Alexis "Lex" Murphy (S/F)

Lex Murphy, age 11 (1993)

Alexis “Lex” Murphy is an American programming enthusiast and the granddaughter of the late Scottish entrepreneur Dr. John Parker Hammond. She is best known for her role in the 1993 Isla Nublar incident, in which she played a pivotal part in enabling the survivors to escape, and for being one of the first people outside of InGen to know that the company had performed de-extinction.

Name

The given name Alexis was originally a male name and was popularized for girls in the United States in the mid-20th century; it remains commonly used as a female name in the United States. It was spread through Europe as a male name referencing saints in Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions, and originates from Greek (meaning “to ward off, avert, or defend”). She usually goes by the nickname Lex, or sometimes Lexie. Since the use of Alexis as a girls’ name rather than a boys’ name is a distinctly American tradition, it was more likely suggested by her father than her mother; her maternal family is British in origin.

The surname Murphy, which comes from her father’s side of the family, has Irish origins and is related to the personal name Murchadh. This name translates to “sea-warrior” and is associated with a legendary warrior of Irish history who fought against the Danish invasion. Murphy is the most common surname in modern Ireland, and is also very common in the United States due to Irish immigration. While Lex Murphy’s paternal heritage appears to be European-American, her surname clearly demonstrates an ancestral link to the British Isles on both sides of her family.

Biography
Early life

While Lex’s date of birth has not been disclosed, she was twelve years old as of June 1993, specifically June 11-12, neither of which appears to have been her birthday. This means that her date of birth falls between June 13, 1980 and June 10, 1981. Her place of birth is also unknown, but somewhere within the United States.

Lex’s mother was of Scottish origin, the daughter of self-made entrepreneur Dr. John Parker Alfred Hammond. Her father was most likely American. She grew up wholly in the United States and has no trace of any European accent. When she was three years old, her parents had a second child, a boy named Timothy.

Although they teased each other and bickered as siblings are wont to do, Lex and Tim appear to have largely gotten along, but their interests were quite different. While Tim grew fascinated with dinosaurs, Lex was enamored with technology, especially computers. As she grew up in the 1980s, computer technology was still very new, and she stayed informed of new developments. Tim subscribed to the magazine Omni, which he used among other sources to learn about paleontology; it is likely that Lex also read these magazines as a source of information about new computer technology. She spent many days in her room on her own personal computer, playing games and learning to program. By the early 1990s, she was proficient with the Unix operating system and fancied herself a hacker.

Lex began practicing vegetarianism during her youth. This appears to have been spurred by a belief in animal rights, as she hated seeing animals abused or in distress. She had a particular fondness for cows. However, she was not a strict vegan. She regularly wore a baseball cap, though it is not known if she played baseball or was a devoted supporter of any team (her novel-canon counterpart, while a very different character, is a baseball fan).

One part of their lives where Lex and Tim’s interests were always brought together was their grandfather Dr. Hammond, who embraced new technologies and was fascinated by the prehistoric past. A few years before Lex was born, Hammond had come to the United States and founded a company called International Genetic Technologies out of San Diego, California. This company specialized in biotechnology, placing it at the cutting edge of science. Hammond’s long-term dream was to achieve successful de-extinction of prehistoric life forms, something that most scientists believed impossible. It is unknown how much Lex and Tim knew about Hammond’s plans, or how successful he truly was. By 1986, his goal had been achieved.

In the meantime, the Murphy household fell into difficult times as their parents experienced marital problems. These eventually culminated with the Murphy parents beginning the divorce process by June 1993. Hammond spent time with their mother, comforting her and hoping to shield the children from the worst of the family crisis. By that time, he had built an attraction called Jurassic Park on the island of Isla Nublar, Costa Rica; here he would showcase the fruits of his company’s labor. The Park was experiencing difficulties too, and before construction could enter its final stages, his investors wanted a dry-run tour with several experts to give their endorsement. Hammond invited his grandchildren to join in the tour. Not only would this help them stay away from the divorce for a weekend, they represented his Park’s target audience and would surely help the experts see what the Park really had to offer to the public.

