Justin Hendricks (S/F)

Justin Hendricks (2004)

Justin Hendricks was an American business student and an intern at Jurassic World during the 2004 Bright Minds program. His mother is the owner of vegan cosmetics company Ivy Rose Cosmetics and the associated women’s shelter Ivy Rose House. Hendricks was a university student on the American East Coast as of 2004, and was accepted into the Bright Minds internship program with Masrani Global Corporation in the summer of that year. During an incident in the second month of the program on Wednesday, September 8, he was mauled to death by a Velociraptor; his death was covered up by the company to avoid delaying Jurassic World’s opening date.

Name

Justin is the English form of the given name Justinus, which comes from the Latin “Justus” meaning “just” or “fair.” The surname Hendricks can be traced back to ancient German, meaning “home rule,” but may also have origins in the Irish name O’Inneirghe, meaning “the descendant of the abandoned one.” Both names are fitting, as Justin Hendricks was a staunch supporter of equal rights for women, and his father abandoned his mother.

Because his father was absent for much of his life, it is possible and likely that Hendricks is his mother’s maiden name, rather than his father’s surname.

Biography
Early life

Hendricks’s date of birth is currently unknown. However, he was an undergraduate college student as of 2004, meaning that he would likely have been between eighteen and twenty-one at the time; this puts his year of birth in the early-to-mid-1980s. He was an only child; his family later lived in Portland, Maine, but it is not known if he was actually born and raised here.

Sometime after he was born, his father abandoned his mother; while exact details are private, his father had been harshly abusive. Their small family struggled to get by at first. For years, Hendricks’s mother worked hard to support her son, founding a vegan cosmetics company called Ivy Rose Cosmetics in her own mother’s basement to bring in money. Even with this, the family’s financial situation was dire enough that support from Hendricks’s maternal grandmother was all that kept them from homelessness.

He would have been in his early adolescence in 1997, when the world was shocked by the appearance of a living Tyrannosaurus rex in San Diego, California. This revealed the existence of de-extinction as a scientific reality, having been accomplished in secret over the past decade by International Genetic Technologies. While many people bemoaned de-extinction as an upsetting of the natural order, Hendricks and his mother appear to have been fascinated with it. At one point during his youth, Hendricks painstakingly constructed a scale model of some Jurassic Park facilities based on designs released by the Park’s mastermind Dr. John Hammond.

Through their difficult early years, Hendricks was mostly unaware of his mother’s struggles as she sought to shelter him from the truth of her financial situation. He had a happy childhood despite their impoverished life.

Eventually, though, his mother’s company began to gain traction, and Ivy Rose Cosmetics became a success with hundreds of stores. There was enough of a market for vegan cosmetics to keep it afloat, since this niche in the business world had not yet been filled. Hendricks learned business skills from his mother, and as he learned more about cosmetics, he became interested in chemistry as well. This combined skillset of business and science set Hendricks up for a bright future.

University career

Hendricks began attending college by the fall of 2003 at the latest, intending to major in business with a minor in chemistry. He followed his mother’s career advice and shared many of her business views, understanding the ideas behind capitalism but not being afraid of criticizing it. He also maintained a highly feminist belief system. By this time, he had learned the truth about his mother’s financial struggles and his father’s abusive behaviors. His mother founded a women’s shelter in Portland called Ivy Rose House, funded by donations taken directly from the profits of Ivy Rose Cosmetics. Hendricks made efforts to be entirely unlike his father, making it known to all his peers that he respected and supported women.

In college, Hendricks found that he learned best through listening to lectures. To help himself study, he sat in the front of classes and recorded the lectures to listen to again later, allowing him to take notes during class without fear of missing anything important.

InGen, the company which had perfected and accomplished de-extinction, was bought out by Masrani Global Corporation a year after the public learned about de-extinction; in 2002, the company’s billionaire CEO Simon Masrani announced that a theme park, Jurassic World, would be opening in 2005 on the remote island of Isla Nublar. Hendricks followed these developments; in late 2003, Simon Masrani began seeking interns to work in the park. The program was officially titled Bright Minds in March 2004, and applications opened. Hendricks submitted an essay with his application, drawing off of his past experiences to justify his candidacy. He also set up notifications on his cell phone to ensure he would be quickly notified of any Jurassic World news stories.

It is unknown if he had any romantic relationships; his personality and conventional attractiveness made him appear flirtatious in conversation, but he rarely made any overt romantic advances. As of the summer of 2004, he was single.

Bright Minds

Along with eleven other undergrad-aged Americans, Hendricks was hand-picked for the Bright Minds internship program at Jurassic World by Simon Masrani. His personal essay reminded Masrani of himself at a younger age, which was a major part of why Hendricks was selected. Hendricks flew to Costa Rica from an international airport on the East Coast in August, nearly missing his flight. On the hours-long journey, he was seated next to a nineteen-year-old political science student named Claire Dearing, who turned out to be a fellow intern. They bonded over shared interests in science and appear to have become romantically attracted to one another immediately.

