governmental organizations opposed it. Grady, as usual, remained neutral, which meant that he took the latter position by default.
2018 incident
On June 22, 2018, Grady was performing some of the preliminary construction on his cabin when he was met by Claire Dearing. They had not spoken much, if at all, since breaking up, but she invited him to get drinks at a local bar.
Dearing informed Grady about a planned rescue mission she had with her organization, the Dinosaur Protection Group, and the former Jurassic World benefactor Benjamin Lockwood. Grady had already been contacted by Eli Mills of the Lockwood Foundation and informed about the mission. They had a plan to reach Isla Nublar the following day and recover dinosaurs via the S.S. Arcadia, but only Grady would be able to rescue Blue. Grady declined the offer, claiming that he no longer cared about Blue’s condition. Frustrated and disappointed in him, Dearing left.
That night, Grady mulled over her offer, reminiscing on raising his raptors from eggs and the emotional bonds that he formed with them. His need for connection ultimately overpowered his desire to self-isolate, and he made for the private airstrip that Dearing had informed him about and boarded Lockwood’s airplane. At sunrise, he was joined by Dearing, as well as her associates Zia Rodriguez and Franklin Webb, and they departed for Isla Nublar.
On the flight to the island, Grady was briefed on the mission. They were to land on the island, move north through the valley to an operable radio bunker, and use Dearing’s biosignature to access the park’s RFID tracking system to locate the dinosaurs they intended to rescue. Upon arrival to the island, they were surprised to find the operation already well underway; Grady took an immediate dislike to Ken Wheatley, the operation’s lead hunter. Although they were fundamentally at odds, Grady resolved to cooperate with him in order to find and rescue Blue.
They progressed as planned, moving a truck convoy southwest into Sector 3 and making a brief observational stop at Main Street. Grady, while here, remarked to Wheatley that some of his memories of Jurassic World were good ones. From Main Street, they moved north through what was once Gallimimus Valley, reaching Radio Bunker 02-17. Webb gained them access to the building, and Dearing used her handprint ID to access the tracking beacons. Grady and his team were surprised to see a heavy concentration of dinosaurs at the Jurassic World East Dock, which Wheatley explained was the location of the S.S. Arcadia; they had already captured a number of dinosaurs. Blue was easily located using her RFID implant, and Grady departed along with Wheatley to capture her. Rodriguez insisted on coming along for Blue’s own safety, not trusting Wheatley to know the proper tranquilizer dose.
Grady planned to get close to Blue to ensure she would not bolt, and then at his signal, Wheatley would have his men tranquilize her and surround her. Having located a footprint belonging to Blue in the mud, he had Wheatley’s convoy hold back as to not alarm Blue; furthermore, the dense jungle would impede the vehicles and slow their progress. Grady instructed Wheatley to wait for his signal to surround and tranquilize Blue.
Grady progressed ahead of Wheatley’s men and Rodriguez to locate Blue at her nesting site, near a small creek and an abandoned Jurassic Park tour vehicle on Mount Sibo’s western slope. While Blue was initially aggressive and wary, she soon recognized him and their bond was reestablished. As they approached, Blue was hit in the neck with a tranquilizer dart and panicked. Wheatley and his men emerged, having already surrounded Blue. Grady was furious that Wheatley had not awaited his signal as planned, and insisted that he have his men back down. Wheatley made no such effort, and behind Grady’s back, one of the mercenaries leveled a gun at him. Blue tackled Grady aside and killed this mercenary by driving a claw through his skull, but not before he shot her in a panic; the bullet lodged in an artery in her left shoulder. Blue passed out from a combination of shock and carfentanil tranquilizer. Grady charged Wheatley, but was shot in the chest with a tranquilizer dart; this was removed by Rodriguez before a lethal quantity could be administered, but he still succumbed to the tranquilizer’s effects.
When he awoke, he was alone. This lasted only a few moments, however, as a familiar Sinoceratops found him and greeted him happily. He recovered from the tranqilizer bit by bit, managing to avoid being crushed by the affectionate ceratopsian. Suddenly the animal panicked, smelling smoke, and fled the area; with its bulk no longer blocking his view, Grady was able to see the forest beginning to burn as a lava flow overwhelmed it. The volcano’s magma chamber had breached while he was unconscious, and the island was doomed. As his body slowly recovered from the tranquilizer’s effects, he managed to stay barely ahead of the advancing lava flow by just enough to avoid being burned by its intense heat. After a minute or so, he was able to get to his feet and flee. He armed himself with a firearm obtained from the mercenary Blue had killed.
Grady rounded Mount Sibo’s southern side, retracing his steps to the radio bunker to try and find Dearing and Webb. Knowing that Wheatley had betrayed them, it was unlikely that Dearing or her friends had been evacuated safely. As he approached the bunker, he was interrupted by a fresh series of volcanic outbursts, which panicked a herd of dinosaurs. A stampede ensued and he fled for his life, spotting Dearing and Webb and screaming for them to run. The three of them sheltered behind Gyrosphere 08; once most of the stampede had passed, Dearing and Webb entered the gyrosphere, but Grady hesitated. A predatory Carnotaurus, hunting stragglers behind the stampede, appeared and threatened them. Its real target was a Sinoceratops lagging behind the other dinosaurs, but when its prey escaped, it angrily lashed out at the humans instead. During the struggle, Gyrosphere 08 was struck and its doors automatically sealed shut, trapping Grady outside.
The menacing Carnotaurus was subdued by an ambush attack from the last surviving Tyrannosaurus, which temporarily saved Grady, but his safety was short-lived. The volcano’s eastern face collapsed, unleashing a cloud of toxic gas and ash that swept over the northeastern part of Isla Nublar. The dinosaurs were driven toward the coast, as were Grady and the others; all of the victims were trapped between the hot, poisonous cloud and the two-hundred-foot cliffs of the island’s north coast. Gyrosphere 08 took the plunge, though it and Grady were briefly exposed to the volcanic gas. Grady dove off the cliffs before ash particles or poisonous gases could cause permanent damage to his lungs, and numerous dinosaurs did the same. He spotted Gyrosphere 08 sinking quickly, having sprung leaks and filled with seawater. Grady attempted to get the sphere’s door to open by shooting holes in its aluminum oxynitride hull, but before he could do real damage to the resilient glass, he was struck on the wrist by a piece of volcanic rock and dropped the gun. He surfaced for air and returned to pry the door open using his hunting knife, helping the struggling Webb reach the surface while Dearing ascended without his help.
They made their way to a beach south of the East Dock, crawling onto the shore. Dearing was emotional at having learned that the rescue mission was never real, and that she had merely been used by Mills to capture Blue. Grady, while also upset, remained calmer and tried to assess the situation. They observed helicopters loading dinosaurs, including the tyrannosaur, onto the S.S. Arcadia and realized that it was their only way off the island. They observed the ship from a vantage point, spotting Blue in critical condition with Rodriguez protecting her and Wheatley threatening both. As the eruption shifted to the northeast, the mercenaries were forced to make a rapid evacuation, abandoning a Mercedes-Benz Unimog that stalled on the dock. Grady, knowing that Dearing was quite capable at the wheel of a Unimog, had her start up the vehicle while he helped Webb keep up and get on board. Dearing safely got them onto the Arcadia as it left the dock, leaving Isla Nublar behind. As they left, Grady and the others witnessed a Brachiosaurus follow the Arcadia in hopes of its human caretakers coming back for it; Grady was unable to save this or any other animals as the poisonous dust enveloped Isla Nublar, suffocating and burning any animals in its wake.
Though they had escaped certain death in the toxic dust cloud and searing heat, they were still in great danger. Wheatley had shown he had no qualms with having his enemies murdered in cold blood, and everyone on the ship was a potential enemy. The exception to this was Zia Rodriguez, who they reunited with as she tended to Blue’s wound. Blue was losing blood, and Rodriguez recommended a transfusion to save her life. Unfortunately, as there were no other Velociraptors, their only hope was to perform a xenotransfusion. At her instruction, Grady and Dearing tracked down the tyrannosaur to obtain a suitable blood sample.
The animal was still sedated, but could recover at any minute, so they worked quickly. Grady was pinned against the side of the crate during the procedure as the animal lethargically tracked Dearing’s movements with its head, but she succeeded in getting a large enough blood sample before the tyrannosaur recovered. While they were inside, two mercenaries noticed the shipping crate’s open door and closed it, trapping them; Grady ended up stuck in the crate as the tyrannosaur recovered from its tranquilizers and became enraged. Dearing escaped through the top of the crate and opened the door, allowing him to dodge the tyrannosaur’s teeth and claws and escape.
Back at the makeshift medical tent, Grady assisted in comforting Blue as Rodriguez and the others treated her wound and performed the xenotransfusion. Rodriguez successfully removed the bullet from Blue’s artery and treated her shock and blood loss, saving her life. Grady was relieved to learn that she would survive. His feelings for Dearing were rekindled again after they collaborated to save Blue’s life; this time, the adrenaline was not the only thing creating feelings between them.
The Arcadia steadily traveled northward throughout June 24. Around dusk, it arrived at a private harbor and unloaded. Dearing, Grady, and Webb again attempted to avoid detection, while Rodriguez remained with Blue as not to arouse suspicion. Webb was caught, but as the crew had been assembled recently, he was mistakenly believed to be a member of the deck crew and conscripted into service. Grady and Dearing took one of the convoy’s trucks to try and rescue him, as well as Rodriguez and Blue. They had learned from Rodriguez that while most of the dinosaurs were destined for the black market, Mills needed Blue for other purposes; Wheatley had been promised a bonus for capturing this specific animal. Dearing, too, recalled how Mills had wanted Blue specifically, as this was the entire reason Grady had been brought along.
While following the convoy, Grady and Dearing realized that they were approaching the Lockwood estate, and that they were near the tiny town of Orick, California. Grady suggested reporting the activity to the authorities, but before he and Dearing could leave the convoy for Orick, they were apprehended by Wheatley and his mercenaries. They were imprisoned within the mansion’s sub-basement laboratory alongside the captured dinosaurs; Wheatley brought Mills to see them, and Mills revealed what the operation was leading up to: it was an extension of Hoskins’s original plans to engineer military animals, based on Dearing’s approval of the Indominus rex and Grady’s work in the I.B.R.I.S. project with the raptors. Grady assaulted Mills, threatening to break his arm through the cage bars, but was talked down by Dearing when Wheatley threatened to shoot him. Dearing then assaulted Mills herself, which amused Grady despite the situation. Mills left them for the time being, but appeared to be discussing with Wheatley on how best to dispose of them.
During their imprisonment, Dearing expressed feelings of guilt for participating in the operation. Grady, in a reversal of his treatment of the 2015 incident, actually took all the blame onto himself, trying to absolve Dearing of any guilt by claiming that without him, Blue would never have been captured. Rather than wallow in guilt, however, Grady took it upon himself to right what had gone wrong by breaking them out and shutting down the auction taking place above. He overheard the vocalizations of a dinosaur in the adjoining cell, recognizing them as the sounds of a Stygimoloch. Grady whistled, knowing that this dinosaur is irritated by high-pitched noises, and aggravated the dinosaur into ramming the brick wall between their cells. It was slow work, but the animal eventually broke through the bricks; Grady then got its attention and provoked it one more time, luring it into ramming the cell door and busting it open. This freed himself and Dearing, as well as the Stygimoloch.
Once outside of the cell, Grady and Dearing encountered a small girl, who immediately fled from them. Dearing identified her as Lockwood’s granddaughter Maisie. Grady and Dearing followed her as she made to flee using a dumbwaiter to the upper floors. Like Dearing and Grady, Maisie had been betrayed by Mills, but Dearing convinced her not to run away. They learned from her that Benjamin Lockwood was dead. Maisie did not initially trust these new adults, but she recognized Grady from an I.B.R.I.S. video log she had watched. He promised her that, if she came with them, he would tell her all about Blue and the other dinosaurs, and so Maisie came to trust Grady and Dearing. They planned to rescue Rodriguez and Webb, escape the mansion, and get the authorities to shut down the auction.
Maisie knew the mansion’s layout better than anyone, and was able to help them leave the basement via a service corridor leading upstairs. They witnessed the auction, which had reached its halfway point, meaning that several dinosaurs had already been sold. As they watched, an animal was brought out for display, said to be a hybrid of Indominus rex and Velociraptor: the auctioneer introduced it as the Indoraptor, a prototype not intended for sale. This was the miniaturized Indominus that Hoskins and Wu had been working on, now nearing completion. Maisie pointed out Henry Wu himself in the audience. It was demonstrated to be trained to kill: a laser sight on a modified SIG SG 552 rifle would select a target, and an acoustic signal would command the animal to attack. As bidders began vying for the creature against Wu’s wishes, Grady realized that they didn’t have time to reach the authorities and instead vowed to shut it down himself.
He hotwired the elevator in the basement, luring the Stygimoloch inside and taking it up to the garage-turned-auction-hall. When the animal was released, guests began to panic, and their screams agitated it. The dinosaur charged into the hall; as it caused chaos and drove the guests out, Grady slipped through the crowd. He was noticed by Mills, who fled the scene, but the security personnel did not realize Grady was there at first due to the chaos. Grady subdued a mercenary who had aimed to shoot the Stygimoloch, then fought his way through the crowd to reach the controls for the catwalk where the Indoraptor was being loaded out to its buyer. Taking advantage of the confusion, Grady was able to fight off other security guards one at a time in hand-to-hand combat, subduing one before the next noticed he was there. Finally, he was able to stop the cage from leaving the auction hall, destroying the controls to prevent it from being moved again. He then left the hall to rejoin Dearing and Maisie.
While he used the service corridors to evacuate the mansion with them, Mills and two of his guards apprehended the trio. He established himself as Maisie’s rightful guardian (which would conveniently place the Lockwood fortune in his hands). However, Grady and Dearing refused to give up Maisie, prompting Mills to reveal the fact that Maisie was not Lockwood’s granddaughter, but a replica of his daughter created through illegal human cloning. This revelation, while shocking, did nothing to deter Grady from protecting the girl, and Mills’s mercenaries were ambushed by the Indoraptor which had somehow escaped. Mills fled one way while Grady and his companions fled the opposite direction, soon finding themselves in the mansion’s fossil diorama room. Unknown events transpiring in the building caused a power outage, darkening their surroundings except for the diorama lights.
The Indoraptor had already arrived at the diorama room, having fed upon another mercenary. Though Grady tried to keep his companions hidden, the Indoraptor noticed them and gave chase; they escaped by ascending a spiral staircase that was too narrow for the creature to navigate quickly, hiding in a closet near the library. While the animal attempted to sniff out their scent, they escaped down into the dioramas on the ground floor, shutting off the diorama lights to aid their escape. As they made their way through, though, the lights began to come back on, revealing that the Indoraptor had already spotted them. It pounced into the diorama, trying to push through the display features to attack. Dearing was trapped and wounded while Maisie fled, her screams drawing the Indoraptor away. Dearing’s injury meant that she could not follow, but she kissed Grady and sent him to rescue Maisie. Grady armed himself and began following the Indoraptor‘s trail of destruction.
He located the creature in Maisie’s bedroom where it was advancing on her. He got its attention, shooting it several times, but the animal’s resilient hide protected it from lethal damage. Grady, out of ammunition, was about to be killed by the Indoraptor when Blue arrived, having tracked his scent through the mansion. She leapt into battle to protect her father figure, allowing Grady a chance to get Maisie safely out of the way. They exited the room via the balcony, Maisie leading him across the mansion’s wall toward safety; Blue and the Indoraptor fought violently inside.
Maisie and Grady were forced down from the upper floors and to the display room’s sun roof when the Indoraptor was knocked of a window by Blue. The animal cornered them on the edge of the sun roof, Maisie slipping and nearly falling; Grady caught her and saved her life. Dearing arrived, wielding the modified SIG SG 552 used to give the Indoraptor kill orders. She and Grady collaborated without needing to speak: she aimed the laser sight at Grady’s chest, commanding the hybrid to kill him. When it pounced, Grady dove directly toward it, passing underneath its leap and causing it to land heavily on the sun roof. This broke the glass, but the Indoraptor managed to save itself from falling and clambered back up to the roof. Grady appeared to have been bested, but Blue had just then caught up to her adversary and distracted it with a cry. She pounced, and their combined weight broke the roof’s metal supports. The Indoraptor landed forcefully on a fossil display and was impaled, dying of its injuries.
Grady and Dearing were reunited with Rodriguez and Webb (who Maisie would be meeting for the first time). Through them, Grady learned of another problem: the dinosaurs in the sub-basement were facing certain death from a hydrogen cyanide gas leak. The gas was leaking due to an explosion that took place during a fight in the lab, during which Dr. Wu had been evacuated; it was this battle that freed Blue and caused the power outage. The only way to save the dinosaurs’ lives would be to release them into the outdoors. Dearing considered doing this, and while Grady strongly cautioned against it, he did not make a move to stop her. She ultimately decided that, while the deaths of all the dinosaurs would be devastating, she could not risk the unpredictability of releasing them into the wild.