1993 incident

On June 11, 1993, Lex and Tim traveled to Costa Rica and then to Isla Nublar itself, 120 miles out into the Gulf of Fernandez and far from civilization. They took a helicopter to get here, traveling as VIPs and arriving to the island a few hours after Hammond and his endorsement team did. Lex and Tim would have arrived at the helipad in the island’s central area and traveled north via Jeep Wrangler, reaching the Park’s under-construction Visitors’ Centre. By now they would have known the truth about the Park, how their grandfather’s scientists had brought dinosaurs back from the dead through genetic engineering.

Lex and Tim were happy to reunite with their beloved grandfather, thanking him for gifts he had recently sent and recounting their helicopter ride to him. They were thrilled to see the Park at long last, though for Lex in particular, it was not the dinosaurs but rather the Park’s astounding technology that captured her interest. She also met the endorsement team, which consisted of three scientists and one lawyer. The scientists were Dr. Ian Malcolm, a charming mathematician, Dr. Alan Grant, a dinosaur paleontologist whose works Tim had read, and Dr. Ellie Sattler, a paleobotanist and the only female member of the team. Lex became enamored with Dr. Grant, developing a precocious crush on the paleontologist which Dr. Sattler slyly encouraged. This was not only because Dr. Sattler, who was Grant’s romantic partner, enjoyed teasing him; she also knew that he was deeply uncomfortable around children and hoped that this would soften him up.

Hammond led them all out to the front of the Visitors’ Centre, where they were met by a pair of electric-powered Ford Explorers that served as tour vehicles. Lex and the others noticed that the vehicles had no drivers; rather than be driven by staff members at the Park, they were guided by a track set in the road. Lex was thrilled by the automation used in the Park and investigated the vehicles as everyone prepared for the tour. She discovered that each Explorer had an onboard interactive CD-ROM system which relayed information about the island and the dinosaurs.

Drs. Sattler and Malcolm took the rear vehicle (EXP 05) while the lawyer, a man named Donald Gennaro, took the fore vehicle (EXP 04). Tim followed Dr. Grant around until the paleontologist finally managed to evade him; meanwhile Dr. Sattler encouraged Lex to ride with Grant as well, claiming it would be good for him. Lex, like her brother, attempted to ride with Grant in the fore vehicle but Grant refused. Instead, Lex and Tim rode with Gennaro while the scientists all went together. The vehicles departed the Visitors’ Centre with Hammond’s promise he would watch from the control room, and from here, they passed through an imposing set of motorized wooden gates and into the Park.

While the computerized technological aspects of the tour were impressive and user-friendly, the animal side of things was decidedly less so; there were two no-shows, beginning with a Jurassic carnivore called Dilophosaurus. Also remaining out of sight was the Park’s star attraction, the Tyrannosaurus rex. From the control room, the chief engineer Ray Arnold tried his best to lure the huge predator out of the jungle by dispensing a live goat, which the dinosaur ignored. Lex was appalled that the Park would feed a live animal to the tyrannosaur, remarking that she was a vegetarian when Gennaro and Tim lightly teased her reaction. Nonetheless, she was as disappointed as the others that the tyrannosaur did not show.

A short while later, she and the others witnessed Dr. Grant suddenly leave the vehicle behind them, followed by Dr. Sattler. The tour was halted from the control room and everyone disembarked despite Gennaro’s insistence that they remain where they were supposed to be. Lex and Tim took the opportunity to stick close to Grant, with Tim pestering him with questions while Lex tripped on purpose so he would catch her before she fell. She used this as an excuse to hold his hand, persistently gripping him against his futile efforts to escape. She hung on until they finally reached what had caused Grant to get out of the car in the first place: a huge dinosaur, tranquilized and semi-conscious. It was a Triceratops, a massive horned herbivore, and the first dinosaur that Lex saw up close and personal. Grant was thrilled, since this dinosaur had been his favorite as a child. Encountering it seemed to awake a sense of nostalgia in the scientist, and from that point on, he was less irritated by the Murphy children’s presence. Lex hung back from the dinosaur, though she watched with amazement as her brother and the scientists aided the Park’s chief veterinarian Dr. Gerry Harding in diagnosing the animal’s illness.