After arriving in Costa Rica, Hendricks and Dearing became acquainted with several other interns including Eric and Tanya Skye as well as the son of a Masrani Board member named Wyatt. They were transported via shuttle van to the docks of the Pacific coast, and from there took a ferry to the harbor at the southern tip of Isla Nublar. Along the way, Hendricks stood up for Dearing when she was harassed by Wyatt. Having had dinner on the ferry, they were brought to the fourth floor of the island’s hotel, where they would stay for the duration of the internship. He roomed with a pre-veterinary student named Art, directly across from the one shared by Dearing and Tanya Skye. This would place him in a southeast-facing room.

Simon Masrani personally greeted the interns on their first day, including Hendricks and Dearing, who ate breakfast together with their roommates. This was followed by a tour of the park: they were treated to a view of Gyrosphere Valley as the sixteenth Triceratops was introduced. Hendricks was astonished to learn that the gyrospheres were real, and not a hoax; the patent had leaked some time before, but the futuristic design had spread doubt that it was authentic. Hendricks made an impression on Masrani with his enthusiasm for the park and savvy business knowledge. He and Dearing were selected to have lunch with Masrani after the Gyrosphere Valley tour, since they were the interns best suited for higher-level administrative work. Masrani showed clear signs of being impressed by both of them. Hendricks, too, was impressed by Dearing’s boldness in their conversation with the billionaire.

They toured the Hammond Creation Laboratory after lunch, meeting Dr. Henry Wu, who probed them with questions to determine who would be suited for lab work. Despite Hendricks’s reasonable understanding of the rationale behind genetically engineering the dinosaurs, his status as a business major disqualified him in Wu’s eyes.

After the lab tour, the interns had free time before dinner, and Hendricks drove Dearing and the Skye twins to the greenhouses. While they were alone together, Dearing confided in Hendricks that she had overheard Dr. Wu and Mr. Masrani discussing a previous group of interns, despite Bright Minds supposedly being the first such program. They learned from fellow intern Wyatt that there had supposedly been a previous group of interns, but that a few months into the program, one intern had died during a fierce storm and Masrani Global covered it up. Hendricks was skeptical that this tale was true, assuming it to be just another conspiracy theory.

While in the greenhouses, Hendricks and Dearing’s attraction to one another increased, but neither made a clear and unambiguous move on the other; at this point they may both have harbored doubts that their feelings were mutual.

During the second day of the program, Hendricks and the other interns were brought into the valley to perform fieldwork. The youngest Triceratops had not moved in a worrying period of time, so they accompanied park staff into the area to investigate and respond. They found that the young animal had fallen down a gully and become trapped and injured. While the park staff went to ready a veterinary and ACU team to respond, Dearing led the interns in an unauthorized effort to calm and treat the animal, which Hendricks helped with. They were reprimanded by staff for this, but did manage to help the injured Triceratops.

Some days into the program, Hendricks was tasked by Oscar, the head of ACU, to test-drive a gyrosphere in the valley to assist with its machine learning. His roommate Art was originally supposed to join him in this project, but Art was offered a chance to work alongside the veterinary staff with juvenile dinosaurs, so Hendricks naturally asked Dearing to fill in for him. By this time, Hendricks was so busy with his work as an intern that he had not emailed his mother as often as he promised, though she was fully supportive of his ambitions with Masrani Global.

During the terrain mapping project in the gyrosphere, their vehicle became stuck in a forested area and they had to disembark to try and free it. While they were outside of the vehicle, a spirited young Brachiosaurus named Pearl charged the sphere and batted it around; this was apparently a favorite game of hers. Dearing froze in fear and Hendricks had to pull her out of the way as the dinosaur charged. Since the vehicle was being used as a toy, Hendricks and Dearing could not safely reenter, and had to be rescued by ACU instead. Hendricks’s glasses were broken during this misadventure; they were eventually replaced, presumably courtesy of Masrani Global.

Rather than visit a nurse at the hotel as instructed, Dearing and Hendricks tracked down the lead herbivore trainer Bertie to inform them of the incident and their strategy to redirect the dinosaur’s play behavior with new toys. Hendricks assisted Dearing in putting together these toys, painting over the hulls of gutted gyrospheres with interesting patterns and colors.

Hendricks vandalized a small area of pavement while the cement was still wet, writing Pearl Was Here and tracing the shape of a brachiosaur footprint. The two of them also made handprints in the wet cement. After this act, Hendricks finally admitted his feelings for Dearing, and she affirmed that she had feelings for him as well.

Over the next few days and weeks, most of the interns settled into a routine with departments of the park that suited their skills and interests. Hendricks, however, does not appear to have had as much consistency; instead, he moved from one department to another fairly often, working with supervisors in fields as wide-ranging as security, administration, engineering, animal handling, and botany. Whether this was the plan all along, or if Hendricks had more difficulty than the other interns finding where he fit in best in the park, is unknown.