To the young Maisie, however, the dinosaurs’ lives were worth the risk, and she took it upon herself to free the animals when Dearing would not. The animals fled the manor. Grady and the others made it outside in time to witness the tyrannosaur stalking off into the woods, Blue lingering nearby. Grady bonded with Blue at long last, and implored her to return to captivity with him; however, she refused this offer in favor of the freedom nature offered. Grady was heartbroken, and Maisie comforted him over his loss.
Life in a changed world
Following the events of June 24, Grady left the Lockwood estate with Dearing and Maisie, acting as the young girl’s guardian along with Dearing. They were seen traveling north along the coast sometime during the evening of June 25 or later. With the animals released and Dearing having violated the law (and the will of the U.S. federal government), Grady’s role as protector was to be tested in unprecedented ways.
The world changed radically over the course of the next few years. The dinosaurs which had escaped into the wild were integrating into the ecosystems where they found themselves, but this was hardly an easy process for anyone involved. And as for the dinosaurs which had been sold, they were around the world in the hands of criminals, as was the technology to clone and modify them. It was not long before this technology was fully open-source and being used the world over to breed new kinds of animals altogether.
With the future uncertain, Grady was concerned about Blue’s fate in particular. She had chosen a life in the wild, and he would respect that, but he did not want to see Blue captured or killed by hunters or poachers. As the early 2020s began, he spent time with Dearing and Maisie traveling around the western United States keeping an eye on Blue, hoping to locate her and find a safe haven where she could live. While not hard film canon, these events are described in the Maisie Lockwood Adventures junior novels in some detail.
A year or so into the decade, Grady had finished building his cabin and settled in with Dearing and Maisie. Blue was living in the woods nearby, mostly keeping to herself; she made occasional appearances, but had wisened up enough to avoid contact with people in the small logging town nearby. Grady’s remote cabin and the surrounding woodland helped to keep Dearing hidden from the government and Maisie away from anyone who might want to exploit her for research. By 2022, her existence was being widely speculated upon in the news, and all kinds of people were interested in finding her. To keep her safe, Grady and Dearing established rules that would keep her away from town; the disused truss bridge down the road from Grady’s property became the limit of Maisie’s world. While she understood the importance behind keeping a low profile, she grew dissatisfied with such restrictions.
Grady, meanwhile, needed to support his makeshift family; with Dearing still wanted by the government, she was unable to work or use the resources that had once been at her disposal, and the underground dinosaur rights movement could only provide her so much support. Using the expertise he had gotten at Jurassic World, Grady got a job with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which was now much in demand for relocating dinosaurs. This had rapidly become more than just protecting people from potentially dangerous encounters. Where there were dinosaurs, there was a demand for the black market, and this drew in poachers. Even if the dinosaurs stayed away from inhabited areas and caused no trouble, the same could not be said for the criminals that followed them, hoping to score big by selling the animals—or even just their meat, hides, and bones. Grady aided the USFWS in safely relocating dinosaurs and apprehending poachers, and was valued by his superiors for his capability in a conflict. At work, Grady was friends with higher-ranking officers Shep Wauneka and Rosa Delgado, and as an introverted man by nature they were just about all the company he needed away from home. He kept his home life separate from work, considering both Dearing and Maisie’s need to stay hidden. Dearing would still go on dinosaur-rights operations with her DPG allies, although the situation was becoming increasingly impossible for anyone to control alone.
All around, the world was growing chaotic. The 2020s were a restless time overall, and with the American government faltering, they were quick to assign responsibility for the dinosaurs to someone else. Biosyn Genetics, a bioengineering corporation that had once been a competitor to InGen, was granted sole collectors’ rights to any de-extinct animals found on American soil, and other countries were following suit. Most of the animals that Grady was able to relocate were housed in temporary state and federal sanctuaries before being shipped to the U.S. Wildlife Relocation Facility in Pennsylvania, their ultimate destination being Biosyn Genetics Sanctuary. Located far away in the Italian Dolomites, the animals would live with minimal human contact there while being studied for biomedical purposes by Biosyn’s scientists.
Behind the scenes, Bryce Dallas Howard has suggested that Owen Grady’s biggest flaw during this time was that he would not “put a ring on it,” although she has also expressed her theory that Grady proposed but Dearing declined marriage in favor of a non-municipal life partnership.
In the early months of 2022, near the end of winter, Grady had his first encounter with a poacher named Rainn Delacourt. On that day, Grady had been at work on horseback alongside Wauneka and Delgado, wrangling a herd of Parasaurolophus in the Sierra Nevadas. These animals were not original InGen stock, having been bred and released into the wild during the past four years by an unknown party. While herding the animals toward sanctuary, one of them broke ranks and headed off, Grady maneuvering his horse to follow. He managed to lasso the dinosaur, but was pulled from his horse; he succeeded in snagging the rope on a sturdy tree stump, tying it off before the huge creature could pull it free. Once the dinosaur had calmed down, Grady remounted his horse and led it back up the ridge, where he rejoined Wauneka and Delgado; the rest of the herd had been moved out.
While bringing the lone parasaur along the river to safety, Grady caught sight of men in the trees nearby. He realized he and his colleagues were being watched by poachers. Delacourt, the apparent leader of the gang, confronted Grady and claimed to be a Department of Fish and Wildlife special agent who had been tasked with collecting and relocating the animal. Grady and his colleagues saw through the obvious lie, but when Wauneka and Delgado revealed themselves to be Fish and Wildlife officers, the confrontation turned into a standoff. Grady’s side was outnumbered and outgunned, but even so, he had a difficult time admitting defeat. He handed the parasaur over to Delacourt, knowing that the animal was now condemned to be slaughtered, its bones ground into powder for alleged folk medicine. Wauneka remarked that this was the first time Grady had ever let a poacher win without a fight. Grady took the loss, unable to admit the real reason he had given up: if he was killed, Maisie would be without a father figure, and he would not let that happen. Delacourt, for his part, assured Grady that their paths would cross again.
After work, Grady happily greeted Maisie, glad to have something less upsetting on his mind. However, he quickly learned from Dearing that Maisie had gone into town on her bicycle again that day; she had made several of these transgressions since moving into the cabin, fed up with her limitations and hungry for a taste of the outside world. Grady was understanding, but agreed with Dearing that they needed to reestablish the rules. Dearing had already tried to impress the importance of staying hidden on Maisie to no avail, so now it was Grady’s turn. That night, he sat by the campfire with Maisie teaching her how to whittle and letting her in on his secret to winning a knife fight: leaving himself vulnerable to a non-fatal injury, so that his opponent was temporarily vulnerable while taking that opportunity, and then using that opening to land a serious attack.
Maisie was impressed, and Grady hoped that this would make it easier to talk to Maisie about her disobedience. As soon as he brought this up, though, Maisie became frustrated again, and Grady unintentionally let his own frustration out too. His brusque and blunt response sent her storming off to her room. As Maisie grew older, she pressed more and more against the rules set out for her, putting her at greater risk. She was not the only one; hunters were common in the woods around the property, meaning Blue was one unlucky day away from becoming a trophy. Grady could not ensure Blue’s safety with her living out in the woods on her own, but he was resolved to keep Maisie away from harm, though he and Dearing knew that their adoptive daughter’s coming-of-age was more complicated than either of theirs could have ever been.
Kidnapping of Maisie and Beta
A few weeks after his first encounter with Rainn Delacourt, Grady looked out his window one morning to see Maisie feeding toast to what appeared to be a juvenile Velociraptor. He rushed outside upon noticing this, and not a moment to soon; Blue emerged from the forest and summoned the juvenile to her side, behaving aggressively toward Maisie. Grady came to Maisie’s aid, getting Blue’s attention and warning her back. He cautioned Maisie not to show fear—if Blue felt as though her daughter was threatened she would not hesitate to use lethal force, and fear might come across as guilt. After a few tense moments, Blue and her daughter departed into the woods.
Although it remained a mystery how Blue had reproduced when no male raptors were around, that was of no consequence to Grady at the moment. He needed to find the nest, and quickly. Hunters were everywhere, and Blue was already on edge with her daughter to protect. It was only a matter of time before she attacked someone, made the news, and drew all kinds of unwanted attention to the area. Maisie wanted to go too, eager to help protect the dinosaurs, but Grady insisted that she stay behind where it was safe. Frustrated again, Maisie stormed off, and Grady went into the woods to track down Blue and her daughter.
After a few minutes he located the nest, but he was not the first to arrive. When he came across it, Beta had been caught in a net trap and was being hauled into the back of a pickup truck by poachers. Blue had been hit by the truck and shoved over a steep embankment, unable to help. As Grady rushed toward the nest, he caught sight of Delacourt in the passenger seat as the truck began to drive away. Delacourt fired his rifle at Grady twice, though he did not hit, and the truck peeled away through the snow.
Grady pursued on foot, taking shortcuts while the truck got onto the dirt road toward the truss bridge. When Grady caught sight of it again, he was horrified to see the truck stopped on the bridge, Delacourt hurling a child’s bike into the river below. There were no children in the area other than Maisie. In an instant it became clear who Delacourt’s real target had been, and why he had been lurking around the cabin.
Rushing back to the cabin, Grady alerted Dearing to the crisis and they both prepared to pursue. Outside, Dearing ran afoul of Blue, and Grady quickly came to her aid; though he had taken his trusted rifle out of the gun safe, he did not use it, extending a hand toward Blue as a gesture of both authority and alliegence. Blue, though she recognized the gesture as one Grady had used dozens of times in I.B.R.I.S., was filled with fury at her daughter’s kidnapping. Grady and Dearing were the only people around that Blue could blame, so they had become the target of her ire. Despite Grady’s attempt at reassuring Blue that he was on her side and trying to help, she did not absolve him of blame; she slashed out at his hand, lacerating his palm. Grady did not back down, knowing that this could trigger Blue’s killer instinct; instead he outstretched his other hand. Blue was not placated, but she did not attack again. Grady promised that he would find Blue’s daughter and return her, and with the claw wound on his palm serving as something akin to a handshake, he was allowed to leave the cabin. Blue left into the woods, presumably to try and track Delacourt herself.
Dearing had allies they could turn to, namely her former DPG comrade Franklin Webb. After a few years of vigilante work, he had been hired by the Central Intelligence Agency’s Dangerous Species Division for his experience with Jurassic World’s information technology systems. His job was far from glamorous or even high-ranking, but he still had intel that would aid them in finding Maisie’s kidnappers. Dearing was well aware of her wanted status within the CIA DSD, but she was willing to come out of hiding for this vital mission, and she contacted Webb as they left Northern California in Grady’s Wagoneer.
Rather than meet at a covert location, Grady and Dearing drove directly to DSD headquarters and met Webb quietly in the courtyard outside. Webb showed them a list of wanted poachers, and Grady was able to identify his target; this was when he learned Rainn Delacourt’s name and criminal history. Delacourt was well-known to the DSD for years of poaching and smuggling, and the CIA had planted an undercover operative named Wyatt Huntley within Delacourt’s gang to gather intel. They had learned that Delacourt was supposed to meet for a cash-for-cargo handoff in Valletta, Malta tomorrow, and the CIA was arranging a sting operation to catch him. There was more: Grady’s old friend Barry Sembène was also on the case. He was now an undercover French Intelligence operative working in anti-poaching operations, and it was he who had set up the sting against Delacourt. Grady wanted to contact Sembène, but neither he nor Huntley could readily be reached by just anyone due to the deep cover they needed to maintain.
Grady and Dearing were willing to collaborate with the CIA and provide their own knowledge and experience for the sting if it meant rescuing Maisie, and since the government had been trying to locate her anyway, the deal was made. At that point, there was no official record of Maisie being seen with Delacourt, but if she was still with him, she would likely be at the exchange in Malta tomorrow. While Grady and Dearing promised Webb that they would only observe and advise, rather than interfere, everyone present knew they were unlikely to keep this promise if Maisie could be rescued.
And so Grady, along with Dearing, took a CIA-sanctioned flight from the United States to Malta, arriving shortly before the exchange was to take place. Meeting with Sembène, the old friends greeted each other warmly, filling each other in on what had happened in their lives since they last saw each other. Sembène informed them that Delacourt had been hired by a broker named Soyona Santos, who was a major player in the underground dinosaur trade. Malta, with its strategic location, allowed her to ship her illegally-obtained animals and products to all corners of the Mediterranean. Neither the French of American intelligence operatives knew what Delacourt’s cargo was for sure, but when the handoff was made shortly, they would arrest everyone involved and discover whether Maisie was there. Sembène brought them to a clandestine entrance to the notorious Amber Clave night market and gained them entry.
Grady tried to look cool and blend in. Any one of the people here might know what happened to Maisie or Beta, and certainly all of them were complicit in terrible acts of animal cruelty, but he could not engage them now or risk losing any opportunity to find his daughter and Blue’s. All kinds of depravity was visible around them: there were live animals for sale in cramped cages, cuts of dinosaur meat on the grill, bone powder and pelts for sale, and worst of all there were dinosaurs being forced into cockfights against each other. Making their way through the black market, they even saw cages containing a kind of huge grasshopper that had become invasive in the American Midwest over the past year.
Grady and Sembène got into position, having spotted Delacourt and Huntley heading up from the harbor. From a vantage point overlooking a hidden alleyway where Santos had a large truck parked, they watched as Delacourt entered the scene. He was told by Santos that the raptor (probably meaning Blue’s daughter) had arrived in “good condition,” but Maisie was nowhere to be seen. Delacourt was offered another job by Santos: the transportation of four Atrociraptors, a stockier relative of the Velociraptor, to Riyadh for double his usual rate. According to Santos, the raptors were trained to kill on command—Grady’s worst fears from Jurassic World had been realized. The animals had been made into living weapons, and his own research had played a crucial role in making it possible.
As Delacourt accepted Santos’s offer, the CIA operatives moved to surround the criminals. Santos’s guards opened fire and the alley turned into a hail of bullets, Delacourt fleeing for his life from the crossfire. With the operatives occupied in the firefight, Grady realized his best chance at finding Maisie was about to slip away. Grady gave chase immediately, pursuing Delacourt through the marketplace. Delacourt tried to slow Grady down with any obstacles he could find, even shooting open the locks on two shipping crates to one side of the market as a last resort. From these crates emerged two immense theropods: a scarred Carnotaurus and a female Allosaurus, which gave enthusiastic snaps at Delacourt and Grady. Delacourt evaded danger by accidentally falling backwards over the railing next to a cockfighting pit, leaving Grady surrounded by the two giant predators. He futilely attempted to hold them off using his raptor-training authority gesture, but this had no effect at all, and Grady realized that he had no way of deterring these animals. Instead he fell back on his secondary theropod survival strategy, simply dive-rolling out of the way as quickly as possible.
Dealing with the escaped theropods would have to wait for the authorities to arrive, and Grady had little care whether any of the black market patrons were harmed. He only had eyes for Delacourt, catching up to the poacher and tackling him into another cockfighting pit. Their landing interrupted a fight that had been about to start between a baby Carnotaurus and a strange mammal-like creature Grady had never seen before, a male Lystrosaurus. A knife fight ensued, Delacourt having lost his sidearm during his fall earlier. The two were almost evenly matched, but Grady’s strategy paid off; while allowing Delacourt to slice at his arm, he was able to land a blow and knock his enemy to the ground. While Delacourt was down, the baby Carnotaurus clamped onto his right hand and began trying to swallow his arm; on the other side, the Lystrosaurus was egged on by the violence and bit Delacourt’s left hand in its powerful beak. Restrained by the small animals and now under Grady’s hunting knife too, Delacourt was beat.
Grady demanded to know where Maisie had been taken, and the agonized Delacourt divulged that they had handed the girl off to Santos. He had no knowledge of Maisie’s current whereabouts, or what Santos wanted her for. Grady, not yet satisfied, made no move to help free him from the attacking animals. A third fighter entered the ring: a juvenile Baryonyx, barely longer than a human was tall, with a prosthetic arm and one blind eye. The carnivore was emerging from the pit Delacourt had originally fallen into, having broken itself free in an effort to chase down what it thought was a fleeing opponent. With Delacourt unable to defend himself, he would be an easy kill. An understanding passed between the two humans in that moment. Rainn Delacourt was going to die, and Owen Grady would do nothing to stop it.
The Baryonyx made its kill as Grady watched. Around the edge of the pit, spectators who had bet on Grady collected their winnings. He paid them no heed, nor the freed animals; he radioed Dearing on his earpiece, alerting her to Santos’s complicity in Maisie’s kidnapping. She was now their best lead. Dearing replied that she had eyes on Santos and was in pursuit. Meanwhile, Grady went to meet up with Sembène, Huntley, and the other operatives.
When the firefight began, Santos’s driver had sped away in the transport truck, but he had been stopped by a spike strip deployed by one of the Americans. The truck had crashed into a boathouse and Santos had ordered the four Atrociraptors released, siccing them on the operatives. Sembène was trapped inside a sailboat, having been assigned as a target to the raptor called Red. The other operatives were dead. Grady, seeing his friend in peril, helped get the boat’s deck hatch open so that Sembène could escape Red’s jaws. The animal was not about to give up, having been trained into relentlessness, and she prepared for a second attack. Grady could not establish authority with this animal, as she already unquestioningly recognized Santos as her alpha, but he did see an opportunity. Behind them was one of the crates the raptors had been transported in. During the I.B.R.I.S. Project, he and Sembène had tricked their own raptors into getting into a truck for transportation by luring them to pounce and dive-rolling away at the last moment. Sembène had never gotten the timing right, but this time his life would depend on it. Grady urgently gave him direction, and Sembène successfully performed the roll as Red pounced. The raptor’s momentum took her into the crate, which Grady sealed shut before she could escape.