While the group lingered in the Triceratops paddock, a tropical storm reached the island’s shores and necessitated a postponement of the remaining tour itinerary. Everyone except Dr. Sattler returned to their vehicles, which were rerouted to bring them back along the original path rather than continue forward. Once again, Lex and Tim rode with Gennaro in the first Explorer while the rear vehicle was now occupied by just Drs. Grant and Malcolm. As the vehicles returned past the tyrannosaur paddock, they came to a stop as power was lost. From the other vehicle, Grant came to check whether their radio was functional; evidently the radio in the rear Explorer had stopped working. Gennaro confirmed that this radio was not working either, rendering them incapable of communicating with the Visitors’ Centre control room. The five of them waited in the cars for power to come back on, or for someone to come get them. Unfortunately, since most of the staff had gone home for the weekend, Jurassic Park’s skeleton crew would be overworked trying to fix whatever was going on.

As they waited, Lex and Tim tried to find ways to entertain themselves. Gennaro had little interest in science or technology and so made a poor conversationalist, so the wait was quite boring. Tim found a set of night vision goggles under his seat and jumped out to scare Lex while wearing them, and was chided by both Lex for his prank (as well as by Gennaro for handling an expensive InGen-brand device). A short while later, as Lex was fanning herself to ward off the tropical humidity, Tim stopped her: he had felt the car vibrate strangely. With everyone remaining still, they could tell that the rhythmic tremor was not coming from inside the car. Gennaro hoped that it was a sign of the power restarting, but none of them truly believed it. While Tim had the benefit of night vision, Lex also caught sight of what her brother was investigating. The goat, which had been tethered to the tyrannosaur feeder a few minutes ago, was gone. A moment after she noticed this, the goat’s dismembered leg landed on the vehicle’s sun roof.

The tyrannosaur was eating right next to the electric fence, swallowing the remainder of the livestock’s mangled body before turning its gaze on the vehicle. Its arm had brushed the fence as it ate, but the barrier failed to deliver its usual electric shock. With the power out, the fence was nothing more than cable strung between metal posts. The animal knew this as well as the humans on the other side did. Gennaro, in a moment of panic, fled the vehicle and hid in a nearby restroom; Lex and Tim stayed put inside the Explorer. The tyrannosaur pushed its boundaries and broke through, emerging onto the road between the two cars. A deafening territorial roar announced its claim on the new area, and it began searching around.

With the animal out of its paddock, the situation had gone from concerning to life-threatening, and the Murphy children searched the Explorer for tools that could help them. They retrieved a powerful flashlight that could cut through the dark of the storm and approaching night, but the beam also drew the dinosaur’s attention. Tim shut the door that Gennaro had left open, putting a small amount of barrier between them and the tyrannosaur, but this sound was enough to keep the animal interested. It lowered its head to peer inside, its eye level with Lex’s head. For a moment, the flashlight beam shining in its eye drove it back, but then it returned with renewed vigor and began pushing the vehicle. Lex and Tim both screamed in fear, trying desperately to turn the light off, but as they struggled with it the beam now shone through the Plexiglass sun roof. They noticed the tyrannosaur looming above them mere seconds before it pushed its massive snout through the glass.

A large broken piece of the Plexiglass pane was now all that stood between the children and the animal’s jaws. This was large enough that the tyrannosaur could not get its mouth around and break it, so instead it rolled the vehicle over, pressing it into the mud and tearing at its undercarriage. Lex sustained injuries to her face in the attack. While they were no longer within reach of the dinosaur’s mouth, they were now in danger of being crushed or drowning in the increasingly deep mud.

Thankfully, before it could harm them further, it was distracted by a shout from nearby. Grant had come to their rescue, using a road flare to draw the dinosaur’s attention like the flashlight had. He threw the flare, and the dinosaur followed after this new amusement. Grant ran to aid the children; Tim’s legs had become trapped. Grant managed to get Lex out, and when she emerged, she witnessed just how horrific the situation had become. Malcolm had attempted to help using a second flare, but he had paid for his heroism. The tyrannosaur had rammed him into the side of the restrooms and he was buried in debris, with potentially fatal wounds. In the meantime, the dinosaur had grabbed Gennaro and flung him around. As Lex was freed from the vehicle wreck she saw the tyrannosaur thrashing Gennaro’s soon-to-be-lifeless body, limbs coming loose from their sockets and foot-long teeth rending flesh and bone alike. The lawyer’s corpse entertained the tyrannosaur for only a short time, and then its attention was back on the cars. Lex screamed in fear, and Grant held her silent. The paleontologist explained to the terrified Lex that the Tyrannosaurus had vision attuned to movement, and that if they remained very still, they might escape its notice.