After a day in which Hendricks, Dearing, and other interns fertilized plants at the greenhouses, they journeyed to one of the island’s waterfalls with their friends to swim. Hendricks illustrated a common thistle flower in Dearing’s journal after the plant had become entangled in her braids at the greenhouses. The two almost shared a first kiss on this occasion, but were interrupted as their friends jumped from the waterfall and distracted them.

Hendricks accompanied Dearing and her friends in painting gutted gyrospheres for Pearl, which were tested the following afternoon. The toys were a success, meaning that Pearl would be able to stay in the valley with the other dinosaurs.

The day after Pearl’s test, Dearing approached Hendricks asking for his help with a covert project. He agreed to help her break into Gyrosphere Valley at dusk, using a sphere to navigate into Sector C where a waterfall was located. Here, they collected samples of cyanobacteria and tested the pH of the biofilm. They discovered that the cyanobacteria were highly acidic, making them potentially hazardous to animal life. This, Dearing reasoned, was the cause of an unidentified illness that had affected some of the valley’s dinosaurs. As they returned to the hotel, they shared a first kiss, which Dearing initiated.

Death

Three days after the discovery, Dearing finally described the reasons behind her investigation. She had discovered the journal of a girl named Izzy James, who had interned at Jurassic World in the early months of the year and died before Bright Minds started. This proved that the “phantom interns” conspiracy theory was rooted in real events. Before her death, James had been investigating the mystery illness and Dearing had continued James’s research in secret. Some of Dearing’s intel had come from Wyatt, so Hendricks helped her pick the lock to Wyatt and Eric Skye’s room to try and uncover more information. There they found evidence that Wyatt had been stealing Jurassic World supplies and data, and with the park staff occupied by the arrival of a wild Velociraptor to the quarantine paddock, Wyatt would have a much easier time committing an act of espionage. Hendricks and Dearing tried to track him down, but as he had left the hotel, they instead made for the quarantine paddock to warn Simon Masrani or other staff about the threat to the park.

At the quarantine paddock, they discovered the Skye twins attempting to hack the paddock’s system to steal data, revealing that they were the actual corporate spies rather than Wyatt. The twins accidentally cut power to the paddock, releasing the raptor into the training yard; the emergency hatch opened, but as the secondary security paddock was not yet constructed, the raptor had an escape route to the open jungle. Dearing led the others to temporary safety in the paddock’s larger quarantine area, the raptor becoming briefly trapped by the doors as it pursued them. The four interns located a tree they could use to escape, with the twins making it out safely. The raptor attacked as Hendricks and Dearing attempted to follow, and Dearing fled; Hendricks abandoned his chance to escape in order to help Dearing. He distracted the raptor by throwing a rock at it, then ran with Dearing for one of the paddock’s weapon caches. The raptor had already reached the wall, blocking them from getting to the cache. Hendricks chose to get the animal’s attention by running into the jungle and yelling loudly, leading it away from the cache so Dearing could arm herself.

Hendricks’s speed was no match for a Velociraptor, and he was attacked by the animal. It wounded him, but allowed him to escape, continuing to chase him through the paddock. The attack weakened Hendricks, and he quickly lost a dangerous volume of blood. His glasses were lost in the attack, further putting him at a disadvantage against the raptor’s superior night vision. He succumbed, unable to run any more. Dearing arrived before the raptor could begin to eat, drawing it away; she hit it with bear spray and used a shock prod to knock it unconscious. Hendricks dragged himself to a tree where he could sit upright, and was found by Dearing in a severely weak state. He had suffered a fatal wound to the chest and had internal bleeding throughout his body; he was bleeding from his mouth and ears. Dearing stayed near him to comfort him as he bled to death.

Legacy

Two days after his death, Hendricks’s body was removed from Isla Nublar and returned to the United States so his mother could make funeral arrangements.

As with the death of Izzy James before him, Hendricks’s death threatened the future of Jurassic World. A legal investigation could delay the park’s opening and generate bad press. Fortunately, Masrani had prepared for such a crisis this time around, including a clause in the interns’ NDAs to cover his bases in the event of an intern death. He informed Hendricks’s mother of the true cause of his death, coming up with a cover story to explain the death as being unrelated to Jurassic World operations. The Skye twins were set to face legal consequences for their role as corporate spies, but Dearing blackmailed Masrani into merely expelling them from Bright Minds. Her reasoning for this was that their employer, Mosby Health, had been funding their younger sister’s medical treatment in exchange for their illegal services; if the trials were shut down, Victory Skye would not survive. The trial was funded to completion by Masrani Global Corporation.