Santos returned to the scene of the crime, and Sembène apprehended her before she could flee. Grady heard back from Dearing via his earpiece, learning that she had interrogated Santos and discovered Maisie’s final destination: Biosyn Valley, where the corporation had its headquarters. Somehow Dearing had found a way to get there by air, and advised that he meet her at a disused airfield just north of Valletta. Sembène instructed Grady to go, and he stole a motorcycle from the boathouse to race north. As he exited, Santos sent him a parting gift: using a device concealed in her bracelet, she aimed a laser at Grady and activated an acoustic signal, marking him as a target for two of the other Atrociraptors, Ghost and Panthera.
Everything from I.B.R.I.S. was now turned on its head. Grady was chased through the streets of Valletta by the two animals, raptors that would never heed his commands. To them he was no alpha; he was no more than prey. He maneuvered the motorcycle through the city with the dinosaurs doggedly pursuing no matter what obstacles he put between him and them. He had overheard Santos describe just how relentless these animals had been trained to be. Grady’s only hope of not being caught, killed, and eaten was to flee the island of Malta altogether, and whatever ride Dearing had scored them was his shot at survival.
During the chase through the city Grady witnessed the aftermath of the black market incident: the Carnotaurus and Allosaurus had come out into the open, coming near the Auberge de Castille and cooperating to hunt tourists. As he passed the carnage, Grady had no time to stop and lend a hand, fleeing at speed to escape Ghost and Panthera; if he stopped, they would surely kill him, and the tourists would be at greater risk with even more predators in the public square. Grady raced onward.
Soon he passed the city limits and made his way toward the airfield on the northern coast. There he saw what he presumed to be his target—a beaten-up Fairchild Flying Boxcar painted with the name Midnight Oiler that was speeding up down the runway. He circled around to approach from behind, and the plane’s occupants had the same idea: the cargo hold gate lowered into the open position as the plane’s nose started to rise, and Grade gave his bike a final burst of speed. To one side, Panthera slipped and fell, but Ghost maintained pursuit and pounced after him. He landed in the cargo hold and tumbled to the floor, the bike hitting the rear of the cockpit and then falling backward as the plane lifted off with alarming speed. The stolen motorcycle struck Ghost, causing both animal and vehicle to take a dive into the Mediterranean below.
Dearing was relieved to see that Grady had survived the chaos in Valletta, and it was not until now that Grady himself noticed his knife wound; thankfully it had only scratched the skin, his shirt sleeve taking most of the blade’s impact. He too was glad to see Dearing alive and with no injuries worse than some cuts and bruises. He finally met Dearing’s new ally and his rescuer, an American expat named Kayla Watts, who was familiar with Biosyn Valley. Grady gathered that she was not an official Biosyn pilot, and soon learned that she was a smuggler. She would be able to get them into the valley, but there would be plenty of danger; at first Grady was surprised that she was willing to help people she had only just met, but he knew he and Dearing needed any help they could get. The Midnight Oiler headed north toward the Italian coast as they filled each other in on what they knew.
Despite Grady’s initial misgivings, Watts and her rickety airplane got them safely all the way to Biosyn Valley in good time. They passed southwest over the valley, heading for an airfield on the opposite side from Biosyn headquarters; as they entered Biosyn airspace, Watts contacted the control room and requested permission to land, using a cover story about having perishable cargo on board and in need of immediate unloading. The responding air traffic controller, someone called Denise Roberts, recognized Watts’s voice and denied her permission; Watts threatened to expose embarassing secrets about Roberts to Biosyn’s management, and Denise responded with a threat to take the plane down if Watts did not leave the valley’s airspace. Moments later, an alert reached the cockpit. The Midnight Oiler had been outfitted with an Aerial Deterrent System beacon, which would interact with the neural implants of flying animals to keep them from coming too close, and that beacon had just been turned off.
It did not take long for the valley’s flying inhabitants to realize that their limitations had been loosened. They were quickly flanked by a massive pterosaur which Watts identified as a Quetzalcoatlus; it was so large that Grady initially mistook it for a small aircraft. After giving a warning pass, the animal appeared to move on, but then wheeled around to strike the Midnight Oiler like it would a rival pterosaur. Its claws held fast into the windshield, and using its beak it damaged the wing-mounted engines. As the engines burst into flame, the animal was startled away and released the plane, but there was no recovering the Flying Boxcar now. Watts immediately alerted them to the fact that there was only one ejector seat—the one Dearing was sitting in. Grady was astonished that she had no parachutes otherwise, but Watts retorted that she was not in the habit of carrying passengers.
To Grady, there was only one acceptable option. Dearing would take the ejector seat and escape the crash. She was alarmed at first, knowing he might not survive, but he reassured her that she was Maisie’s best chance at escaping Biosyn’s clutches and talked her through how to use the ejector seat. Telling her that he loved her for what might be the last time, he sent her soaring out of the plane and into the open sky.
He and Watts braced for impact. The plane was unable to gain altitude and was dropping fast, but its momentum would carry it across the remainder of the valley and toward the huge hydroelectric dam at the southwestern end. Watts, fighting with the damaged controls, managed to raise the nose of the Midnight Oiler just enough to clear the top of the dam and avoid a fatal collision, instead slamming into the ice of the alpine reservoir behind it. Frigid mountain water flooded the cockpit, but they were able to escape relatively unharmed thanks to Watts’s quick actions.
The cockpit of the Midnight Oiler was submerged, but the back half was still raised in the air as the bulk of the plane rested on thin ice. They exited via an emergency hatch and made their way down to the lake’s surface, cautiously making their way across the ice toward the power plant entrance. An elevator would take them down to the ground level and hopefully give them a way to reach Dearing. As they slowly crossed the ice, they swapped stories, Grady complimenting Watts’s flying; she described her family’s Air Force legacy, and recounted how she had turned to crime because legitimate contract work did not pay enough for her to support her parents. Watts also admitted that she had seen Maisie being handed off to Santos, and felt guilty about not saying anything at the time. Grady told her about his own time in the Navy, and thanked her for giving up so much to help strangers. Watts, for her part, did not regret it at all, though she admitted to taking this turn of events as a sign that she should give up smuggling for a safer line of work.
They had only made it partway across the frozen reservoir before they heard a commotion. The crash had gotten the attention of an animal—another kind of raptor, this one an island-dweller called a Pyroraptor. It was insulated from the cold by a coat of feathers, and it saw their intrusion into its home as a threat. Grady and Watts stood their ground, preparing for a fight if need be as the dinosaur cautiously approached. Grady made no move to challenge the animal, but knew that if it came to conflict, they had numbers on their side; this creature was alone.
Unexpectedly, as the Midnight Oiler shifted in the ice, a crack opened up and the Pyroraptor saw an advantage. It dove into the water, positioning itself beneath them where Grady’s knife and Watts’s taser would be of no use. The moment either of them stepped onto a weak patch of ice they would be at the predator’s mercy. Both Grady and Watts fled for the dam, the dinosaur keeping pace with them in the icy water below. As he leapt over some disturbed ice, Grady made just the blunder the raptor had hoped for: he landed on thin ice, the impact of his body weight shattering it and plunging him into the water. Seeing its chance, the dinosaur rounded on him as he made for the surface, but it was only thanks to Watts’s quick thinking that he avoided a nasty bite. She hauled him out of the water while standing on firmer ice. Before they could recover, the animal, now infuriated, emerged to pursue over land; they reached the dam just in time, shutting themselves inside the elevator to lock the animal out. Watts hit it with her taser on a low setting, just for good measure.
As they descended in the elevator, Watts brought up her handheld GPS and identified the ejector seat’s tracking beacon some distance away in the valley. They both knew that Dearing was hardly in a safer position than they had just been, having dropped into the heart of Biosyn Genetics Sanctuary where the rehomed dinosaurs were roaming with minimal human interference. Grady and Watts resolved to find her as quickly as they could.
The elevator took them to the ground level and they eventually had to make their way through the forest, though they learned that most of the facilities were connected by underground hyperloop tunnels. After some searching, they located the ejector seat, its parachute torn by claws and suspended high in the branches of a larch. Dearing was nowhere to be seen, but the ferns around the seat were splattered with blood. Grady’s fear was calmed when he and Watts spotted the source of the blood—a lacerated red deer carcass lying on the ground nearby. Although it was a relief to see evidence Dearing had escaped the crash site, they were hardly out of danger yet. A familiar dinosaurian face emerged from the mist-shrouded woods, drawn by the promise of fresh meat. InGen’s first Tyrannosaurus rex, now a venerable thirty-four years old, came to feed while Grady and Watts stayed quiet and unobtrusive. It would be unwise to interrupt her meal.
But as they watched silently, a second theropod appeared. At first Grady thought it was an Allosaurus, but Watts identified this carnivore as a larger relative, the Giganotosaurus. Its size exceeded any other land-dwelling carnivore, even the tyrannosaur. With a mixture of awe and horror, Grady watched as the titanic predator challenged the old tyrannosaur, engaging in an earth-shaking tussle before driving its aging rival away. Triumphant, the Giganotosaurus claimed the deer carcass and stalked off into the woods. Watts brought up a sobering point: these two apex predators had been forced to live together by Biosyn, and if the sanctuary did nothing to intervene, one of them would not be able to survive.
They had crashed during the later afternoon, and by nightfall there was still little sign of Dearing. Grady and Watts trekked northeast, toward Biosyn’s headquarters; that was probably where Maisie was being held by her captors, and Dearing was probably headed that way too. By now, the valley’s nocturnal animals were emerging. Grady knew plenty of the species in the sanctuary (some, like the tyrannosaur, had even come straight from Jurassic World), but already he had seen unfamiliar animals and knew as well as anyone that open-source de-extinction had put an end to comprehensive asset catalogues. There was no telling what they might encounter. Finally, after the sun had set, they approached Research Outpost 04, and there they saw Dearing. She was being investigated by a group of Dilophosaurus, and was too exhausted from her ordeal to defend herself. The carnivores’ alpha was moving in for a kill.
These, thankfully, were a species Grady knew from his training at the park. He acted quickly, restraining the animal by the throat so that it could not expel its venom. While it was startled, Watts took advantage to hit it with her taser, stunning it into submission and saving Dearing. The alpha fled, and its subordinates retreated after it. Grady and Dearing were reunited after a terrifying evening, both overjoyed to see that the other had survived the harsh odds of Biosyn Valley. Now, to continue surviving and to rescue Maisie from the corporation’s headquarters, they needed to find a safer route. The hyperloop tunnels would be the best way, but to access them, they would need to break into Outpost 04.
As they began looking for a tool to break into the outpost, a series of strange phenomena transpired above them. First came a buzzing sound, coming from the direction of headquarters and growing louder. Then came an orange glow, and what appeared to be a cloud of flame billowed in from the northeast. As the burning cloud passed overhead, it began to rain fire, and it became a little clearer what was going on: the cloud was made up of giant locusts, the same kind that had become invasive in the Midwest, and they had been lit aflame somehow. As they swarmed across the sky, they succumbed to the fire and fell to the earth, sparking new fires in the woods. Conditions in the valley rapidly worsened.
Shortly after the wildfires began, a Biosyn-branded Jeep Gladiator rolled into the clearing after having slipped over the edge of an embankment in the chaos. At first the three kept their distance, assuming its inhabitants to be foes, but moments later Dearing heard a voice coming from the wreck—Maisie’s voice. Grady and Dearing rushed to their daughter’s aid, discovering that she had been rescued by three older scientists. All of them had been famed at Jurassic World, names that Grady knew well: the mathematician Dr. Ian Malcolm, the paleobotanist Dr. Ellie Sattler, and the paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant, whose research the I.B.R.I.S. Project at InGen had heavily referenced. Grady and Dearing expressed thanks to the scientists for Maisie’s rescue, but the reunion was to be cut short.
Driven out of the woods by the fire, and now lured into the clearing by the promise of tasty locusts it could snap up as they fluttered to their deaths, the Giganotosaurus appeared. The group of seven humans quickly drew its attention; Grady and Grant simultaneously warned the others not to make any sudden movements. Slowly and cautiously, as the huge animal approached, they moved to the other side of the overturned Gladiator to put an obstacle between them and it. Staying just out of reach of the creature, they got in position to head for the ladder to the outpost’s exterior catwalk; Watts had obtained a crowbar from the Gladiator wreck to pry the outpost door open. She went up the ladder first, and Grady and Dearing urged Maisie to follow closely behind before the dinosaur made its move.
As Maisie was climbing, the animal charged, grabbing onto a protective cage around the upper part of the ladder. Dearing instinctually tried to run and help; Grady had to restrain her, knowing Maisie’s only hope was to move on her own. She was frozen, terrified, in between the dinosaur’s jaws, Watts desperately trying to encourage her up the rest of the way. As the dinosaur pulled at the cage, it came free of the ladder, and for a moment the animal was unable to bite down while the cage was stuck in its teeth. Maisie overcame her shock, made it to the catwalk, and was closely followed by the others. Grady stayed on the ground longest, allowing Dearing to go first, followed by Grant and Sattler. Malcolm was still hiding within the wrecked Gladiator, so Grady followed the rest up the ladder.
Unfortunately the Giganotosaurus succeeded in freeing its jaws at this point, and the outpost was not tall enough to be out of its reach. It aimed for Maisie again, and for a moment, there was nothing anyone could do to stop it from attacking. But then movement appeared to the left: Malcolm had emerged, impaling a burning locust carcass on debris and using it as a makeshift flare. The Giganotosaurus was as distracted as everyone else, turning its attention away from the humans on the platform and approaching Malcolm. Before it could devour him, he hurled the debris like a locust-tipped javelin and stuck it in the back of the theropod’s throat, burning its mouth. Malcolm rushed to join the others, being helped up the ladder by Grant when his bad leg gave out.
Watts had gotten the door open by now, and once again Grady ensured that the others got inside to safety before him. Sattler and Grady came under assault by the now-aggravated dinosaur, which pulled the catwalk apart. As the platform broke beneath them, Grady helped Sattler make it to the door without further harm. Once inside, he tried to reassure the others that they were out of danger, but the expression on Maisie’s face told him this was not yet true. The Giganotosaurus made one last attempt to get at them, forcing its massive head through the glass of the outpost wall; Grady only barely managed to dive out of the way.
A cable snagged around the animal’s lower jaw—and around Dearing’s leg, and as the dinosaur pulled its head back, it inadvertently pulled Dearing to the floor and toward its maw. Grady rushed to her rescue, cutting the cable with his hunting knife and stabbing the dinosaur’s snout. Maisie assisted, tossing Dearing a taser, and Watts pitched in with a well-aimed tranquilizer dart. With this combined assault, the dinosaur gave up, retreating to the woods to find easier prey.
With the immediate danger having passed, the group made more formal introductions. Grady expressed his admiration of Grant, having listened to his book on tape; Grant, too, was familiar with Grady’s work and impressed that he had managed to learn so much about how raptors think. Malcolm, as was his nature, expressed a more critical view of Jurassic World. However, it was Malcolm who was the reason Sattler and Grant were there; he had learned about Biosyn’s complicity in the locust plague, now obvious from the swarm emanating from headquarters after Biosyn’s CEO Lewis Dodgson had apparently tried to incinerate them. Malcolm, who had been working at Biosyn as a lecturer when he learned this, had recruited Sattler and Grant to retrieve evidence. During their escape attempt they had met Maisie, and then Dodgson had deliberately stranded them in the valley to protect himself from exposure.
After they had introduced themselves and patched up their injuries as best they could with the outpost’s medical supplies, they plotted out a course of action. Malcolm had tried to phone for help, but the valley’s landlines and cell service were both down; the wildfires were growing out of control, and between infrastructural damage and heavy stress on the power grid, many of Biosyn’s systems were inoperable. Grady had failed to give his destination to Sembène or anyone else involved in the Malta sting, so no one knew where he and Dearing had gone; it might be days before rescue arrived on its own. Their best bet was to access Biosyn headquarters, as they had originally planned. There Watts would be able to fly them out on any aircraft Biosyn had parked at the helipad. However, the Aerial Deterrent System was among the systems shut down by the power failures, so they would need to reactivate it in order to escape safely. And, of course, they would have to find and rescue Blue’s daughter—who had been brought here too, and named Beta by Maisie.
Maisie had been brought here by Biosyn because they were harboring Henry Wu, who was responsible for creating the giant locusts. Dodgson had released the insects into the wild to test them, but they had proven more fit than Wu had anticipated. Maisie had also learned that she had not been cloned by her grandfather, but instead by Charlotte herself; her mother had not died in a car crash, but of a fatal genetic disorder. She had pioneered a revolutionary cure and treated Maisie to spare her the same fate, but having needed to keep Maisie a secret, she had lacked the resources to make more than one treatment. Wu hoped to use Charlotte’s methods to kill off the locusts, but he had been unable to replicate her research. This was why he had acquired Maisie and Beta: to discover the missing data that Charlotte had left out of her video logs. Hours ago, Maisie had escaped Wu’s lab and freed Beta in the process, so the young raptor was still running around in Biosyn’s headquarters somewhere.