Dr. Grant’s instructions appeared to work, with the tyrannosaur sniffing them but failing to tell them apart from the background. It grew bored of waiting for them to move and instead struck the side of the overturned Explorer. As the vehicle spun on its roof, Lex and Dr. Grant were forced to scurry around it, ending up beside the concrete base of the destroyed electric fencing. On the other side was a steep wall forming part of a concrete moat, one of the Park’s security systems meant to keep the tyrannosaur from wandering too far. Now it formed a lethal trap for the Park’s guests instead, trapping them between a fall of several dozen feet and the wreck of the Explorer. Between being attacked by the dinosaur or crushed by the vehicle if it pushed again, Grant decided to rappel down the side of the wall using one of the broken fence cables. Lex clung to him as he descended, arms around his neck; her frightened grip was strong and nearly choked Grant during their descent.

Partway down, the vehicle suddenly appeared over the ledge: the tyrannosaur was about to shove it off the wall, Tim still inside. Grant and Lex attempted to grab another of the dangling cables, swinging out of the way of the car just as the tyrannosaur pushed it over the side. It crashed into the canopy below, coming to rest in the branches of a large tree. Lex hung onto Grant as they reached the ground at the base of the wall.

Tim was still in the car, and Grant had called his name but gotten no response. If Tim was injured or unconscious, he would need rescue. Grant planned to climb the tree and help the boy, but Lex was still in a panic, unable to forget how Gennaro had abandoned them out of sheer terror. Grant reassured Lex that he would not do likewise, and would remain with the children until they were all safe. He would leave Lex on the ground while ascending the tree to help Tim, but would return as soon as possible. Lex believed him, and hid in a culvert while Grant aided Tim. A minute or two later, they began to descend again; as they did, the car came loose from the branches above them. Grant protected Tim from being crushed, and the Murphy children were reunited.

By now, most of the storm had passed overhead already, and night was falling. The three of them had trekked west using a brochure for guidance and were no longer in the tyrannosaur paddock, but there was no sign of civilization save the tour road and now-useless electric fences. The roars of the tyrannosaur were audible from somewhere in the jungle as it claimed more and more new areas as territory. In order to stay safe, Grant suggested that they spend the night in the canopy of a Moreton Bay fig. Now that they were no longer in immediate danger, Lex teased Tim about not wanting to go back up into a tree. They reached a safe height, farther up than the tyrannosaur could reach. However, they were not alone: socializing nearby was a small herd of the only dinosaurs that could reach their resting place, the long-necked Brachiosaurus. Lex was concerned about the dinosaurs endangering them, but Grant reassured her that they were unlikely to attack; they were merely animals going about their lives, and since they were herbivorous, they would not view humans as food. He imitated their cries, provoking a friendly reply from the herd.

The three of them bedded down for the night among the branches as the sun set. Grant discovered a fossilized dinosaur claw in his pocket, which he had forgotten he brought with him from a dig site in Montana; he and the children came to realize that Jurassic Park had changed the world so radically that Grant’s job might no longer be needed. He remarked that he would have to evolve, as the dinosaurs did, in order to survive. Lex worried that more aggressive dinosaurs might come while she was sleeping; Grant reassured her that he would keep them safe, staying awake all night to do so. She managed to fall asleep, trusting Grant to keep watch. He kept his promise.

In the morning of June 12, Lex awoke startled by a dinosaur’s head coming alarmingly close. After a moment’s panic, she was calmed by Tim and Dr. Grant confirming that it was only one of the brachiosaurs. Grant described it as rather like a huge cow, content to graze and unlikely to attack if not provoked. Since they were so small compared to the titanic creature, it would not see them as any kind of threat, and accepted friendly interactions. Grant and Tim fed and petted the dinosaur, encouraging Lex to join them. Tim noticed that the dinosaur’s nose was running, like a person with a cold; it withdrew its head as Lex attempted to pet its snout, and moments later sneezed heartily. Lex was coated in the dinosaur’s mucus.