Dearing was hired by Jurassic World after Bright Minds, and during her career in management she implemented some of Hendricks’s business philosophies such as interdepartmental cooperation. The success of Jurassic World, and Masrani Global Corporation as a whole, was largely in part to the development of cooperative business practices between the many departments and companies. As a part of the coverup, Dearing could not discuss Hendricks’s influence on her career, and he was essentially written out of Jurassic World history. Not until Jurassic World itself closed could she openly talk about her relationship with him and his grisly fate; this is discussed in her 2018 memoirs, The Evolution of Claire, though there is currently no evidence that she actually published this book in-universe.

Skills
Social skills

Hendricks’s chief skill was his talent at getting along with others, a skill which greatly enhanced his potential in business as well as his social life. His natural conventional attractiveness certainly played a role, but physique alone only gets one so far; Hendricks put effort into his personal health and grooming. He displayed confidence in virtually every interaction, displaying unwavering faith in his own abilities and moral character. This was tempered with humility, ensuring that he did not come across as cocky or self-righteous. His appealing combination of personality traits was a result of his upbringing; he was taught by his mother, herself a successful businesswoman, how best to treat others in order to be well-liked and respectable.

Special notice should go to Hendricks’s relationships with women. Having been raised by a single mother with help from his maternal grandmother, Hendricks developed a respect for the perseverance of working women and understood the obstacles that society places in front of them. He vocally expressed support for the women he met throughout life, defending them against misogyny when he spotted it and making it clear that he valued female friendship. For Hendricks, friendship was a necessary precursor to romance; he did not pursue casual sexual relationships. He found himself attracted to intelligent and scientifically-minded women, but notably had female friends at Bright Minds with a wide range of personalities. Hendricks was also influenced by his abusive father, who he strove to be the complete opposite of.

Overall, Hendricks was well-liked by nearly everyone he met, owing to his open-minded and tolerant worldview as well as his respectful attitude toward others. His business ambitions were related to this; boosting employee morale and cultivating a comfortable and friendly work environment were among his career goals. Hendricks’s philosophy to put others before himself ultimately cost him his life when he willingly put himself in mortal danger to protect his girlfriend, but in his dying moments he showed no regrets regarding this choice.

Scientific knowledge

Although he was a business major, Hendricks was a chemistry minor. He had an understanding of numerous scientific fields outside of chemistry as well; like many people his age, de-extinction had fascinated him since 1997 and led him to study many related sciences. These included genetics and paleontology, with the latter being one of his major interests. He also studied the histories of these fields, learning just as much on the social drives behind scientific research as he learned about the research itself. Because of his studies in chemistry, he was knowledgeable on a variety of basic laboratory procedures.

Hendricks had a particularly detailed knowledge of botany, which is reasonable considering his background in chemistry and cosmetics. Many plant species have scientifically-significant biochemical properties, and his mother’s company likely made use of some of their byproducts. It was his connection to Ivy Rose Cosmetics that first introduced Hendricks to chemistry. Despite his botanical knowledge, he (like Dearing) misidentified cyanobacteria as algae and as a plant, when in reality bacteria, algae, and true plants are entirely different types of organisms.

Physical ability

Hendricks was visually disabled, requiring the use of corrective lenses for purposes such as driving. It is not known whether he was nearsighted or farsighted. Other than this, he appears to have been in good physical shape at the time of his death; he was athletic and adept at climbing, running, and swimming.

Illustration and writing

According to Claire Dearing, Hendricks had a knack for detailed illustration, particularly in the style of a naturalist illustrating plant life. His handwriting was said to be exceptionally neat as well, further enhancing his potential as a naturalist. Hendricks’s skill at writing in general was well above average, being one of only twelve applicants to the Bright Minds program to be hand-selected by billionaire Simon Masrani.

Lockpicking

After repeatedly locking himself out of his house, Hendricks taught himself how to pick locks via internet research. He demonstrated this skill using a bobby pin and copper hair stick to pick the lock of a hotel door in Jurassic World.

Driving

Hendricks possessed a valid U.S. driver’s license as of the summer and fall of 2004. He was capable of driving Jeeps, and also assisted in test-driving gyrospheres for Jurassic World.

Views
Political views

Hendricks espoused generally liberal political opinions, though his politics were still fairly moderate by international standards. He supported concepts such as women’s rights and feminism, animal welfare, and scientific innovation. However, some of his views were tempered by his background in business. For example, he did not oppose capitalism and did not express any openly socialist views; rather, he believed that capitalism could be modified to better benefit the people living in such a society. Hendricks was not opposed to the existence of a billionaire class either, but believed that the wealthy should use their good fortune to help others. His mother’s company was likely a major influence in his economic views, since she genuinely did work for her success and earned it of her own merit rather than inheriting wealth. Hendricks’s mother used her profits to help vulnerable people in her community, a practice that Hendricks idealized.