They could not ride the hyperloop to get to headquarters, since the pods were shut down too, so they walked through the tunnels. Along the way Malcolm expressed a morbid interest in Grady’s research, finding it hard to believe he had really trained raptors to obey commands; Grady tried to clarify that he did not train the raptors but rather established himself as a respectable authority figure among them, but Malcolm ended up segueing into a story about a dog he had owned once that humped his leg excessively, and the conversation more or less petered out there.
Biosyn’s headquarters was all but abandoned when they arrived, so there was no difficulty in reaching the control room. From here, overlooking the valley to the southwest, they could see the full extent of the damage the fire was causing. Dearing investigated the nearest operational computer terminal, discovering that Biosyn had ripped the valley facility’s operating system directly from Jurassic World; however, she was unable to reactivate the ADS. At this point, they were joined by Ramsay Cole, the head of Biosyn Communications who had first warned Malcolm about the locust bioengineering program and set the mission against Dodgson in motion. He informed them that the power grid no longer had enough electricity to keep everything running, so the primary system was hoarding all the power in order to keep the most essential functions running. The ADS was not among those systems. Dearing and Dr. Sattler prepared to go to the server room to manually shut down the primary system and reroute power, while Watts went to get a helicopter ready. Maisie identified the area where she and Beta had originally fled after escaping Wu, the water treatment plant on Sublevel 8. Cole gave them directions to it.
Like back at the cabin, Maisie was determined to help locate Beta’s hiding place, and this time Grady did not hesitate to bring her along. He had come to realize that she was more capable than he had given her credit for, and she was no longer so young as to be helpless. Besides, it was she who had first met Beta and now set her free from Biosyn’s clutches. The two of them talked Dr. Grant into joining them, knowing his expertise with raptors could come in handy. The three groups set off on their missions, Dr. Malcolm and Cole coordinating from the control room.
Taking the elevator down to the bottom floor, Grady, Grant, and Maisie discovered signs that Beta had been around. Grant was cautious; it had been over twenty years since his last in-person encounter with raptors but he was clearly not eager for another one. Grady had armed himself with one of Biosyn’s tranquilizer rifles. Soon they came across Beta. She was stressed and aggressive, giving them warning displays and darting around to avoid capture. Grady was unable to get a clear shot with one of the darts. As he tried to aim once more, Maisie rushed forward, using the same hand gesture and voice command she had seen Grady using with Blue to establish authority. Just like with Blue, this fixed Beta’s attention. Grady was impressed at how much Maisie had picked up from him, and advised Grant to mimic Maisie’s gesture. The paleontologist complied, even more astounded than Grady was. Between the two of them, they were able to hold Beta’s focus and keep her from running away. This way, Grady was able to get close enough to line up a good shot at the side of her neck, where the dart would take effect fastest.
At the last second, Beta finally overcame the humans’ authoritative gestures, making a dash for Grant. Grady fired before she could get far, successfully hitting her in the neck with a single dart. She was knocked over by the impact and succumbed to the drug quickly. Grady regretted having to use forceful tactics, but knew there was no other way to safely catch her and bring her home to Blue. He secured her jaws and slung her over his shoulder, leading the group back to the elevator and into the control room.
Everyone else had succeeded in their goals as well. The ADS was once again active, meaning that Watts’s flight would not be interrupted by angry pterosaurs this time. She was on her way with the helicopter now. Grady’s group met up with Dearing’s as they headed for the rendezvous point. As they made their way there, Grady suddenly stopped everyone: he had just spotted movement, and leveled the tranquilizer rifle at a person in the shadows. He did not lower his weapon when he realized it was Henry Wu, the man responsible for this entire fiasco, and who had ordered the kidnapping of Maisie and Beta.
This was not, however, the haughty and egotistical Wu that Grady had known from Jurassic World, nor from having briefly spotted him in Lockwood Manor. This version of Wu seemed different, broken by all he had experienced over the past few years. When Wu asked to be taken with them, he was not demanding but begging. He explained that if he could study samples of Maisie’s DNA, using Beta’s as a control group, he could find the final pieces of the puzzle and rediscover Charlotte’s breakthrough. By applying that concept to the locust swarms, he could save millions of lives from starvation. Despite these claims, Grady and the others were unwilling to accept him until Maisie objected. She told the adults to spare Wu and bring him along, explaining that this was what Charlotte would have done. Wu was indeed responsible for this incident, but he recognized this and wanted to spare others from the harm his mistakes were causing. Grady and the others realized that Maisie was right. They did not have to like Wu, or forgive him, but proving Biosyn’s culpability was only half the battle. Saving the world from famine was the other half, and for that they needed Wu.
Watts radioed in announcing that she would be landing in the courtyard soon. Cole replied, warning her that it was not safe to land here: as per Biosyn emergency protocols, all the animals had been herded using their implants into the bunker within the mountain, and their evacuation route went straight through the courtyard. With the forest outside burning, though, there was no safe place to land outside, so Watts had to take the riskier route. Grady and the others ran out to meet her, avoiding the last of the dinosaurs making their way to shelter.
As they approached, they found their route cut off by one of these dinosaurian stragglers. The old Tyrannosaurus stood dangerously close, and everyone froze in fear. But a moment later, they were joined by another straggler: the Giganotosaurus had entered the courtyard. The two theropods sized each other up. Neither could escape with the courtyard boxing them in. If a fight broke out, and it looked about to, there would be no way to retreat. The giants circled each other and then charged, and the humans scattered to avoid being crushed.
Grady and his allies suddenly became inconsequential, hardly even worth notice, as the titanic predators rammed and bit at each other. Grady stuck close to Dearing, Maisie, and Cole while the four scientists took a different route. At first they managed to avoid the clashing theropods, but as they made their final rush for the helicopter, the tyrannosaur was thrown down by her rival and knocked over a tree-shaped sculpture. The metal sculpture remained propped up, but now the victorious Giganotosaurus was standing right over the group hidden beneath it. If they stayed, the weight of the unmoving tyrannosaur and the bigger carnivore pinning her down might break the metal and crush them. If they ran for the helicopter, there was nothing left to keep the huge predator’s attention off them. Sattler tried to run to their rescue, but Grant held her back, knowing none of them were close to a match for the largest carnivore on land.
Watts intervened to save their lives, firing off a flare across the courtyard. The Giganotosaurus was distracted, following the light as it settled far from the helicopter. Coincidentally, it landed next to a third huge theropod, this one a creature that was essentially the opposite of the tyrannosaur: a herbivore with a small head, long neck, and massive arms tipped with three-foot-long claws. This was a Therizinosaurus, and it accepted the predator’s challenge. Grady and his companions were now free to escape from beneath the tyrannosaur and reach the helicopter safely. With everyone on board, the overloaded craft took to the skies. A storm was rolling in, and they flew from the valley before it struck; rain began to fall and extinguish the flames, and below, the tyrannosaur regained consciousness in time to make one final attack against her enemy and emerge victorious.
The start of a new age
At the Biosyn airfield just outside the valley, the group was finally able to reach help. The authorities had arrived by morning, first the Italians and then the international community. Grady helped to fill in what had happened since he and Dearing had vanished from Malta, how Watts had sacrificed so much to aid him and Dearing, and how Maisie convinced them all to rescue Wu so that he could prevent the locust swarms from reaching apocalyptic proportions. The numerous injuries they had all received over the course of the last few days were treated, and their story was told to reporters who arrived on the scene.
Those who escaped the valley earned their happy endings. Sattler had her DNA sample stolen from Biosyn’s labs, which would be compared to a sample she had taken from a wild locust in Texas. Scientists could confirm that they bore the same signs of genetic modification, proving that Biosyn was behind the plague. She and Grant reignited their long-lost love after many years apart, too. Cole also provided evidence against Biosyn in the form of eyewitness testimony to the corruption that had festered under Dodgson in the executive ranks, which Malcolm corroborated. Even Dr. Wu was able to find hope, since Maisie and Beta finally gave him the data he needed to replicate Charlotte’s work. After they were all brought back to the United States, he was able to finish his gene delivery mechanism and modify the locust swarms, causing their populations to plummet and sparing the world from famine. Watts was able to put her life of crime behind her, and was compensated by Biosyn enough to have her plane rebuilt. The sanctuary would stay open, with the United Nations taking on a supervisory role to discourage future corruption and ensure the humane treatment of the animals.
And as for Grady, Dearing, and Maisie, some part of their troubles were over. Their relationship was on the mend, with Maisie having seen firsthand not just what kind of threats were out in the world but also the lengths her parents would go to in order to keep her safe from harm. Grady and Dearing, for their part, had also seen how Maisie was growing up to become confident, capable, and empathic—much like her parents. She was also able to take after Charlotte, having learned about her mother from those who knew her in person. The world now knew about Maisie, but the role she and her family played in preventing a global crisis meant that the government was indebted to them; the three were allowed to remain together, returning to their cabin in the mountains. There was no need for Maisie to hide from the public any longer, so her world was about to grow. Grady would still always protect her, she was getting older and more mature. Like with Blue, she would want freedom as she became more independent. Grady now understood that, like with Blue, he would need to come to terms with the fact that she really did deserve it, too.
And speaking of Blue, there was one last wrong to right. Grady and his family were able to bring Beta back to the United States, rather than keeping her in Biosyn Genetics Sanctuary. How they managed this remains unknown (one can imagine that the authorities would have been against it, but fortunately Grady had recently made a friend who specialized in smuggling dinosaurs). They drove out into the woods in the low Sierras, letting Beta out to call her mother. After a short time she got a reply. Blue, having never gone far despite the length of time Grady had been away, came out of the forest and reunited with her daughter at last. The raptors headed into the wild, but before Grady started to drive away, Blue came briefly back to give him a look that might have been gratitude. It was, at the very least, a look of understanding. Peace was between them again.
The world has, since the events of 2018, drastically changed. For better or worse hardly matters any longer, because the change cannot be undone, no matter how many dinosaurs are captured and moved to sanctuary. Grady knows this better than anyone, and while he historically stayed out of world affairs, the events of 2022 demonstrated to him that the world’s affairs will come for him one day too. He knows better than to isolate himself now, and with both Dearing and Maisie wanting to be involved with the wider world, they will remain a positive influence on him. He, in turn, will always bear the reminder that the world is far larger than them and they do not have the power to change everything. But, so long as they stick together and learn to adapt, there is little they cannot overcome.
Skills
Animal handling and training
Grady is an animal behaviorist by trade, having learned his skills through the United States Navy’s Marine Mammal Program. There, he worked not only with the intelligent and social bottlenose dolphin, but with other cetaceans such as whales, pinnipeds such as seals and sea lions, and even non-mammalian animals such as sharks. His three years of experience here gave him valuable insight into how non-human animals think and perceive their world. It was for this reason that he was selected to head InGen Security’s I.B.R.I.S. Project, which sought to understand these same things about theropod dinosaurs. During this project, Grady raised multiple dinosaurs from the egg to adulthood, becoming a parental figure in their lives.
Between early 2012 and late 2015, Grady worked not only with the raptors but with most of the species present on Isla Nublar. The only known exception to this was the Indominus rex, which was restricted to all but a few employees; Grady was actually unaware of this creature, though its existence was not a secret. He worked with herbivorous animals as well as carnivores, with some of his subjects including Sinoceratops and Stygimoloch, which were not yet ready for park exhibition as of 2015. The Jurassic World Employee Handbook includes annotations from Grady which provide further examples of his knowledge of the park’s creatures. He is able to read the body language of most animals very well, using this to determine whether they are safe to be around; in the case of intelligent animals, this may change from moment to moment, making Grady’s ability to analyze their behavior a crucial factor in being safe around the animals.
His best subjects, and those about which he knows the most, are naturally the Velociraptors. Basing his studies on research performed by scientists such as Dr. Alan Grant and Billy Brennan in decades past, Grady has become one of the world’s leading experts on Velociraptor intelligence, cognition, and behavior. His success at understanding and training these animals is unrivaled. Grady has achieved this through not attempting to control the raptors, but rather seeking a relationship based on mutual respect, in which he makes efforts to empathize with his charges and understand their motivations. Having discerned the complexities in their communications and social behavior, he appeals to their nature in order to encourage the behaviors he wants to see. This is often misinterpreted by his colleagues, which frustrates him; he dislikes being referred to as a “raptor wrangler” or hearing the animals described as “trained” or “controlled.” He is the first to remind others that raptors are not domesticable and remain wild animals, no matter how close a partnership their handlers may have with them. In Jurassic World: Evolution, he acknowledges that some dinosaurs may be domesticated eventually, but that this is not a quick or easy process by any means.
When in tight situations, he has been able to use his understanding of animal cognition to help himself and his allies. Along with giving commands to I.B.R.I.S. Velociraptors (and using his knowledge of their behavior to protect against them when they rebelled), he was able to quickly learn about the cognition of the Indominus and predict its behaviors on the fly. He has also used other animals to his advantage, such as provoking a Stygimoloch into freeing himself and his companion Claire Dearing from a makeshift prison in the 2018 incident. When he encounters unfamiliar animals, he can reference the behavior of animals he knows to better predict how they might act.
Tracking
Along with his other outdoor survival skills, Grady is a skilled tracker. He has used evidence left by both animals and humans to follow their trails through uneven and unfamiliar terrain, particularly in dense jungles where tracking is not easy. He is skilled at spotting tracks such as footprints and discerning what creature made them as well as the animal’s behavior at the time. Contrary to Claire Dearing’s assumption early in their relationship, he cannot track animals or humans by scent with any particular efficiency, though he does have the knowledge necessary to disguise his own scent from his quarry.
Weapons skill
As a former sailor with the United States Navy, Grady has experience using firearms and other weapons. During his employment at Jurassic World, his weapon of choice was a scoped Marlin Model 1895 SBL lever-action rifle, which was selected due to its potential to bring down a rogue raptor. He carries a custom hunting knife at all times, though this is more often used as a tool than a weapon. If it is his only option, though, he does know how to use it effectively; his preferred strategy in a knife fight is to let his enemy land a non-critical strike and use their momentary vulnerability to cut something vital. He employed this against Rainn Delacourt with success during the 2022 Valletta incident; Grady did not have a firearm as he had flown internationally to get there and was traveling with a wanted criminal, and Delacourt had lost his sidearm during a chase, so they were both down to knives when it came to a physical fight. While Grady typically does not carry a tranquilizer gun, he has shown that he is more than capable of using the custom semi-automatic multi-dart tranquilizer rifles that InGen’s Asset Containment Unit carried in Jurassic World, as well as the more conventional DANiNJECT JM used by Biosyn Genetics. During the 2018 incidents, Grady variously armed himself with a 9mm SIG-Sauer P226R and SIG SG 552 obtained from deceased mercenaries.
In all cases, Grady is demonstrably highly skilled with firearms against even fast-moving targets, and once assisted ACU in downing several escaped Pteranodons and Dimorphodons. His preferred lever-action rifle was specifically chosen for neutralizing a rogue Velociraptor, another fast-moving animal with noted evasive abilities. While Grady has not had the need to do this yet, he was able to tranquilize a juvenile Velociraptor, though her high speed necessitated that she be slowed down by distractions before he could land a successful hit. He has taken up arms against the hybrids Indominus rex and Indoraptor without success, as these animals’ tough hides make them resistant to firearms.
Physical strength and tactical skill
Grady’s Navy training has led him to develop impressive physical strength and hand-to-hand combat skills. He has excellent endurance, speed, agility, and dexterity which help him out of dangerous situations. Grady is usually able to survive combat without serious injury thanks to his tactics and physical ability. He can improvise during a fight to overpower an enemy without sustaining too many serious blows himself. In addition, Grady is good at creating diversions to confuse his enemies and make them easier to overpower. This was used to great effect during the 2018 incident at Lockwood Manor, in which he released a Stygimoloch to sow chaos and slip effortlessly through a large crowd peppered with armed guards. Since the panic made him harder to spot, he was able to take multiple guards by surprise, taking each one down before the others knew he was there.
Along with giving him the edge in close combat, Grady’s strength allows him to evade large threatening animals that he may not be able to fight off. He has used this to avoid being harmed on a number of occasions during his employment at Jurassic World as well as later incidents involving de-extinct life forms, as well as artificial hybrids such as the Indoraptor. He is also a highly capable swimmer and can hold his breath for long periods of time, an essential skill for a Navy sailor. His Navy training also taught him how to resist hydrothermia, a form of hypothermia caused by frigid water. This gives him better endurance in cold-water conditions than the average person, a critical ability for any sailor and a skill all American Navy personnel are taught.
Grady’s athletic ability helps him out in life aside from simply being useful in emergencies. As of 2018, he was constructing a small homestead by hand, and had made significant progress; he had completed this by 2019. Prior to having Claire Dearing and Maisie Lockwood move in with him, he had been cutting the wood himself and performing nearly all the construction without outside help.