As they recommenced their trek westward to the Visitors’ Centre, Lex tried to clean herself off to no avail. The mucus dried on her skin and clothes and in her hair. Tim teased that she would never want to go out in nature again, and that she would stay in her room and play on her computer instead of going outside. While they exited the herbivores’ paddock and into an adjoining one, Grant made a startling discovery between the buttress roots of another Moreton Bay fig: a nest containing recently-hatched dinosaur eggs. He and Tim again engaged in a biology discussion; Lex listened as they discussed how InGen had intentionally engineered all the dinosaurs to be female to ensure they couldn’t breed, but that somehow they had done so anyway. Grant hypothesized that, since InGen had used amphibian DNA to replace decayed segments of ancient DNA from the dinosaurs, they must have accidentally included sequences that coded for sequential hermaphroditism. He knew about some frog species which could change from female to male, enabling them to breed again if all the males had died out. Grant mentioned that Dr. Malcolm had predicted the Park would be unable to achieve true control over its biological assets, and this was an example of what he had meant.

The journey continued into midday, and by the time they reached the central plains, they were all hot and exhausted. The open grassland, framed by mountains, was not the hardest part but it was one of the most tiresome legs of their trek. Along the way, they spotted more dinosaurs that had escaped their paddocks: this time, it was a flock of Gallimimus, as identified by Tim. Lex was again concerned that these dinosaurs were predatory, but Grant and Tim were unconcerned. This changed when the flock stampeded in their direction, forcing them to hide behind a log as the swift dinosaurs sped on by. Grant had remarked that it looked like they were fleeing something, and he was right; the tyrannosaur suddenly appeared, ambushing an unlucky Gallimimus and eating it before they eyes. Grant and Tim admired the dinosaur’s predatory abilities, but Lex was only satisfied when they hastily made for the treeline and continued west once more.

Finally, after passing through hills and valleys and steep mountainsides, they reached the perimeter fence. The warning lights on the fence post were off, but Grant checked anyway to see whether the electricity was truly still deactivated. He tossed a stick at the fence’s wires, and when no sparks appeared, he put his hands on the metal. For a moment, Grant dramatically yelled in apparent pain, and Lex shrieked in fear; a moment later, though, Grant turned and gave the children a mischievous grin, revealing that he had been teasing them. Lex chided Grant for making this joke, but Tim took Grant’s side. Since this section of fence was still intact and undamaged, they would have to either climb it or go around, and a not-too-distant tyrannosaur roar encouraged them to take the first option.

Lex and Tim raced each other to see who could scale the fence fastest. Upon reaching the top, Lex managed to get over faster than Tim, and as her brother slowed down she reached the ground much sooner. Grant also reached the ground before Tim had gotten around halfway down. As they waited for him to regain his strength and courage, a warning klaxon sounded and the lights on the fence post lit up: the power was coming back on. If Tim did not reach the ground before that, he would be electrocuted. Lex feared for her brother’s safety as Grant tried to encourage Tim to let go, promising to catch him. Tim was hesitant to jump from such a height, but worked up the bravery to do so. Unfortunately, he was too late; the electricity was activated and he sustained a severe shock to his body. The jolt was powerful enough to launch him backward off the fence and briefly stop his heart. Grant came to his rescue, and as a terrified Lex waited anxiously nearby, Grant attempted CPR. Tim was fortunate enough to revive despite Grant performing CPR incorrectly, and he regained consciousness much to the others’ relief.

One final leg of the journey allowed the three of them to reach the visitor compound, and at long last they entered the Visitors’ Centre again. Now, it was apparently empty, the skeleton crew having abandoned it. Grant instructed the children to remain in the Centre while he searched the compound for anyone else. Lex and Tim now fully trusted that Grant would return for them, so they agreed to stay put. Besides, for the first time in nearly a day they were back in the comforts of civilization, and the Centre’s restaurant buffet had been prepared for them the previous day for when they returned. Having not eaten since before their departure on the tour yesterday, Lex and Tim helped themselves to a luxury meal.