On business and capitalism

Having learned much about entrepreneurship and business from his mother’s success with Ivy Rose Cosmetics, Hendricks understood the importance of cooperation between differing sections of a company. When interning at Jurassic World in the summer and early fall of 2004, one of his criticisms of the park was that InGen Security did not cooperate readily with the animal handlers or scientists. With most park employees living full-time on the island, Hendricks mentioned that the staff should strive for family-like relationships and that a social support system would reduce stress on all employees. Hendricks rejected traditional corporatism, instead believing that the purpose of business was to innovate, solve problems, and offer better quality of life to the company’s customers and the surrounding community. He also fully endorsed corporate funding of scientific research, which he understood could lead to breakthroughs that the company, its customers, and scientists could all benefit from.

Hendricks believed that many modern capitalist practices were self-sabotaging, favoring short-term profit over long-term sustainability. He argued that capitalism would better benefit from valuing employees as people, encouraging and enabling creativity, and fostering cooperation. He did not oppose the concept of capitalism itself, but rather believed that it was being performed incorrectly by the modern world.

On feminism

Hendricks fully supported women’s rights and considered the feminist movement to be a serious and important one, a view that was influenced by his mother’s struggles and eventual success during his childhood. When he was old enough to understand how far she had come and what obstacles she had surmounted, he developed a deep respect for her hard work. Hendricks came to understand that women such as his mother faced unfair advantages in many aspects of life and made it a point to help reduce systemic barriers in any way he could.

Throughout his life, Hendricks frequently expressed an up-to-date understanding of feminist topics and debates. He used the term “man-spread” in 2004, nearly a decade before the term “manspreading” would become popularized on the internet. Hendricks was always cautious not to invade the personal space of women and firmly adhered to the principle of consent; he was known to avoid possible romantic interactions if he was unsure a woman was interested, and frequently allowed women to make the first move in a relationship. He was skilled at coming across as confident, however. As a result, rather than appearing hesitant or shy, Hendricks strove to make his potential romantic interests comfortable enough around him to express their own feelings.

Hendricks’s feminist beliefs extended to his interactions with other men. His own father had been an abusive partner to his mother. Hendricks, abhorred by this, made it a point to stop misogyny before abuse even occurred. During the Bright Minds program, he was frequently at odds with another intern named Wyatt who was known for harassing the female interns. Hendricks took any opportunity to call out Wyatt’s behavior and support his female peers; at one point he goaded Wyatt into revealing his true nature in front of an intern he had been flirting with. In this way, Hendricks prevented one of his female peers from entering into a potentially toxic relationship while still allowing her to make this choice of her own accord.

On scientific progress

One of the bigger philosophical questions Hendricks considered was the cost of progress, not just in business but in science as well. He understood, and learned from his peers, the ways in which unchecked progress in one field could lead to damage done in other respects. An example he took to heart was the Bone Wars of the 1800s, a fierce paleontological competition. During these events, rival paleontologists raced to catalogue as many impressive new species as possible in order to outdo one another; while over one hundred twenty new animals were discovered, irreversible damage to smaller fossil specimens was done, workers were mistreated, and the Sioux Nation was betrayed. In this case, the ambition that drove the Bone Wars led to advances in science that are impossible to consider without also discussing the great harm that came with them.

Hendricks was generally supportive of scientific advancement and considered scientific research to be a means to improve life, both human and otherwise. Still, the costs associated with progress weighed on him. He had little direct experience with the negative impacts of progress of any kind, so his conclusions were mostly based on what he learned from others. His opinions on costs versus benefits of scientific developments were not fully formed by 2004, as he was still taking in more information as to be as informed as possible. At the time of his death, which was caused by an animal created through genetic engineering and cloning, Hendricks brought up the cost of progress one last time. Having knowingly given his life to save that of his girlfriend, rapidly bleeding to death in an unfamiliar jungle in the middle of the night, Hendricks concluded that if the cost of progress was a person’s life then it was no longer justifiable.

On de-extinction

Hendricks was not a genetics or paleontology student, studying business and chemistry, but was self-taught in paleontology and knowledgeable enough. Unlike professional paleontologists, he had no ill feelings toward de-extinction, becoming fascinated with the subject after it became publicly known in 1997. Hendricks’s interest in de-extinction was not purely scientific: as a business major, the concept of a de-extinction theme park thrilled and intrigued him. He devoted much of his free time to studying John Hammond’s blueprints and concept art for Jurassic Park, even building scale models of some of the facilities himself. He kept up to date on Jurassic World developments, applying to the Bright Minds internship when it became available.

While on Isla Nublar, Hendricks demonstrated just as much amazement regarding the animals as his fellow interns, and also appreciated their potential to astound the public and draw crowds. He worked with the animals on a few occasions, although his routine as an intern was much less regimented than his peers and he moved from one department to another. Still, all of his jobs were at least tangentially related to the de-extinct organisms that the park was based around. In September, he was involved in an incident in which a recently-imported female Velociraptor was accidentally released from the carnivore quarantine paddock and mauled him to death. In his dying moments, he placed blame on InGen, rather than the animal.