Driving and boating
As of 2022, Grady possesses a valid U.S. driver’s license. While on Isla Nublar working for InGen Security, his preferred vehicle was a 2015 Triumph Scrambler motorcycle, registered in June 2014 to the state of California with license plate 9Z9982 (in 2021 it was registered in August for unknown reasons). Grady is skilled at driving through rough conditions and even offroad in forested environments. He also owned a second bike as of 2015, a Baja Motorsports MB200; it is unknown whether he still possesses it. During the 2015 incident, he showed proficiency at driving a 2014 Mercedes Benz G 550 and a Kawasaki Brute Force 750, the latter of which he could drive with a passenger without any trouble. During the 2018 incident, he briefly drove a Mercedes Benz Unimog U 5020. Grady is able to drive vehicles with manual transmission. He is also a skilled mechanic and repairs his own vehicles.
He owned a trailer attachment in 2015 which he used for part of his living quarters on Isla Nublar, but on the mainland, he instead owned a 1985 Airstream 270 that he lived in for some years after the closure of Jurassic World. He also owned a 2003 Chevrolet Silverado as of 2018, which appeared to be his main form of transportation; after the 2018 incident he was seen driving a 1989 Jeep Grand Wagoneer with California license plate 3PC1438, though it is unclear if he had owned this vehicle previously or obtained it after the incident. It was most recently seen registered in August 2021. The Wagoneer is still his primary vehicle, although he also owns a modified 1970s-era camper called “Pumpkin.”
As of 2018, he owned a small boat with outboard motor, suggesting that he has a California Boater Card and therefore license to operate a personal watercraft.
During the 2022 Valletta incident, Grady stole a 2018 Montesa 4Ride which he drove over city streets while being pursued by trained attack animals. During this chase he showed excellent control despite this vehicle being unfamiliar to him; the chase saw him dodge oncoming traffic, navigate tight spaces, drive over uneven terrain, and finally make a short jump into an open airplane cargo hold; this final stunt was the only one during which he actually fell. During all of these feats he managed to stay just barely ahead of his pursuers.
Skill with children
While Grady once professed to be a loner and not a family man, there were always clear signs that he has skill with children. During the 2015 incident in Jurassic World, he was instinctively protective of seventeen-year-old Zach Mitchell and eleven-year-old Gray Mitchell; in fact, as soon as he learned from Claire Dearing that two children were potentially in danger, he dropped everything he was doing for a chance to rescue them. He quickly won the boys’ respect for his capability and amicable personality, with the older Zach Mitchell referring to him as a “badass.”
Three years later, during the 2018 incident at the Lockwood estate, Grady’s love of animals won the trust of the traumatized nine-year-old Maisie Lockwood, who reasoned that if Grady cared about animals then he must be a trustworthy person. In contrast to the tough and heroic side he presented for the Mitchells, Grady showed a more tender and caring side to Maisie, demonstrating that he can adapt his behavior to the needs of different children. Since 2018, he has acted alongside Dearing as Maisie’s guardian, a position he willingly took up less than an hour after meeting her. While he considered himself a father figure to his animals for much of his career prior to this, it is clear that Grady makes an excellent parent to children of the human variety as well, even if he took time to admit it.
Of course, caring for a child in the long term is quite different than doing so for a couple hours, and as Maisie has grown older they have had their struggles together. Grady tries to be the “fun” parent, but is not as skilled with empathic discipline; this is done quite differently with humans than with animals. He finds it difficult to explain the reasons behind rules to Maisie, which is a source of conflict between them. Things seem to be improving after the 2022 incident, in which he was forced to admit that she was growing up to be quite capable and skilled—traits that he had helped to cultivate.
Language
Grady’s first language is American English, but his close friend Barry Sembène’s first language is Parisian French; it appears that Grady has learned French from his friend. Grady has a thorough understanding of spoken French, though he does not appear able to speak it himself. His service in the U.S. Navy and time working on the Costa Rican island of Isla Nublar may have helped him with other languages, such as Spanish, which is commonly spoken in Central America. According to Jurassic World: The Game, Grady is fluent in Morse code, likely due to his time in the Navy.
In addition to the above, Grady has a more detailed understanding of Velociraptor communication than almost any other researcher due to his work with InGen’s IBRIS program. Some scientists, including the vertebrate paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant, consider the vocalizations and body movements used by Velociraptor to constitute a legitimate language, among the most advanced of all non-human animals.
Singing
While it is not a skill he practices around other people, Grady is a good singer. In 2018, he was heard singing a blues song of his own composition.
Crafting
As discussed above, Grady is a skilled craftsman, having constructed a cabin mostly by himself and regularly performing maintenance on his vehicles. He is also good with a knife in many ways, especially when working with wood. He is an expert whittler.
Social skills
Grady is sometimes considered to have an antisocial personality. In reality, though, he is introverted but not antisocial by any means; he avoids large crowds when possible but actually welcomes the company of others should they need him. He works well with others, even those he does not necessarily get along with, though he has difficulty with authority. Grady compensates for his authority problems with presentation of his skills, which he uses to earn the respect of those who outrank him. In some cases, his abilities lead to his superiors viewing him as an equal.
At times, Grady can become frustrated with society and withdraws into himself. He has described humans in general as “overrated,” and when he is in these moods he prefers the company of animals. Despite this, it does not take much to get him into a friendly mood again; he is quickly cheered up, for example, by someone showing appreciation for his skills and contributions.
Grady often changes his demeanor based on the people he is around, though it always retains a sense of traditional masculinity. As discussed under his skill with children, his two main presentations are the cool, unfazed hero-figure and the protective, loving father-figure, but he can present himself in whatever way is needed to best get along with present company. Conversely, he can present himself to appear dominant over a person that he does not like; this was one of the major sources of conflict between Grady and the hunter Ken Wheatley, who immediately disliked one another upon meeting. Based on the situation and the people around him, Grady’s personality shifts to bring out traits that best serve him, which probably occurs subconsciously to some degree. In any case, it helps him win friends quite quickly, as well as establish himself to his enemies. He wears his heart on his sleeve, making his feelings about others known right away. Despite claiming not to like people, he actually does appreciate the company of most of the people he knows; he really only dislikes those who do things he finds morally objectionable, such as abuse animals or people.
Views
Political views
Grady is firmly apolitical, generally not choosing to take sides where he does not have to. Whether this is out of a disinterest for issues that do not concern him or a desire to be liked and not rebuked for his beliefs has yet to be seen. Regardless, it means that Grady ends up supporting the status quo more often than not; he does not refer to himself as a conservative, but his inaction in political debates leads to him defaulting to the conservative side of a controversy. However, this is not a universal condition. Sometimes, when a conservative agenda challenges the status quo (such as exploiting new animal species for military purposes), he supports the liberal side of the argument.
He opposed the creation of new types of organisms in Jurassic World, believing that dinosaurs on their own should impress people enough to support the park indefinitely. Curiously, he was simultaneously unaware of the park’s impending financial concerns and the existence of the Indominus, both of which were widely known among the park’s senior staff. Grady’s tendency to remain out of the loop may have an impact on, or be influenced by, his apolitical stance. He is not above changing his mind about an issue, though. For example, he initially supported the non-action policy regarding Mount Sibo, even if it meant letting Blue perish in a volcanic eruption; he recanted on this after reminiscing on raising Blue and admitting to himself that he really did still care about her. He deflected any mention of his change of heart, however, suggesting that he prefers not to be thought of as someone who changes his mind.
Although he tends to be on the conservative side of the political spectrum through virtue of choosing an apolitical worldview, he often befriends people with more liberal views. His romantic partner Claire Dearing initially held moderate-left views which have shifted farther left over the years, while he has made friends such as Franklin Webb and Zia Rodriguez, both of whom are environmental activists. Rodriguez is by a wide margin the most liberal of his friends, but the two still have a respectful relationship. On the other hand, mercenary hunter Ken Wheatley quickly became Grady’s enemy, and holds much farther-right views than Grady. He also held a strong dislike toward his superior at Jurassic World, Vic Hoskins, who was best known for his zealous patriotic fervor for the United States, as well as the ruthless capitalist Eli Mills.
Over time, Grady’s experiences have shown him that he cannot be politically isolationist forever, either. He prefers to stay out of world events, but they have a way of reaching him one day or another, and as of 2022 he has firmly been taught that it is better to know what is happening out in the world so as to be ready to face it when it comes knocking. Now that he has a family to protect, it is important for him to keep this in mind, and not isolate himself as he has sometimes done before.
On de-extinction
Despite working directly with de-extinct animals, Grady’s views toward de-extinction tend to be neutral at best. He genuinely loves the animals he works with and treats them with the utmost respect, and considers dinosaurs to be inherently impressive creatures, but was opposed to further integrating them into modern life. This was originally limited to his opposition to Hoskins’s militarization plans, which sought to use Velociraptor and other de-extinct species as military animals as well as genetically engineer even more suitable creatures of war. Grady dismissed this idea as dangerously myopic and foolhardy.
After the deaths of all but one of his raptors, his separation from the sole survivor Blue, and the permanent closure of Jurassic World, Grady turned impossibly neutral toward de-extinction. Not only did he show no interest in protecting the dinosaurs from an impending natural disaster, he would not even endorse other organizations doing so. Claire Dearing ultimately did change his mind and persuaded him to help them rescue Blue; it appears his opposition had come from a place of emotional hurt, rather than morality. They were both tricked, however, and Blue ended up in the hands of a criminal enterprise; at this point, Grady regretted his part in removing Blue from the island. He sought to stop the black market auction at the Lockwood estate, but whether his primary concern was dinosaurian or human safety was never brought up. Later, he advised Dearing to allow the remaining de-extinct animals to die of hydrogen cyanide poisoning rather than let them go free into Northern California, but also would not have stopped her from releasing them. When he was reunited with Blue, he urged her to return to captivity with him in a reversal of his actions at the end of the 2015 incident; she rejected his offer, which saddened him, but he did not pursue her.
Grady’s complicated relationship to de-extinction is probably the reason why he has a difficult time taking a stance on issues such as these. With the status quo in regards to de-extinction so rapidly changing, Grady finds it a challenge to keep his opinions up-to-date, and for a time seemed content to allow nature to take its course or for people he trusted to make the right decisions. However, in more recent times, he has begun actively helping capture and relocate dinosaurs that are struggling to acclimate to the continental United States where they now live. He is firmly opposed to efforts to exterminate the animals, now considering them fully deserving of protection, but also understands that certain species or individual animals are unable to adapt and need special treatment. Others are living where poachers can easily harm them, or where they could potentially harm people, and so also need to be secured and humanely housed somewhere else. While he is still neutral on de-extinction as a whole, he has shifted from simply letting events occur to taking part in protecting both the human and animal sides of the equation from harm they might cause each other.
On genetic engineering
Grady’s view of genetic engineering on the whole tends to be negative, meaning that his neutral view of de-extinction is an exception rather than the norm. This may be because while de-extinction is fairly well understood by most people with basic knowledge of DNA, the more complex aspects of genetic engineering may be lost on those without higher scientific education. All of the animals at Jurassic World were genetically modified, an unavoidable aspect of their creation; Grady appeared to take no issue with raising such animals. His favorite raptor, Blue, was actually named after a feature she obtained via genetic modification: her distinctive blue stripes, which are the result of gene splicing with the black-throated monitor (Varanus albigularis microstictus). Grady has never complained about genetic engineering where it was a necessary part of de-extinction, I.B.R.I.S., or other aspects of Jurassic World where he worked.
Grady’s issues with genetic engineering originate from areas where he personally finds it unnecessary, starting with the creation of artificial genera. Thanks to advancements in genetic engineering techniques, Dr. Henry Wu discovered how to construct organisms that never would have existed in nature. Beginning with flowering plants in 1997, he eventually was permitted by Masrani Global Corporation to engineer a new animal species for Jurassic World. In 2012, he hatched two members of a new theropod species called Indominus rex. Grady did not learn about the existence of this species until December 2015, at which point he opposed it, claiming that the naturally-occurring species of dinosaurs should be enough to continue impressing visitors indefinitely. The Indominus, however, was not actually intended to be a park attraction in the end; it was instead a proof-of-concept for military bioengineering, which further opposed Grady to the creation of such organisms. This was also a factor in this immediate fear of the Indoraptor in 2018, which was explicitly made to be a military animal and was trained to kill. His stance on Wu’s other hybrid species, such as the conceptual Stegoceratops, have yet to be seen. His commentary on the hybrid locust which became invasive globally in 2022 has also not been deeply explored but is presumably negative due to the damage it was notorious for causing.
On nature
As an avid outdoorsman, Grady takes a more conservative, down-to-earth view of nature than some of his colleagues. He does not view it as a separate entity distinct from himself, but rather a set of relationships in which he is a participant. Unlike his former superior Vic Hoskins, he does not view nature as a state of perpetual warfare, recognizing some of the relationships as being mutually beneficial rather than violent or exploitative. His work as an animal behaviorist has led to a well-developed empathy with other species, but also a tendency to anthropomorphize. In order to better understand an animal’s motives, he aims to adjust his point of view, but in doing so he also assigns more human-like traits to an animal’s cognition. This was illustrated with his interpretations of the Indominus rex‘s behaviors, which he described in very human terms. He also assumed that this animal had a far more precise ability to predict human behavior than is reasonable, not even considering more plausible reasons for the hybrid’s actions.
Grady’s opinions on genetic engineering may be linked to his view of nature. Since genetically engineered animals are not a part of the natural ecology, they do not “belong” in the traditional sense, and so Grady opposes their integration into the world. Genetically modified versions of organisms that did once exist naturally are a more conflicting topic; he has had good relationships with de-extinct creatures in the past, even those that have been extensively modified from their original versions such as Velociraptor. He described them as worthy of protection in 2015, but then in 2018 opposed protecting them if it meant interfering with ecosystems outside Isla Nublar. He did not attempt to actively stop the Dinosaur Protection Group‘s mission, instead cautioning against it; he even assisted them when his emotional connection to the animals he had worked with overpowered his views on nature. He has consistently opposed the creation of new species through genetic engineering and actively participated in efforts to kill two such animals. He also firmly opposes the breeding of animals for specifically military purposes, considering this to be a risky endeavor and a perversion of evolution.
In general, Grady’s relationship to nature can be described as one between neighbors. He lives alongside other creatures of the world, preferring not to interfere more than necessary, but acknowledging that his life will inevitably affect them and vice versa. Grady understands that it is impossible for humans to separate themselves from the rest of the natural world and are a part of it whether they like it or not, though he discourages unneeded or excessive exploitation in the name of scientific and economic progress. Grady idealizes living in peace with nature, a goal which he personally accomplishes through simple living.
On military topics
Although he has a background in the U.S. Navy and greatly benefits from his combat training, Grady does not openly support the ongoing American foreign wars. He has not openly opposed them either, but he does strongly oppose the “state of perpetual warfare” concept that his former superior Vic Hoskins endorsed. The United States is known globally for its hesitance to end armed conflict and occupation of sovereign nations, particularly in the Middle East, out of a combination of resource control and Western supremacy politics. Grady’s politics are in general non-interventionist, so it stands to reason that he does not support an extended American military presence in other countries. Although he used to isolate himself from other people when in a mood, he has never been a cultural isolationist, having made good friends from other countries; in this manner he does support international relationships although he does not endorse warfare.
Grady explicitly opposes the expansion of military animals. While humans have made use of other species in warfare for thousands of years, and Grady himself worked in the U.S. Navy’s Marine Mammal Program, he does not support the inclusion of new animals into war. He has consistently opposed military bioengineering, a field of military science that has made significant advancements in the Genetic Age. This stems from his support of animal welfare, since military animals are often subject to trauma, physical harm, and abuse, and creating species of animals for nothing other than military use would destine them for a lifetime of psychological torment.
On gender roles and family
In line with his generally apolitical-conservative views, Grady behaves in a manner consistent with the traditional Western standards of masculinity and expects that people around him consider these standards normal. His skills are largely those considered masculine in Western society, such as construction, vehicle repair and maintenance, marksmanship, and combat. Grady’s idea of masculine behavior also encompasses empathy, a trait that some modern-day conservatives no longer consider manly. Grady’s empathic traits make him an effective leader and father figure, and he clearly takes pride in his paternal nature, even if these traits are dismissed by some. Grady is fully confident in his ability to perform what he considers manly, and that includes caring about others.
He has a sense of chivalry which can sometimes come across as demeaning or patronizing, especially by people who themselves prefer a sense of independence. This was one of the main sources of conflict between himself and Claire Dearing. While he is undeniably attracted to Dearing, their competing dominant traits often clash, which ended their relationship once.
During the events of late 2015, Grady and Dearing cooperated to handle various crises that affected Jurassic World. This challenged Grady’s view on gender roles, since Dearing refused to be left out of the events. He was impressed at her ability to improvise and react to rapidly-changing circumstances, having assumed that she was suited only for office work and would not be useful in survival situations. These events rekindled his interest in her, and they began dating after the incident. His romantic relationship with Claire Dearing has resulted in him exploring his preferences more, and he has since discovered that he does find assertive and protective traits very attractive in women. As of such, Grady’s adherence to traditional gender roles has changed in the years following the 2015 incident. He still practices the traditionally manly behaviors that he has always favored for himself, but has become less liable to impose gender roles on other people; this has made his relationship with Dearing easier, and helped him become friends with younger and more feminist women such as Zia Rodriguez.