As they ate dessert, Lex happened to glance at the mural on the wall opposite her, which depicted various dinosaurs living in a primeval forest. A shadow on the wall, shaped like one of the dinosaurs, was moving. She froze in fear, and Tim noticed, following her gaze. The animal was entering the restaurant only a few dozen feet away, and in moments it would see them. Lex regained her composure and led Tim into the nearest hiding place, the Visitors’ Centre kitchen, and shut the door behind them. They hid behind a counter, daring to peer out. The dinosaur was right outside the door, and it saw them before they could hide again. It seemed as though the door provided enough protection, but the dinosaur was determined: it used its dexterous hands to work the handle, eventually figuring out how to operate it. As the creature entered, Tim identified the creature as a Velociraptor, a highly intelligent predator. The raptor loudly barked to summon a second animal, and together, the carnivores began stalking through the kitchen in search of the Murphys.

Lex and Tim moved quickly and quietly, trying to keep ahead of the raptors and stay hidden. It was to their detriment that kitchens are not known for being silent places; both they and the dinosaurs banged against pots and pans and kitchen utensils, and eventually the dinosaurs homed in on Tim’s hiding place behind a counter. Lex tried to encourage her brother to follow her lead and seek out a new hiding place, but he was too afraid. With seconds to spare until the hunting predators found and killed him, Lex took a spoon and rapped it on the floor, making a loud noise that drew the raptors away and saved Tim. Now, she was the one in peril. The lower-ranking of the two raptors charged as she tried to hide within a cabinet, but the sliding door was jammed. Luck was in her favor this time, though; the raptor had spotted her reflection in the metal of the counter opposite Lex’s would-be hiding place and pounced at this instead. Hitting its head, the dinosaur was stunned, and Lex abandoned the cabinet. Tim, meanwhile, had gained a burst of courage and lured the more dominant raptor into the walk-in freezer, trying to shut it inside. Lex rushed to her brother’s aid and helped him push the door closed against the dinosaur’s strength, making sure to lock it. The stunned raptor was now recovering, so they fled the kitchen.

In the Centre’s main rotunda, they found a well-armed Dr. Grant, who was now accompanied by Dr. Sattler. Two raptors were now contained (Sattler having evaded the alpha in the maintenance shed), leaving just the middle-ranking one free and roaming about. Retreating to the Centre’s control room, the four survivors sought to restore control to the Park. When the disaster started, a command code had been used by a disgruntled employee to turn off security systems around the island; when the power had been reset earlier today, it rebooted the computers without the harmful command code having been implemented, but the systems still needed to be manually reactivated. Without doing so, the Park’s technology would be useless. To make matters worse, the raptor had found them, and it took the combined strength of the two adults to hold off the powerful animal.

While the scientists fought to keep the raptor out of the control room and Tim panicked helplessly, Lex realized that she had a unique way to help. The security systems were computer-controlled, as was everything else in Jurassic Park, and the door locks were electronic; locking the raptor out of the room could be done simply by activating the correct function. Lex quickly observed the SGI Crimson at the programming workstation and recognized that it ran on Unix. Her time had come.

Lex Murphy searching the Park computer system for the door integrity file for the Visitors’ Centre (6/12/1993)

Lex navigated the Park’s systems and searched for a way to reactivate everything as fast as possible. After a short time of searching, she found what she needed: within the Park’s physical security files, one that indicated the Visitor’s Centre. By activating this, Lex turned on all of the building’s physical security via the central supercomputers, restoring it to full operational status. Electronic door locks engaged, and the phones were connected once more. Grant called Hammond, who was elsewhere in the compound, informing him that they were safe and that he should send for rescue.

Outside the room, the raptor was not ready to give up, and prepared to shatter the glass to get inside. Grant fired upon it, but missed, and when the gun jammed he did not know how to fix it. Instead, he abandoned the weapon and the four of them clambered into the building’s ventilation ducts. They made their way toward the rotunda, the raptor having broken into the room moments later. It followed them from below, pushing through the ceiling tiles. It came up right underneath Lex, and though Grant fought it off, Lex nearly fell out the newly-created hole. Dangling within reach of the raptor’s jaws, she came dangerously close to a bite on her leg before Grant helped her back up in the nick of time. Shortly after, they came out into the rotunda on the second floor.