Fears

Hendricks had a strong fear of flying in airplanes, particularly if turbulence occurred.

Relationships
Family

Hendricks was primarily raised by his mother, with help from his maternal grandmother. His father was abusive toward his mother and abandoned them sometime after Hendricks was born; Hendricks does not appear to have distinct memories of his father, suggesting that this abandonment happened during his early childhood. Financial assistance and housing provided by his maternal grandmother kept them from becoming homeless.

Hendricks’s mother was a relentless worker, motivated by a strong desire to provide her son with a good life. She founded a vegan cosmetics company called Ivy Rose out of her own mother’s basement, though this took some years to become a success. When it did, though, it took off and grew into a nationwide chain with a strong presence on the East Coast. Hendricks lived a comfortable childhood thanks to his mother’s entrepreneurial skills, though even before the company was successful, she ensured that he did not suffer because of their financial situation.

When Ivy Rose began turning bigger profits, Hendricks’s mother remained just as devoted a parent. As a teenager he was better able to understand just how much she had overcome to get their family where it was, and he held her in exceptional regard because of that. He learned business skills from her, and she fostered his interest in science from a young age. In his young adulthood, Hendricks considered his mother to be somewhat overbearing, but understood that this came from a place of love and that she wanted to ensure his safety and happiness over anything else. She was thrilled when he was accepted into Bright Minds, knowing that this would provide him with incredibly rare opportunities for success in life, and tried to keep in touch with him during the program. He admitted that he did not reply to her emails as frequently as he should have.

Sadly, Bright Minds would be the end of Hendricks’s career rather than a new beginning. While he still showed incredible promise and made many connections there, he was mauled to death by a Velociraptor in September, perishing thousands of miles away from his home. His mother was informed of his death by Simon Masrani; details of their conversation are unknown, but Masrani convinced her to remain silent due to a clause in the interns’ nondisclosure agreements. A cover story for his death was concocted; it is unknown if his maternal grandmother, if she was still alive at that point, learned the truth.

Claire Dearing

Since they both flew out of the same international airport (most likely Boston Logan, the nearest airport to Portland that offers nonstop flights to Costa Rica), the first of his fellow interns Hendricks met in the Bright Minds program was business student Claire Dearing. They were assigned seats next to one another, either by coincidence or because they were both Bright Minds interns. Hendricks introduced himself by promising to respect Dearing’s personal space, which Dearing found unusual but reassuring. She was attracted to him on sight, and it appears that Hendricks was also attracted to Dearing. They bonded over a shared fear of flying, and when the airplane experienced turbulence during takeoff, Hendricks (apparently compulsively) grasped Dearing’s hand; he apologized immediately.

Despite the unusual circumstances of their first meeting, Hendricks and Dearing quickly got along quite well. Hendricks realized that Dearing was reading a paleontology history book about the Bone Wars, a topic which he was already familiar with. They bonded over their shared interests and discussed ethics on the flight to Costa Rica. Upon arrival, they discovered that they were both partaking in the Bright Minds program, so they did not have to part ways just yet.

Over the next few weeks, Hendricks and Dearing grew closer as they worked on numerous projects in Jurassic World and spent free time together. Hendricks was impressed not only with Dearing’s scientific knowledge, but also her determination, seeing in her the markings of a great entrepreneur. On the second day of their third week on the island, Hendricks told Dearing that he had feelings for her, and she admitted that she felt the same. Still, their relationship developed at a moderate pace rather than in a whirlwind; Hendricks was in no rush and wanted Dearing to come to him when she was comfortable with it. She trusted him more than any of Jurassic World’s staff or her fellow interns, convincing him to break into Gyrosphere Valley to perform specimen sampling for reasons she did not disclose until two days later; he trusted her enough to go along with this. On the night that they performed this operation, on Monday, September 6, they shared a first kiss.

After learning about Dearing’s investigation into possible corporate espionage on Wednesday, September 8, Hendricks helped Dearing break into a suspect’s room. They followed their lead to the carnivore quarantine paddock, where the park’s first Velociraptor was held. In the incident that followed, the animal was released accidentally and pursued the interns through the paddock. Hendricks was on the verge of escaping when the raptor charged Dearing, and he descended back into the paddock to help her. They fled together, but when the animal blocked their access to a weapons cache, Hendricks led the raptor away so that Dearing could arm herself. This act cost him his life; he was spared from being eaten alive when Dearing stunned the raptor. She was the last person to see him alive or speak to him, and he bled to death in her arms.

While Hendricks’s death was covered up by Masrani Global and Simon Masrani himself, Dearing did not forget how he influenced her. During her career at Jurassic World, she implemented some of the business strategies she learned from him, and still recalled him fondly in her 2018 memoirs. She kept the thistle flower that he gave her during Bright Minds well into her adulthood along with her journal, which included his annotations on the flower.