Today, he and Dearing are in a long-term romantic relationship, though they are not married as of 2022. Behind-the-scenes suggestions differ as to whether Grady has proposed yet or not. He and Dearing have a much more harmonious relationship now than they did before 2018, both of them having matured and grown as people over the years, and are now cooperating to raise the orphaned Maisie Lockwood as their own child. While the younger Owen Grady expected that everyone would conform to what he considered normal gender roles, the current-day Owen Grady has no such expectations, and has been known to encourage Maisie to pursue skills not typically presented to young girls (such as how to use a hunting knife, even going so far as to give her pointers on how to defeat an opponent in a fight).
Dietary preferences
Grady enjoys his alcohol and has stated a preference for Sunrio tequila. He has also been seen drinking Beck’s Domestic Pilsner. He owns fishing equipment and prefers to live near lakes, suggesting that he catches and eats his own fish; it is likely that, considering his background and skill with firearms, he hunts as well as fishing. His annotations in the Jurassic World Employee Handbook imply that he enjoys falafel and soda, while Jurassic World: The Game states that he enjoys piña coladas as well as staple breakfast items such as bagels and coffee, and is also skilled at foraging for food in the wild. In the game Jurassic World: Evolution 2, he directly states corn dogs with mustard to be not only his favorite food, but his second-favorite thing after providing dinosaurs with the care they deserve. He also states in several pieces of dialogue a strong preference toward meat in his diet. However, with Claire Dearing ensuring that he keeps the kitchen well-stocked with a variety of food items and ingredients, he has a properly diverse diet.
Because of his preference for an outdoor way of life, Grady is naturally skilled at preparing meals outside of a kitchen environment. He commonly cooks and grills outside. During some nights he and his family roast marshmallows.
Relationships
Barry Sembène
Owen Grady’s closest friend as an adult, who he met while in the Navy, is Barry Sembène. The two men share similar views about the military and animals’ roles in human society, as well as having a shared interest in animal training. Sembène’s personality is more level and calm, providing a good foil to Grady’s reactive behavior.
In 2013, when Grady was roughly a year into the I.B.R.I.S. project, he trusted Sembène to join him and better manage the raptors. That Sembène was his first choice for secondary animal trainer and caretaker speaks volumes about the kind of trust that Grady has for his friend; InGen could have linked him to any animal trainer in the world. Their success with the raptors prior to the 2015 incident, and their cooperation during that incident, clearly demonstrate how well these friends work together. During the incident, Grady intervened to save Sembène from the enraged Blue, and later ensured that his friend had gotten proper medical treatment once the events had concluded.
The events after the fall of Jurassic World made it difficult for them to see each other often. Grady spent a period in depressive isolation after the deaths of three out of his four raptors and his separation from the one survivor, and then once he was gotten out of his funk, he was forced to keep a low profile to protect his family. Sembène, meanwhile, has a job working undercover in anti-poaching operations for French Intelligence. However, the two men remain the best of friends, even if they see each other less. After the events of early 2022, during which Grady and Sembène cooperated to track down the kidnapped Maisie Lockwood, Grady no longer needs to keep his family hidden and can be readily contacted again, so it will be easier for Sembène to visit in between assignments.
Claire Dearing
Grady first met Claire Dearing, the Senior Assets Manager and Operations Manager of Jurassic World, sometime after his introduction to the I.B.R.I.S. project in 2012. They had little in common, and Dearing considerably outranked Grady in the Masrani Global hierarchy. Nonetheless, they became attracted to one another during their employment and went on a date at some point between 2012 and 2015. Grady’s relaxed idea of a date conflicted with Dearing’s more structured one, and he dismissed her as uptight and controlling. Likewise, Dearing disliked Grady’s casual approach and unprofessional demeanor. Grady still harbored an attraction to Dearing, which he was not shy about and played up when they worked on projects together. His trouble with authority figures almost certainly played a role in their disagreements, as did his view on traditional gender roles, which typically places higher scrutiny on women in positions of power. Grady certainly did place more scrutiny on Dearing than any of his other superiors, such as Simon Masrani and Vic Hoskins, or on equally high-ranking InGen members such as Dr. Henry Wu. Grady eventually did criticize Wu and Hoskins for their roles in creating the Indominus, but was always vastly more skeptical of Dearing’s leadership qualifications, and never once criticized Masrani even though Dearing and Masrani had equal responsibility in permitting the Indominus to exist with minimal oversight.
During the 2015 incident, Dearing turned to Grady for help locating her nephews and later cooperated with him to reduce the loss of life in the park. At first, Grady blamed Dearing for the escape of the Indominus, not assuming any responsibility for the incident even though the escape was technically his own fault. He dismissed her as uncaring and cold, though over the course of the day he came to empathize with her and understand her behaviors better. Grady soon came to realize that Dearing was more caring than she appeared and had the determination to protect those she loved, and likewise Dearing quickly grew to appreciate Grady’s field skills. Their feelings for one another grew into a psychological attraction rather than just a physical one, reaching a point where Grady impulsively kissed Dearing after she protected him during the incident. They entered into an official relationship after losing their jobs, which conveniently removed the power dynamic between them.
Their first official relationship did not go well for long. The adrenaline-filled incident that brought them together was no longer ongoing, and their personalities began to clash again. Grady’s traditionally masculine behaviors had their appeal, but they conflicted with Dearing’s own dominant personality and need for control over her side of the relationship. This conflict, probably along with Dearing’s increasing political activism, drove them apart. Still, Dearing had helped him learn more about himself and what he liked in relationships; he came to realize that while he was comfortable with traditional gender roles, they were not a necessity. Broadening his horizons ultimately allowed him to have more mature and fulfilling relationships by allowing both himself and his partner greater freedom to be themselves. Dearing taught Grady to appreciate strong women, and he came to realize that a capable and assertive woman would make a good partner in the rougher outdoor life he prefers.
In 2018, Dearing recruited Grady a second time. During their time apart, he had become increasingly reclusive and cut off; she saved him from isolation, both emotionally and physically, though he did not understand it at first. This second operation together played out quite differently than the first. Grady was much quicker to support Dearing this time, and returning to Isla Nublar reminded him of how their previous relationship had started. Once again they relied on one another for survival and saved each other’s lives on more than one occasion. Dearing risked her safety to save Blue’s life as well, which endeared her to Grady. Similarly, Dearing witnessed Grady show his seldom-seen emotional side while he worked to save Blue and later comforted and protected the orphaned Maisie Lockwood. Dearing, too, became protective of Maisie during the latter part of the incident. These events brought out the parental traits in both of them, which helped them develop a much deeper appreciation of one another. During the end of the incident, although Grady was wary of allowing dinosaurs to be released into Northern California, he did not take any action himself and instead trusted Dearing to make the right decision. He gave her cautionary advice, but never tried to force her hand, willing to support whichever course of action she chose.
Following the events of 2018, Grady and Dearing resumed their relationship. This time, it was fueled by neither physical attraction or adrenaline, but by a genuine emotional connection and an appreciation of one another’s value. Their relationship is now one between two fully-realized adults whose feelings for each other go deeper than sexuality and are able to help one another grow as people in the long term. As of now, their unusual relationship is as stable as it can be, and they cooperate to deal with problems rather than butting heads. The world is now changing incredibly rapidly, and with an adopted daughter to raise, the stability of their relationship is an invaluable benefit.
U.S. Navy
Grady’s first long-time employment was with the United States Navy, where he served as a sailor for several years. According to Jurassic World: The Game, he spent three years in the service of the Navy from 2000 to 2003, working in the group MK 9 of the Marine Mammal Program during the Iraq War. There, he worked alongside other sailors as well as trained animals such as bottlenose dolphins, sea lions, whales, seals, and sharks. Not much is known about his time in the Navy other than he considers it to have been a waste (other than his time at Pearl Harbor on account of the piña coladas). However, he had real love for his team’s dolphins and appeared to have a positive relationship with his ship’s captain.
After an incident in the Persian Gulf in which a dolphin was almost killed due to friendly fire, the American government made efforts to save face by disbanding MK 9. In order to protect his team’s dolphins, Grady volunteered to go on television and falsely claim that the Marine Mammal Program would ramp down in favor of drone warfare. Grady’s captain connected him with Masrani Global Corporation to safely relocate the dolphins to sanctuary, all expenses paid in exchange for Grady signing a contract to work with Masrani Global should they need his services. To cover up the existence of this contract, Grady was put through a staged court-martial, which went on his permanent record. However, the Navy did not make this publicly known; even Vic Hoskins, the Head of InGen Security and a former serviceman himself, was not aware that Grady had been court-martialed until he looked up the paperwork.
While Grady has a largely negative view of the U.S. Armed Forces today, he still appreciates the skills he learned in the Navy, which help him out regularly. He knows how to keep himself in shape, is capable in the outdoors, skilled in combat, and practically unmatched in the water regardless of how difficult the conditions are.
Vic Hoskins
Grady probably got the attention of the leader of InGen’s Security Division, Vic Hoskins, due to his time with the U.S. Navy. Hoskins himself had been a security contractor with an as-of-yet-unknown branch of the Armed Forces with wartime experience in the Middle East. Hoskins’s experience with the military had left him with intense patriotic zeal where it had left Grady disillusioned, so while Hoskins valued Grady’s skill as an animal trainer, the two men did not agree on much of anything else. Hoskins had paranoia about America’s enemies stealing or hacking drone technology, or using advanced technology to take out drones and render American troops defenseless. Instead, Hoskins favored the expansion of military animal use, up to and including using genetic engineering to manufacture intelligent biological weapons. A major aspect of I.B.R.I.S., which Hoskins supervised and personally hired Owen Grady for, was the use of theropods as military animals.
Grady considered Hoskins’s plans to be short-sighted and foolhardy. In reality, military animals are never used for attack missions because they cannot distinguish a human’s political allegiance on sight alone. Grady, having worked with MK 9’s animals, would have known this; Hoskins, who had primarily worked with human soldiers, did not. This, and Grady’s general disregard for authority, put strain on their working relationship. Hoskins frequently pushed the I.B.R.I.S. raptors for field tests to determine their combat potential, ignoring Grady’s insistence that this was inadvisable.
During the 2015 incident, Hoskins commandeered Jurassic World following the death of CEO Simon Masrani, taking charge of all the park’s resources including I.B.R.I.S. He forced his field test to occur despite Grady’s warnings, which angered Grady to the point of physically assaulting Hoskins. To protect the raptors, Grady went along with the mission, but it failed spectacularly when the raptors discovered that they could turn on their owners and be free. Despite this failure, Hoskins remained confident that military bioengineering would be a success one day, telling Grady as much during the park’s evacuation. He was never able to put his plans into action due to being ambushed and killed by a Velociraptor during the incident. Even so, his plans were furthered by his co-conspirators, including Eli Mills and Dr. Henry Wu, causing further problems for Grady down the line.
Other Masrani Global employees
Grady had fairly few close friendships at Jurassic World aside from his friend Barry Sembène. He was greatly appreciated by other InGen Security employees, and even his CEO Simon Masrani considered Grady to be one of InGen’s best assets. When Masrani became concerned about the security of Paddock 11, Grady was his first choice to inspect it. Masrani tolerated Grady’s problems with authority because of his value to the company. Grady’s work into theropod intelligence and dinosaur behavior was immensely helpful to other aspects of park operations, such as the neurotechnology developed by Dr. Martin Riley which was used in Dr. Kate Walker‘s research into the emotional intelligence of dinosaurs. I.B.R.I.S. in general was a boon to Dr. Henry Wu‘s work in genetic engineering, though it is unknown how well Grady and Wu knew one another. Grady was known to and respected by many of the park’s employees, even short-term employees such as public relations intern Chad Barris, who worked in the park in 2015 under Dr. Riley. He probably worked closely with Jurassic World’s paleoveterinarians, who were as of 2015 led by Dr. Suzanne de Lange. Grady was also well-liked by the park engineer Hal Brimford, who had become extremely paranoid about the park by 2015 and was fired for misappropriation of park resources; the reason for this was Brimford’s secretly building a survival bunker underneath an upcoming attraction where he hoped he and Grady would survive if the park ever collapsed around them. Since Grady has never mentioned Brimford, their friendship seems to have been somewhat one-sided.
Since he was an employee of InGen Security, Grady worked along with the park rangers and Asset Containment Unit with frequency. His concern for the safety of ACU troopers during the 2015 incident may have been more than customary; it is likely that he personally knew some of them, and was seen working alongside park security during the incident on Main Street. The ACU staff working at the raptor paddock trusted Grady’s judgment with the raptors, holding their fire when instructed even though an employee was in immediate danger. That said, at least one major incident had occurred at the raptor paddock before in which another employee was severely mauled.
Grady’s tendency to take matters into his own hands was not appreciated by some of the park’s management, however. This was a matter of concern for Claire Dearing, but other control room staff such as Lowery Cruthers and Vivian Krill were also affected by his actions. Krill, as the primary communications operator at the park, was likely in touch with Grady with some frequency to provide him with security updates, and would also have had to try and keep track of his unpredictable behavior when he was on assignment. Cruthers, who was in charge of the park’s technical systems, often appeared frustrated with Grady’s temper and unpredictability; he was sometimes the unintended victim of Grady’s outbursts. However, Cruthers hesitated to close the Paddock 11 gates during the incident when doing so would condemn Grady to a violent death; Cruthers’s hesitation saved Grady’s life, but also gave the Indominus just enough time to reach the gates before they closed.
According to the Jurassic World Employee Handbook, Grady was friends with a falafel cart vendor named Bobby who would slip him free sodas. The mobile game Jurassic World: The Game details Grady’s working relationships with the other employees further. Unlike the game’s details on Grady’s backstory, the present-day plot of the game does not occur in S/F canon and instead presents an alternate story; therefore, its take on character relationships is not discussed here.
The closure of Jurassic World ended most of Grady’s work relationships, other than those with people who he would have been friends with outside work hours. He has, however, had an oddly recurring if periodically brief connection to Henry Wu, who was disgraced in the public eye after the Jurassic World incident. Wu turned up at the Lockwood estate during the 2018 incident, appearing as the creator of the Indoraptor, but vanished again before Grady could confront him. Then four years later, he appeared in a far more disheveled state, having enabled Biosyn Genetics to breed a world-threatening swarm of hybrid locusts and claiming that Maisie Lockwood’s altered DNA was the key to stopping what he had started. Understandably, Grady did not trust him, especially considering Wu was responsible for Maisie’s kidnapping, but Maisie requested that Wu be spared and brought back to the United States with them. As a result, Wu was turned over to the authorities and was able to finalize his research, ending the locust plague.
I.B.R.I.S. animals
InGen Security hired Owen Grady for the I.B.R.I.S. project, which began in 2012. Four of the project’s theropods, Velociraptors named Blue, Delta, Echo, and Charlie, became Grady’s personal charges; he was there for them to imprint on when they hatched, becoming a surrogate father. During their early development, Grady provided them with stimulation and care while maintaining a video log of their growth and progress.
As the raptors matured, their pack dynamic became increasingly complex. Blue, owing to her size, strength, intelligence, and empathy, became dominant over the others. Fortunately, she showed the most loyalty to Grady, keeping Delta, Echo, and Charlie in line. The raptors’ increasingly intelligent behavior was what prompted Grady to bring Barry Sembène into I.B.R.I.S. in 2013.
Blue eventually began challenging Grady’s authority, and often led her sisters in escape attempts. While the raptors’ training continued with numerous successes, they became an increasing security threat which Grady was pressed to contain. Despite their struggles, Grady managed to keep a respectful view of the animals and reinforced his qualifications as their alpha. He seldom entered their paddock when they were mature, knowing that they could easily turn on him if they realized he was vulnerable. Only Blue’s hesitance to strike him held back the others. Grady also dealt with issues from the other side of the paddock walls, protecting the raptors from Hoskins’s efforts to weaponize their predatory adaptations.
The 2015 incident was a major test of their relationship. When presented with a far larger and more powerful animal, the raptors rejected Grady’s leadership in favor of the alluring Indominus rex. The ensuing firefight with InGen Security resulted in Charlie’s death, which drove Blue into a rage; she began attacking her former caretakers. This culminated in a confrontation at Main Street, where Grady showed compassion toward Blue which the Indominus did not. Blue concluded that Grady’s paternal traits made him a better leader than the Indominus, and led her sisters in rebelling against the larger dinosaur. As a result, Delta and Echo were killed and Blue was wounded. As the sole survivor, Blue tried to return to Grady’s side, but he granted her freedom instead.
Grady suffered without Blue, becoming withdrawn and rejecting human contact. He initially refused the chance to rescue her from an impending volcanic eruption, but changed his mind after reminiscing on the bond they had once had. Upon their reunion, Blue was at first wary, but quickly recognized her father figure and calmed down. She was summarily captured by mercenaries led by Ken Wheatley and was separated from Grady. He found her again on the S.S. Arcadia, cooperating with Claire Dearing and her allies to save Blue from a gunshot wound. They were separated again as the dinosaurs were loaded out to the Lockwood estate; after being freed, Blue tracked Grady down through the manor and found him facing down the threatening Indoraptor. She sprung into battle to protect him, but after defeating her foe, she did not take Grady’s offer to return to captivity, instead choosing a life in the wild.
As the dinosaurs became threatened by poachers and other people looking to exploit them, Grady put effort into ensuring Blue’s safety, and eventually convinced her to settle down in the woods near his cabin. There they could remain near each other while still maintaining a respectful distance. Blue kept an eye on Grady’s family, especially the young Maisie Lockwood. Eventually, Grady discovered that Blue had reproduced through parthenogenesis, having a single daughter called Beta. Blue was fiercely protective of her daughter, even threatening Grady’s family members if they got too close.
Upon discovering Beta, Grady tried to locate Blue’s nest, but found it too late; poachers had gotten there first, and Beta was shipped out of the country. This infuriated Blue, who actually wounded Grady despite his use of the hand signal he had always used to establish his authority. When he did not back down, Blue let him live, and he promised to return Beta (while this was too complex a concept to communicate using words, the point still got across). Grady kept true to his word: he discovered that both Beta and Maisie Lockwood had been kidnapped by the same people, and tracked them down across half the globe to retrieve them. At first Beta was stressed and tried to attack; it took cooperation to secure her, and Grady regretted having to use force. When Beta was returned home, Blue showed signs of appreciation, and Beta’s aggression had subsided as she recognized that Grady and his family were safe people to be around. While they still keep a respectful distance from each other, Blue and Grady’s families can coexist peacefully in the world together, and Blue still knows she can rely on Grady when human threats present themselves. Blue has also played a vital role in helping Grady realize that if he loves someone, he needs to allow them freedom and independence in order to flourish.
Other Isla Nublar animals
Though he was chiefly in charge of caring for and training the I.B.R.I.S. raptors, Grady was also involved with the other animals in the park. He developed a thorough understanding of their needs and potential risks, allowing him to assist ACU and the park rangers in handling the other creatures across the island. Grady considered all of the animals his charges and was known to have befriended some, such as a particular female Sinoceratops, which became enamored with him after he fed her a head of lettuce. He likely worked with other theropods that were of interest to I.B.R.I.S., and may have been familiar with the Troodon Jeanie since she was involved with a related project.
Grady was actually unaware of the existence of the Indominus rex, despite this creature being heavily advertised since the beginning of 2015. He was brought to Paddock 11 to inspect it for security purposes, mistakenly believing that the animal within had escaped; this led to a series of mishandled events that caused the Indominus to actually escape. Throughout the ensuing incident, Grady helped to comfort a dying Apatosaurus that the hybrid had slaughtered, and was threatened by a flock of Pteranodon and Dimorphodon that had been accidentally freed from the Aviary. He assisted ACU and the park rangers in tranquilizing several of the escaped pterosaurs; some of them may have died due to collision injuries or drowning during this incident. During this battle he was attacked by a frenzied Dimorphodon, which was killed by Claire Dearing.
During the night of the incident, Grady spearheaded a mission to capture and kill the Indominus, though he did not approve of the mission’s methods and was strongarmed into participating. He competed with the Indominus for alpha status over his raptors, ultimately using his paternal love to prove himself superior to this animal rival’s brutish cunning and strength. The Indominus still slaughtered two of his remaining three raptors before turning on him. It was attacked by the eldest Tyrannosaurus, and ultimately killed after being forced to the edge of the Jurassic World Lagoon during the fight and ambushed by the Mosasaurus.
Grady readily accepted the possibility, and soon the inevitability, of a permanent closure of Jurassic World resulting from the incident. The dinosaurs were left to roam freely, the invisible fences being shut down. Masrani Global Corporation distanced itself from the park, and scientific research of the island ceased in early 2018 following concerns about volcanic activity on the island. During this time, Grady worked hard to convince himself that he no longer cared about the fates of the animals he had once protected. Separation from Blue, as well as the end of his relationship with Claire Dearing, had caused him to withdraw from the world. Dearing was able to spark his love for the animals again, though the 2015 incident had tainted his view of them.
While on the island for a few hours during the 2018 incident, Grady encountered many of the animals he had known before, including the Sinoceratops that had grown attached to him and the surviving Tyrannosaurus. He was menaced by a Carnotaurus at one point, along with the various dinosaurs involved with a stampede during the eruption. He failed to save any dinosaurs other than Blue, who had been his only real objective. On the mainland, he used his knowledge of dinosaur behavior to provoke a Stygimoloch into destroying a cell he and Dearing were imprisoned in, then later used the dinosaur as a distraction so he could halt a black-market auction.
While his actions caused the Stygimoloch to escape into the forests of Northern California, he cautioned against freeing the other animals. Due to complicated circumstances, the animals held within the Lockwood estate were in immediate danger of dying due to hydrogen cyanide poisoning, with the only means to save them being to release them out of the building. Because letting them free would cause unpredictable results, Grady opposed saving their lives, though not so strongly that he would have stopped anyone else from making the call. Ultimately he left this decision up to his companions, respecting their choice regardless of whether he would have done the same.
Rather than let nature take its course following the 2018 incident, Grady has tried to be an active participant in keeping the dinosaurs safe from people and vice versa. His knowledge of their behavior patterns has proven invaluable in the new world as he works with the United States government to identify animals that need to be relocated, track them down, and bring them to sanctuaries. In this endeavor he faces enemies: poachers value the animals for their monetary value on the black market, and some such as Parasaurolophus are commonly slaughtered for their byproducts. While he tries his best, Grady has not been able to protect all the dinosaurs. During the 2022 incidents, he witnessed firsthand what happens to some of the animals that wind up in the black market. Many are killed for their meat, hide, and bones, while others are sold as exotic pets and status symbols or forced to fight each other to the death. During the incident in Valletta, he was briefly threatened by two Carnotaurus, including a scarred adult and a very young juvenile, as well as a female Allosaurus. He also encountered a Lystrosaurus called Leonard, who had been scheduled to fight the young carnotaur before Grady interrupted. During his own fight with Rainn Delacourt, Grady was inadvertently aided by a one-armed juvenile Baryonyx, which mistook Delacourt for a cockfighting opponent when Delacourt fell into its pit. The abused animal pulled itself free of its restraints in a desperate attempt to win the fight, killing Delacourt; Grady allowed this to happen, watching with grim satisfaction. He was less pleased when he witnessed the larger escaped theropods hunting tourists, but there was not much he could do to stop it, being preoccupied with problems of his own.
During the incident Grady was also set upon by Atrociraptors, which had been trained by Soyona Santos to kill on command. In a cruel twist of irony, it was Grady’s own work with I.B.R.I.S. which had made this feat possible. After rescuing his friend Barry Sembène from the one called Red, he was chased down by two others, Ghost and Panthera, who doggedly pursued him all the way to a runway where he escaped aboard an airplane. Ghost may have died in a fall from the plane’s cargo hold into the ocean. The Atrociraptors were trained by Santos to never give up pursuit until they made the kill, making Grady one of very few people who is still alive after being targeted. If Ghost or Panthera are still alive, it is likely they remember his scent well, and he would do best to keep far from wherever they are held today.
He encountered yet more animals in Biosyn Valley later that day, including several species he had never witnessed before. These included a gargantuan Quetzalcoatlus, among the largest animals ever to fly, which was deliberately released by Biosyn to down the plane Grady was trespassing into the valley aboard. After crash-landing in a reservoir, he was beset upon by a territorial Pyroraptor; its behavior was markedly different from the raptors he was familiar with, though he could still predict some basics of how it might act. He did not anticipate that its winged arms would make it a skilled swimmer, even his superior in the water. (Grady has also noted the animal’s antisocial behavior, calling it “an asshole.”) Later still, he used his Jurassic World training to keep Dearing safe from a group of Dilophosaurus by subduing their alpha, ensuring that the rest would give up. An enormous predatory Giganotosaurus was a different threat, one too large to fight easily; he still did his best when it came after them, stabbing it with his hunting knife once he was in an advantageous position. He briefly encountered other animals, including Dreadnoughtus, Iguanodon, and one particular blind female Therizinosaurus.
Jurassic World visitors
Grady generally did not interact with park visitors during his time at Jurassic World, since he was preoccupied with IBRIS. Supplementary media suggests that he did sometimes assist in educating visitors about certain dinosaur species, or that he would spend time in visitor areas during his off hours. However, Grady is introverted and avoids large crowds, so this was probably never a regular occurrence. He does work very well with children, but would probably not be regularly employed to take care of the park’s younger guests because of his difficulty taking orders from his superiors.
During the 2015 incident, Grady did spend several hours searching for and protecting two special guests, Claire Dearing’s nephews Zach and Gray Mitchell. During the incident, he presented himself as a brave and heroic paternal figure, likely because this was the kind of person that the boys would most quickly come to respect. It probably also helped Grady find more confidence to be treated as a hero, which undoubtedly was beneficial during the crisis. The Mitchell boys were awed at Grady’s ability to handle the dangerous Velociraptors, with seventeen-year-old Zach referring to Grady as a “badass.” Grady repeatedly protected the boys from the Indominus as well as his own raptors after they rebelled, working with Dearing to ensure they survived and were safely reunited with their parents on the mainland.
Dinosaur Protection Group
True to his apolitical nature, Grady stayed out of the Mount Sibo controversy between 2017 and 2018; he did not get involved with the Dinosaur Protection Group, though he also did not support its opposition. The organization was founded in 2017 by his ex-girlfriend Claire Dearing, whom he had parted with on bad terms. Dearing convinced Grady to join the DPG mission to Isla Nublar funded by Benjamin Lockwood; Grady took time to accept the offer, but ultimately his parental feelings toward his Velociraptor Blue prompted him to go. He did not participate in efforts to rescue dinosaurs other than Blue, having gone solely to protect her.
Grady and Dearing were accompanied on the mission by two of Dearing’s associates and leaders of the DPG: a paleoveterinarian named Zia Rodriguez and a former Jurassic World IT worker named Franklin Webb. Grady befriended both of them, though he was closer with Rodriguez. She took a quick liking to him for his confidence and handsome figure (though she herself does not date men), while Webb described himself and Grady as “not compatible.” Webb suffers from numerous phobias, including one of dinosaurs, making Grady’s status as an animal trainer with dinosaur experience entirely alien to Webb’s preferences. Both Rodriguez and Grady, on the other hand, had former military experience and thus had something major in common.
Rodriguez accompanied Grady on a mission to recover Blue due to her distrust for the operation’s leader Ken Wheatley. Her distrust proved accurate when Wheatley betrayed the DPG and Grady, capturing Blue and leaving Grady to die. Rodriguez saved his life by removing a tranquilizer dart from his chest before a lethal quantity of carfentanil could be administered. She found herself in a standoff with Wheatley and his mercenaries while protecting Grady, but as she was outnumbered, the best she could do was provide her services as a paleoveterinarian to ensure that Blue survived a gunshot wound she had sustained.
Grady recovered from the attack and reunited with Dearing and Webb, helping the less athletic Webb escape danger on a few occasions. The three of them were able to escape Isla Nublar and reunite with Rodriguez on the S.S. Arcadia, working as a team to save Blue from death due to blood loss and shock. This experience helped Grady bond with and trust Rodriguez and Webb, cementing their status as his friends.
On the American mainland, Webb was accidentally conscripted into service on the decks of the Arcadia and was separated from the others. Rodriguez continued to be Wheatley’s prisoner as not to arouse suspicion, leaving Grady and Dearing separated from both of their companions for a time. They would not be reunited until after the entire incident with the Indoraptor, when Rodriguez and Webb alerted Grady, Dearing, and their new ally Maisie Lockwood to a situation developing in the sub-basement. A laboratory explosion had caused a hydrogen cyanide leak, which was minutes away from killing the dinosaurs still imprisoned there. Grady cautioned against saving the animals, as the only way to do so would be to release them into the open. Rodriguez and Webb, like Grady, allowed Dearing to make the final call on this, and all four of them mourned the unavoidable truth that the dinosaurs would not survive. This decision was overridden by Maisie, who Rodriguez had been comforting. With the dinosaurs’ lives saved, they fled into the surrounding forest.
After the incident, Rodriguez and Webb did not accompany Grady, Dearing, and Maisie on their northbound journey. However, as the only other people who knew the truth about what had happened on the night of the Lockwood Manor incident, Grady would have had to trust them sincerely to protect his newfound family’s secrets. Dearing stayed in touch with the two of them after they parted ways in 2018, so Grady did sometimes hear from them. Although they considered his and Dearing’s relationship surprising and odd, they were still willing to provide help when needed, and Grady trusts both of them to do what is best. Webb in particular aided Grady in identifying Maisie Lockwood’s kidnapper in early 2022, getting him in on a sting operation conducted by the U.S. and French governments in Malta that played a role in tracking Maisie down and rescuing her.
Ken Wheatley, Eli Mills, mercenaries and the black market
The DPG mission to Isla Nublar was funded by Benjamin Lockwood, but its mastermind was his estate manager Eli Mills, who knew of Grady but had not personally met him. Upon arrival to the island, Grady was first introduced to Ken Wheatley, an egotistical trophy hunter who Grady took an instantaneous dislike to. Wheatley enjoyed the sport and spoils of the hunt, rather than viewing it as a time-honored aspect of ecology as Grady does. Having a clear lack of respect for animals and viewing them as nothing more than targets or prizes, Wheatley’s involvement in the operation was for money and glory rather than a concern for the animals’ well-being. He was also deeply conservative and sexist, a more extreme version of the kind of man Grady might have become had he never met Dearing. Despite the obvious enmity brewing between the two men, Grady agreed to cooperate with Wheatley in order to save Blue, and by extent agreed to work with Wheatley’s mercenary team.
Unbeknownst to Grady or the DPG, or even Lockwood, Mills and Wheatley had no plans to relocate the dinosaurs to Sanctuary Island as promised. Instead, they were to be taken back to the Lockwood estate and sold on the black market to finance Henry Wu’s continued research. Wheatley had plans to kill Grady, Dearing, Rodriguez, and Webb as soon as they were no longer needed, which in the case of Grady meant as soon as Blue was secured.
Grady assumed that Wheatley was merely boastful and disrespectful, never suspecting that he would be capable of murder. He trusted Wheatley to heed his judgment when hunting Blue, and instructed Wheatley and his men to stay back while he closed in on the raptor. Grady planned to signal them when it was safe to move in and tranquilize Blue, but Wheatley did not wait for the signal and had his men move in as soon as Blue was within range. One of the mercenaries aimed to shoot Grady, but Blue spotted this threat and killed the man; she was shot in the shoulder for her troubles, causing Grady to attack Wheatley. Grady was shot in the chest with a tranquilizer dart; at that dosage, it would have been lethal for a human, and Grady would have died of cardiac arrest had Rodriguez not removed the dart in time. Rodriguez bargained her way into being taken along with Blue, but was helpless to save Grady from the island as Wheatley intended to leave him to die and had Rodriguez outnumbered.
Grady recovered a firearm from the killed mercenary, which he later used to rescue Dearing and Webb; the three of them escaped the island and hid among the mercenaries using simple disguises to go unnoticed in the bustle of the S.S. Arcadia. He and his companions managed to avoid detection for the course of the trip, but were apprehended at the Lockwood estate when a mercenary recognized them from the island at a checkpoint. Wheatley imprisoned them, bringing Mills to discuss their fate. This was the first time that Grady and Mills met in person, though Mills had a detailed knowledge of Grady’s IBRIS research and credited him with their mission’s success (along with Dearing’s authorization of the Indominus rex). Somewhat like Wheatley, Mills was a more extreme version of Grady’s own negative traits, in particular his isolationism and misanthropy. Grady threatened to break Mills’s arm, but Dearing talked him down when Wheatley threatened to shoot him. Dearing then assaulted Mills instead, much to Grady’s amusement. This action cost them any chance of Mills letting them live, but he left with Wheatley to manage the auction. He left Grady and Dearing’s fates up in the air until he figured out how best to dispose of them.
After escaping confinement, Grady and Dearing were led by Maisie Lockwood up to the garage, which was being used as an auction hall to sell the dinosaurs. After witnessing auctioneer Gunnar Eversoll introduce Henry Wu‘s latest creation, the Indoraptor, Grady became determined to stop the auction before the weaponized creature could leave the estate.
Grady disrupted the auction by luring a Stygimoloch into an elevator and bringing it up to the garage. As the animal caused chaos in the room, a mercenary aimed to fatally shoot it, and Grady assaulted the man to stop him. The misaimed gunfire peppered the roof of the auction hall and terrified the guests even further, causing chaos. Mills spotted Grady and fled to evacuate the lab, failing to alert his guards to Grady’s presence as he panicked. The mercenaries were too busy trying to control the situation to notice Grady as he assaulted one unsuspecting guard after another, ambushing them and using the element of surprise to overpower them. Some of the guards put up a fight, and a few managed to spot Grady before he reached them, but they all failed to stop him as he shut down the transport catwalk to prevent the hybrid Indoraptor from leaving with its buyer, the Russian mobster Anton Orlov.
Grady fled the auction hall, but he, Dearing, and Maisie were caught by Eli Mills with two armed guards. Mills attempted to convince them to let Maisie go by revealing that she was the product of illegal human cloning, but this did not change Grady or Dearing’s minds. Before Mills could try more forceful tactics, his guards were attacked by the Indoraptor, which had escaped.