Simon Masrani

Justin Hendricks was one of probably thousands (or more) of entrants into the Bright Minds internship opportunity, overseen by the billionaire tech mogul Simon Masrani. Hendricks’s application essay stood out, reminding Masrani of himself when he was younger. This was one of the main reasons that Masrani selected Hendricks to be one of only twelve undergraduate college students for Bright Minds during the late summer and early fall of 2004.

On the interns’ first full day on Isla Nublar, Masrani came to the breakfast and personally introduced himself. Hendricks was astounded to learn that the famous Simon Masrani knew him, who he was, and had a good understanding of what his ambitions were. With Hendricks as an aspiring businessman, Masrani had a chance to teach his own skills and experiences in the world of business to the young generation. They developed a friendly relationship and Hendricks was offered opportunities to work alongside many of Jurassic World’s best employees. Masrani himself spent time with Hendricks as well.

After learning on September 8 that corporate espionage was possibly happening on the island, Hendricks (along with Claire Dearing) trusted no one less than Simon Masrani with that vital information and attempted to find him and warn him. Unfortunately, when they sought him out at the carnivore quarantine paddock, he was not there; instead, they found two other interns who were responsible for the espionage. In the surprise, a feral Velociraptor was accidentally released from the quarantine paddock and mauled Hendricks to death. Masrani was deeply saddened by the loss of one of his favorite interns, but in the interest of keeping Jurassic World on track, he covered up the death. A clause in Hendricks’s NDA ensured that not even his mother could disclose the true cause of his death publicly. The effects of this incident would linger over Isla Nublar in the ensuing days and weeks, but with Jurassic World mere months away from opening, Masrani soon moved on to other things.

Other Bright Minds interns

During the Bright Minds internship program, which was originally slated to run for at least eight weeks, Hendricks became acquainted with eleven other hand-selected undergraduate university students. The first intern he met was Claire Dearing, on the flight to Costa Rica; after arriving, both of them met twins Tanya and Eric Skye. The former was a botany student, while the latter was a videographer and photographer. Dearing was closer with the Skye twins than Hendricks was, but he also became friends with them and worked with them on many occasions. Tanya Skye considered Hendricks attractive, but did not pursue him (she quickly became friends with Dearing and encouraged Dearing to pursue Hendricks instead). Eric Skye worked with Hendricks on an animal behavior program with a young brachiosaur, and the two appear to have gotten along well as friends rather than just fellow interns.

Hendricks met several of the female interns through his relationship with Dearing, including a marine biology student named Amanda and West Point candidate Ronnie Torres. In general, the female interns considered Hendricks’s respectful personality to be refreshingly different from the norm and enjoyed his friendship.

His roommate, a pre-veterinary student named Art, was one of his notable male friendships. While they did not work in the same areas at Jurassic World all the time, their relationship as roommates meant that they reconvened each night and would have been able to share their day’s experiences. Art’s perspective as an aspiring veterinarian made his insights different than many of Hendricks’s other friends.

Most of the interns quite liked Hendricks due to his confident but agreeable personality, but he often butted heads with an intern named Wyatt who was primarily in Bright Minds due to his father’s influence as a Masrani Global board member. Wyatt and Hendricks met during dinner on the ferry to Isla Nublar, and already, Wyatt’s backward opinions about women got on Hendricks’s nerves. On many occasions, Hendricks intervened in conversations where Wyatt was harassing his female peers or otherwise being unpleasant. Once, he goaded Wyatt into behaving this way in front of Amanda, whom Wyatt had been attempting to flirt with. Because of this, Amanda lost interest in dating Wyatt. Similarly to Dearing, Hendricks believed that Wyatt was the most likely suspect in a case of corporate espionage occurring on the island; he never suspected the Skye twins, who had been bribed by a rival corporation to Masrani Global in exchange for their younger sister receiving much-needed medical treatment.

The Skye twins were responsible for accidentally releasing a feral Velociraptor which trapped all of them in the quarantine paddock; even so, Hendricks helped the twins escape with their lives. This incident resulted in his death. Once word got out that he had died, his friends mourned him; Tanya Skye was devastated that her actions had killed her friend. While the incident was covered up and the twins were spared legal consequences by Dearing’s intervention, their guilt was fully known to all the Bright Minds interns, most of whom had been friends with Hendricks. However, the nondisclosure agreements they signed prohibited them from going public as whistleblowers. It is not known if any of them violated these agreements, but as Jurassic World operated for ten years without hint of a public scandal, it seems unlikely that any NDAs were violated.

Other Jurassic World staff

Like his fellow interns, many of Hendricks’s supervisors at Jurassic World during Bright Minds quite liked him. He had a versatile set of skills encompassing both the business and science aspects of Jurassic World, so he worked with multiple different supervisors throughout the first half of the program. It is unclear if, like most of the other interns, he was planned to work with a specific park department; he does not appear to have settled into a particular role. His supervisors included lead herbivore trainer Bertie, head of ACU Oscar, and chief veterinarian Dr. Tim O’Donnell as well as Simon Masrani himself. While they never met, Dr. John Hammond had been a major inspiration for Hendricks after Jurassic Park became publicly known in 1997.

Along with the other interns, Hendricks was given a tour of the Hammond Creation Laboratory and met lead genetic biologist Dr. Henry Wu. When quizzed for his knowledge of genetic engineering, Hendricks commented that InGen could alter the appearances of dinosaurs for aesthetic reasons, such as preventing them from growing feathers to better suit the public’s perception. While technically correct, Dr. Wu dismissed Hendricks and his suggestion in private, stating that a business major (even with a chemistry minor) had no place in his lab. In actuality, the dinosaurs’ lack of feathers was not intentional on Dr. Wu’s part but rather an unexpected byproduct of gene splicing and a source of frustration for Wu, so Hendricks’s apparent approval of the animals’ scaly skin may have touched a nerve.

However, when Hendricks perished in an animal attack five weeks into the program, Dr. Wu sympathized with his friends. Wu had lost close coworkers in the 1993 incident, so he understood what the interns were going through. The other park staff mourned Hendricks, having grown to like the young man over the past month. However, it is unknown how his death impacted the staff members’ careers; if any protested to Masrani about safety protocols or resigned due to this incident, nothing has been mentioned of it. Jurassic World was considered inevitable by this point, and its opening date would not be postponed or cancelled for any reason, no matter how dire.

Jurassic World animals

When de-extinction was revealed to the public in 1997, it would come in the form of a buck Tyrannosaurus rex in the streets of San Diego and on screens around the world. This was how Hendricks first became enamored with de-extinction and the animals it brought to life. For years, he researched what tantalizing small pieces of information about Jurassic Park became public. In 2002, it was announced that Jurassic World would be opening in three years, and Hendricks eagerly kept up with news about this new park. He applied to the Bright Minds internship when it became available and was on Isla Nublar in August of 2004.

The first dinosaurs he encountered were a herd of Triceratops, including three adult females named Hypatia, Curie, and Johnson as well as a newly-introduced juvenile female named Lovelace. He participated in field research with the trikes, helping Dearing and the other interns to treat Lovelace when she fell down a gully and injured herself. He also encountered other dinosaurs in the central valley, including the Gallimimus and a trio of older female Brachiosaurus named Olive, Agnes, and Dot. The youngest brachiosaur, a female named Pearl, encountered him while he was test-driving a gyrosphere with Dearing to assist InGen Security’s ACU division. Pearl was known for playing with empty gyrospheres, and her play caused her to nearly trample Hendricks. Although her huge size made her a danger to him, she did not actually intend to harm him, and he understood this; he worked with Dearing and her friends to develop a behavioral program to redirect Pearl’s playfulness to more appropriate toys.

Other herbivorous animals on the island at the time included more than twelve Parasaurolophus and six juvenile female Ankylosaurus, which Hendricks was less involved with.

Carnivorous animals were not as easy to access, being chiefly kept away from the park’s interns for safety reasons. At the time, the island housed Dilophosaurus and Compsognathus as well as a single older female Tyrannosaurus; some of these animals, including the tyrannosaur, had lived on Isla Nublar since the time of Jurassic Park. While the compies were free-roaming over parts of the island, the dilophosaurs were housed in secure habitats and the tyrannosaur in particular was under high security containment. Hendricks encountered the tyrannosaur only once, driving past Paddock 9 in a jeep and hearing her bellow from within. He did not see her directly.

During the fifth week of the internship, the first new carnivore from Isla Sorna was transported by cargo ship to Isla Nublar. This was a female Velociraptor antirrhopus nublarensis, separated from her pride to make transport less dangerous. When she was released from her paddock by accident during an act of corporate espionage, Hendricks was among her targets, but his presence lured the raptor back into the quarantine paddock and therefore prevented her from escaping. She stalked the interns through the paddock and ambushed Dearing, which prompted Hendricks to intervene by distracting the raptor. He and Dearing almost made it to the weapons cache but were blocked by the raptor, so Hendricks sacrificed himself by running and yelling to lure the raptor away from Dearing and the weapons. The raptor pursued Hendricks through the thick plant growth in the paddock, eventually catching him and mauling him. She was ready to begin eating when Dearing arrived, fighting off the raptor and electrocuting her into unconsciousness.

Hendricks was spared from being eaten alive, but still died of blood loss. The raptor was euthanized at the orders of Simon Masrani.

Portrayal

Justin Hendricks has so far only appeared in The Evolution of Claire, where his character is portrayed by author Tess Sharpe. He appears on the book’s cover alongside a young Claire Dearing and a male Velociraptor that does not appear in the book, making him the only Claire-exclusive character with canon artwork. It is unknown who, if anyone, inspired his character design.