Grady did not see Mills or Wheatley again. Wheatley was already dead, having actually been the one responsible for the Indoraptor‘s escape, while Mills attempted to evacuate the lab and was killed by dinosaurs that Maisie released later in the night. The escaped Indoraptor made short work of many of the other mercenaries at the Lockwood estate, who probably did not know that the animal had been released into the building. As of such, Grady’s troubles with Mills and his hired hands were effectively over, though he was able to arm himself using firearms that the Indoraptor‘s victims left behind.
While the end of the 2018 incident had taken Mills, Wheatley, and a good number of their hired men out of the picture, it was far from the end of the dinosaur black market. In fact, this was just the beginning of a new age of animal exploitation, the practice of which incensed Grady. He took up a job with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in roughly late 2020, finding this an easier way to safely relocate animals than operating independently as he had done for the past five years or so. In this position he not only relocated animals to sanctuaries, but also directly combated poachers. He was renowned for never backing down from a fight. However, his family did come first, and to protect Maisie Lockwood he tried to keep a lower profile; in early 2022 he allowed the notorious Rainn Delacourt and his gang to get away with poaching a parasaur, which would be led off to slaughter. Delacourt was smug about this, taunting Grady that he would see him again. In fact, Delacourt was tracking Grady in search of Maisie and Blue, whose daughter Beta was a target of Lewis Dodgson, the CEO of Biosyn Genetics and a serious criminal behind the scenes. When Delacourt succeeded in capturing both Beta and Maisie, with the help of trafficker Carolyn O’Hara, the incident set Grady and Dearing off on a search around the globe for their daughter and Blue’s.
Delacourt was wanted by the CIA as well as the intelligence agencies of other countries around the globe, having recently become an international problem thanks to his work for the black-market broker Soyona Santos. Grady was allowed to ride along on a sting operation being conducted against Santos and Delacourt, which quickly turned into a shootout; Grady was the only one able to pursue Delacourt, getting into a physical fight with the poacher in the marketplace. After a brief but vicious knife fight, Grady overpowered Delacourt and wrung a confession out of him. All Delacourt could tell, however, was that Maisie had been handed off to Santos; he knew nothing more. This was not enough to spare his life. In perhaps his darkest moment, Grady spotted a young Baryonyx that had mistaken Delacourt for a cockfighting opponent and chased him down. Grady knew the animal would kill Delacourt, and simply watched it happen. Though their enmity was brief, Delacourt still managed to bring out the worst in Owen Grady during that short time.
Grady was also present for the arrest of Santos, which was conducted by his friend Barry Sembène of the DGSE. By that time, they had learned that Maisie was destined for Biosyn’s headquarters, and Grady was advised by Dearing to meet at an airfield for transportation. Despite being actively under arrest, Santos still managed to sic two of her attack animals on Grady as he left, seemingly for no reason other than sheer spite.
Once he successfully reached the airfield, however, Grady finally found himself an ally. Dearing had won the aid of an American expat smuggler named Kayla Watts, who had witnessed Maisie during the handoff and had made numerous flights to Biosyn Valley. While her relationship with Grady was prickly at first, he soon warmed up to her when he realized how much of her life she was throwing away in order to do the right thing and rescue Maisie, whom she had not even met. By the time they reached the valley, Grady held great respect for Watts, which was further enhanced when Watts did not hesitate to let Dearing have the only ejector seat during a plane crash. They helped each other survive the crash and the trek across Biosyn Valley, during which time Grady learned that Watts had served in the Air Force before taking up illegal smuggling work to support her family. She, like Grady, had long been apolitical, but distancing herself from the world and ignoring its problems was now becoming impossible while keeping her sense of morality. Grady came to understand what she meant, and agreed that it was no longer an option to sit back and watch as the world fell apart.
Grady and Watts collaborated to rejoin Dearing, rescuing her from danger in the process. Watts’s taser proved effective in driving off threatening animals more than once. Later they successfully found Maisie, and Watts continued to provide protection no matter the risk. In the end of the incident, she flew them out of the valley, saving them all as the conditions at Biosyn were made ever more perilous by Lewis Dodgson’s ill-fated attempts to destroy evidence of his crimes. Without Watts, it is unlikely Grady would have even made it out of Valletta alive, let alone reuniting his family. She helped him in other ways too: witnessing her choice to throw neutrality aside was the final nail in the coffin for Grady’s own tendency to dismiss the world’s problems as none of his business.
Indoraptor prototype
While spying on the auction at Lockwood Manor, Grady watched as a prototype of the hybrid Indoraptor was introduced to buyers. The animal was an advancement of the Indominus rex that Grady had faced three years prior, enhanced with more Velociraptor traits to make it smaller, sleeker, and more intelligent. The hybrid was not for sale, but buyers began bidding on it anyway; Grady became determined to stop it from leaving the estate alive.
He fought his way through the auction hall and destroyed the mechanism controlling the catwalk, which prevented the cage from loading onto the transport trucks. This stopped the Indoraptor from falling into the hands of notorious Russian mobster Anton Orlov. Grady left the auction hall to avoid being caught by Mills’s guards. The trapped Indoraptor tricked mercenary hunter Ken Wheatley into releasing it from the cage, killing Wheatley in the process and emerging to prey on various attendees and security guards. It eventually targeted Grady and his companions when their paths crossed again, though its real target was the young Maisie Lockwood, with whom it had developed a sinister fascination. Grady helped his friends evade the Indoraptor, but its superb hunting abilities quickly found them again; Dearing was wounded and Grady was forced to pursue the animal alone to protect Maisie. He confronted and shot the creature, but was unable to kill it. Blue intervened, and the fight was taken to the outside roof.
Dearing rejoined the fight and commanded the Indoraptor to pounce at Grady, hoping that its attack would break through the sun roof and save them. Grady voluntarily risked his life in this move, diving under the pouncing creature to dodge its deadly claws and teeth. The pounce did break the sun roof, but the animal clambered back up, Dearing and Grady’s plan having failed. Blue reentered the fight at this point, leaping on the Indoraptor to save her father figure; their combined weight broke the metal supports in the sun roof and both animals fell into the fossil display room below. The Indoraptor landed directly on an Ajugaceratops skull and was fatally wounded, dying in seconds as its vital organs were punctured.
Maisie Lockwood
While investigating the Lockwood estate’s sub-basement laboratory for evidence that Mills intended to sell the Isla Nublar dinosaurs on the black market, Benjamin Lockwood’s granddaughter Maisie discovered a video log on Henry Wu’s computer. Wu had been observing the Day 176 log of InGen Security’s Integrated Raptor Behavioral Intelligence Study, the day on which Owen Grady first observed Blue’s empathic tendencies and how they secured her authority over her sisters.
After escaping from Mills and discovering that her grandfather had died, Maisie fled to the sub-basement and ran into Claire Dearing and Owen Grady. She distrusted them at first, attempting to run away. She had seen Dearing and Mills working together before, and had no way of knowing which side Dearing was really on. Grady was able to win Maisie’s trust; she recognized him from the IBRIS video log, and reasoned that if he really loved dinosaurs that much, then he could not be working with Mills. That meant that Dearing was also Mills’s enemy, and both of these adults could be trusted to help her. She provided them with navigation through Lockwood Manor’s maintenance corridors, allowing them to get their bearings and spy on the auction taking place above. Maisie informed them that the hybrid Indoraptor was created at Mills’s orders, and pointed out another familiar face at the auction: Henry Wu, the disgraced geneticist who had made Jurassic World possible.
Grady became protective of Maisie from the start, disrupting the auction while she was safely hidden and then coming to help Dearing get her out of the building. During their escape, the Indoraptor was accidentally released and attacked them; Grady risked his life repeatedly to ensure that Maisie survived the night. With his protection, she was able to think clearly enough to formulate an escape plan that led them outside of the mansion; Grady continued to protect her from the animal’s attacks with the help of Blue and Dearing. Ultimately, the animal was killed.
In the sub-basement again, Maisie and the others learned that the remaining dinosaurs were under threat of death due to a hydrogen cyanide gas leak. Everyone deferred to Dearing’s judgment on whether to release the dinosaurs into the forest outside or allow them to perish in the toxic gas. Dearing weighed her options, but ultimately decided that the unpredictability of letting the dinosaurs out of her control was not worth the risk. Grady had partially advised her toward this course of action, which Maisie could not bear to allow. She chose to open the sub-basement doors to the ground floor outside, saving the animals’ lives.
Following the incident, Grady briefly introduced Maisie to the now-grown-up Blue. He attempted to bring the raptor back into captivity, but Blue refused and left for the open wild. Maisie, recognizing that Grady was heartbroken without his beloved animal, comforted him. Since that point, Grady has acted as father figure toward Maisie, with Dearing becoming an adoptive mother figure. Grady’s paternal traits have now been brought out in full force with the chance to care for a human child, instead of animals. Unlike the first time he was separated from Blue, which caused him to lose his sense of purpose, Grady’s role as a paternal figure was not brought to an end this time.
Though he has remained dedicated to his role as Maisie’s adoptive father, this has hardly been without struggle. The situation which he and Dearing adopted Maisie from was already a bizarre one, and only became stranger as time went on; not only did they learn that Maisie was an illegal clone, but at the same time they needed to adapt to a world in which dinosaurs were both in the wild and on the black market. Grady’s desire to prevent harm to the dinosaurs became complicated when rumors of Maisie’s existence started circulating. They grew from urban legends all the way into news reports, and all kinds of people started looking for the mysterious girl. Grady and Dearing were both intensely protective, but as Maisie grew into a teenager, she started to rebel against their restrictive rules.
Much like with Blue, Maisie was dissatisfied with the confinement she was subject to. Though she had room to roam, she was not allowed into town, and so was more or less limited to Grady and Dearing for social interaction. She would defy these rules by sneaking away into town while her parents were out. Grady tried to admonish her for this, but he could not discipline her in the same way he had his raptors, and he had little else to reference. His efforts to enforce the rules were brusque and rigid, which only drove a wedge between him and Maisie. Grady well understood that adolescence would be a difficult time, remembering his own rebellious teenage years, but the challenge still grated on him. Maisie also wanted to join in on dinosaur protection missions, which Grady would not allow at all. This was ultimately the last thing they fought about before Maisie was kidnapped, having finally been tracked down by one of the many interested parties.
Grady and Dearing pulled out all the stops in their efforts to track down and rescue Maisie, finally finding her in Biosyn Valley all the way in Italy. While there, Maisie had learned a lot about herself, and also about her mother and twin Charlotte. It turned out that Charlotte herself had cloned Maisie before dying of cancer, but she had cured Maisie of the genetic disorder that had made her susceptible using a revolutionary technique. Grady was impressed at how Maisie had managed to escape Biosyn’s clutches on her own and evaded their security forces before finding herself some allies and making a valiant attempt to get out of the valley. During attempts to capture Beta, Maisie was brought along without objection from Grady, who was starting to realize that she was becoming more mature than he had given her credit for. She was, it turned out, partly taking after him.
She demonstrated that she had picked up many of his raptor interaction techniques, successfully (though temporarily) establishing authority with Beta and helping Grady capture the little raptor. The aftermath of the 2022 incident meant that Maisie was no longer being hunted by the government, who allowed Grady, Dearing, and Maisie to live in peace at their home. With this pressure gone, their lives have become easier. Grady has now realized just how skilled and clever Maisie is growing up to be, thanks to his and Dearing’s lessons as well as all her experiences, and understands that just like with Blue she needs to be allowed more freedom in order to flourish. He is still protective over her, but the rules have become more fluid, as they must be when raising a growing child. Maisie, too, has better respect for Grady after having witnessed just how far he will go to keep her safe when she needs it. Their connection is no longer about control; it has become a relationship based on mutual respect.
Other people in the 2022 incidents
Along with his family, Kayla Watts, and Henry Wu, who are all discussed above, Grady forged an alliance with several other people during the 2022 incidents who he met in Biosyn Valley. While searching for Maisie, he found she had already been rescued, and to his shock, her rescuers were three very famous scientists who had history with Jurassic Park. Among them was his personal hero, the vertebrate paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant, whose own research into raptor behavior and cognition had been important during the early stages of the I.B.R.I.S. Project. Grady had even owned a book-on-tape version of Grant’s Dinosaur Detectives. Grant had also heard of Grady and his work with Velociraptors, which had astounded Grant when he learned about it. They were both able to share their knowledge with each other in person, and both saw the other’s expertise in action when they cooperated to find and rescue Beta.
The mathematician Dr. Ian Malcolm had always been critical of InGen and the kind of science it pursued, and he took a more cynical view of what Grady and Dearing had done at Jurassic World. While Grady appreciated Malcolm’s help, they butted heads a little more often than the others, though as was typical of him Malcolm either did not notice or actually enjoyed being irritating. Still, he and Grady helped one another out during the incident. Malcolm had been the one to recruit the others in his party after being alerted to Biosyn’s culpability in the locust plague by whistleblower Ramsay Cole, who joined them later on to help with their escape from headquarters.
Finally there was Dr. Ellie Sattler, a paleobotanist who had been the first to independently notice the disturbing feeding patterns of the invasive giant locusts. She had reasoned that Biosyn was behind it, and Malcolm had gotten her into the facility to gather evidence to show the media. When Grady met her, she had already collected this evidence and was trying to escape the valley with it. Grady helped to keep her and the evidence safe from harm as they collaborated to evacuate. There were also some noteworthy parallels between Sattler and Grant’s relationship and Grady and Dearing’s. Much like Grady had been before Dearing came back into his life, Grant had retreated into himself, becoming dissatisfied in a career that had once brought him joy as he felt powerless to make a meaningful impact on the world around him. Sattler had pulled Grant back out into the field, reminding him what he had to live for, just as Dearing had done for Grady four years prior.
Other coworkers
Grady was a member of the U.S. Navy between 2000 and 2003, and worked for InGen Security between 2012 and 2015; it is unknown what jobs, if any, he held between 2003 and 2012. However, after five or six years of unemployment following his time at Jurassic World, Grady got a job with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which was in desperate need of people who had experience with de-extinct animals. These organisms had been released into the wild in 2018 and entered the global black-market trade at the same time, and the rapidity with which the situation developed overwhelmed the sluggish pace of politics. With his invaluable expreience as an animal trainer who had worked directly with a diverse arrangement of de-extinct creatures, Grady was great help to his local Fish and Wildlife office.
Operating in California where the de-extinct animals had first been set into the wild, Grady aided in tracking, capturing, handling, and relocating dinosaurs and other creatures. His time at Jurassic World had given him a sweeping overview of the behavior patterns of most major archosaur groups; while he specialized in raptors, he knew a serviceable amount about all the other animals the park had bred too. With the technology to create new species having gone open-source, varieties of animals that were never a part of InGen’s bestiary had started to appear as well, so Grady’s wide base of knowledge helped to handle these unfamiliar animals.
He frequently worked alongside two superior officers, Shep Wauneka and Rosa Delgado. He appeared to be closer friends with Wauneka. Together the three of them not only moved dinosaurs to sanctuaries, but also combated poachers, who were ever eager to exploit the animals for money. Often times, the dinosaurs which ended up in the hands of poachers were slaughtered for their body parts or sold as exotic pets, and they were the lucky ones: cockfighting had seen a resurgence, especially among people who did not think of genetically-resurrected dinosaurs as “real” animals. Grady and his allies were a force working against this cruelty. Wauneka and Delgado respect Grady’s willingness to fight poachers by any means possible, and due to his experience, they typically let him take the lead in field operations.
The first time they ever saw him back down from a fight was during their encounter with Rainn Delacourt’s gang in 2022. After Grady took time off of work a few weeks later, he would finally be able to explain that he only let Rainn Delacourt go because he was concerned about making enemies near his secluded home, on account of his romantic partner being wanted by the Central Intelligence Agency and his unofficially-adopted daughter being an illegal human clone who had recently become the subject of a global manhunt. Hopefully this information will clear things up with Grady’s coworkers.
Portrayal
Owen Grady is portrayed by Chris Pratt. Josh Brolin was also considered for the role, but left the project for undisclosed reasons. For his performance in Jurassic World, Pratt was awarded MTV’s Best Action Performance award in 2016. He won two awards for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, the Teen Choice Awards’ Choice Summer Movie Actor award in 2018 and the Kids’ Choice Awards’ Favorite Butt-Kicker award in 2019. Over time, Chris Pratt’s declining popularity has impacted audience opinions of Owen Grady. Even in 2015, he was criticized due to Pratt mainly being known for comedy and action films; his character being ex-military disappointed many scientists in the audience, since none of Jurassic World‘s leading roles were scientist characters. Many audiences mistakenly believe that his character is a former Navy SEAL, but this is not said in any of the films, only that he is ex-Navy. According to the mobile games, he worked in the Marine Mammal Program, and held the position of first lieutenant.
The character of Owen Grady is not based on any character in Michael Crichton‘s novels. Instead, he is an original character intended to illustrate the relationship between humans and animals in the context of animal training for both military and entertainment purposes.
According to Colin Trevorrow and Steven Spielberg, Owen Grady’s first name was originally planned to be Vance.