They were quickly joined by the raptor, making it impossible to use the scaffolding to get down to the first floor as they had planned. Instead, they climbed onto one of the mounted dinosaur skeletons in the middle of the rotunda. The raptor pounced on as well, and this impact broke the skeleton apart. Lex now dangled precariously, the fossil’s tether no longer supported enough to support its usual cargo and an unexpected passenger. The display soon collapsed and deposited all four human survivors and the pursuing raptor onto the ground floor. Things went from bad to worse when a second raptor, the alpha, joined them. Lex spotted it as she regrouped with the others. The adults did their best to shield the children, but even with strength in numbers, the raptors knew that the humans were unarmed and no match for their raw power. The alpha pounced.

A final stroke of luck saved all their lives. The alpha raptor never landed its attack; instead, it was caught in midair by the Tyrannosaurus, which had followed it in through an unfinished wall of the Visitors’ Centre. The alpha raptor was crushed to death in the tyrannosaur’s massive jaws. While the dinosaur was about to eat its prey, the subordinate raptor became infuriated at the death of its leader and attacked the larger carnivore. The raptor’s fit of rage was a sufficient distraction, and with its attention diverted, Lex and Tim were herded out of the Centre by the adults. Hammond was already waiting outside in Jeep 10, and with him was a wounded but alive Dr. Malcolm. Everyone piled into the Jeep and sped for the helipad.

By the time they arrived, the InGen Construction helicopter N293G had already been dispatched to them and landed. They all disembarked Jeep 10 and boarded N293G. Hammond hesitated before boarding, wistful and saddened by the loss of the Park. Grant wordlessly reminded him that what really mattered in his life was not on Isla Nublar, but in the helicopter and about to head home. Hammond, recognizing this, boarded, and he departed the island for the last time in his life with his grandchildren.

Lex and Tim stayed close to Dr. Grant on the flight back across the Pacific Ocean, falling asleep by his side. They had not only grown closer to him; they had been an instrumental force in changing Dr. Grant’s outlook on life. He had been reminded of the childhood love of dinosaurs that had driven him to become a scientist, and with that reminder, Grant could better understand children himself. While he never ended up having any of his own children, he became more comfortable around them, and grew to love fostering an interest in science in the next generation.

Aftermath of the incident

Lex, like her brother, sustained injuries during the incident on Isla Nublar that likely took time to heal. None of them appear to have been permanent, but the trauma would be long-lasting. She had nearly been killed in two different animal attacks less than a day apart, seen a man’s body torn asunder, and faced the terrifying reality that her loved ones could be ripped away without a moment’s notice. She had been abandoned by a grown man while in mortal peril, and Grant’s faithful efforts were all that kept her from breaking down altogether during the incident. To make matters worse, there were few people she could speak to about what had happened; InGen wanted to keep the incident a secret from the general public. Her parents likely knew the truth, but they had not seen what she had seen. Lex’s only solace would have come from the few people who had experienced the same things she had: her brother and grandfather, and the three scientists who also survived the catastrophe.

She did remain in touch with at least Dr. Malcolm, and probably Grant and Sattler as well. The trauma they had experienced together linked them. Sadly, the lives of the three scientists only became more difficult after the incident was over. Malcolm violated his nondisclosure agreement, discussing the incident with his new girlfriend while recovering from his wounds and then going public about it in 1995. Grant and Sattler’s careers were protected for the time by the public not believing Malcolm’s tales, but their relationship was put under intense stress by their incompatible coping mechanisms and they stopped dating not long after Malcolm went public. With Malcolm, Grant, and Sattler all experiencing their own problems as a result of the incident, Lex’s best confidants would have been Tim and Hammond.

Not all of her family was understanding, or helpful. Her first cousin once removed, Peter Ludlow, became a problem. He was InGen’s Chairman of the Board, and he was not ready to declare Jurassic Park a lost cause. Hammond was a changed man after the incident and strongly believed that the animals should be left alone; this put InGen in a difficult situation. The company was facing multiple lawsuits from families of the deceased, injured workers, and others, as well as the high costs of losing the Park. Its investors were pulling out, and bankruptcy was on the table. Hammond, who had learned that the animals were still living years later, refused to allow Ludlow to go through with a plan to rebuild the Park. Lex and Tim took Hammond’s side in the feud, but Hammond’s health was beginning to decline.

The InGen IntraNet website includes an email from Hammond which suggests Lex accidentally discovered the existence of Site B while using Hammond’s personal computer by hacking into its network. This was a facility on entire second island, actually the first one that InGen had owned, called Isla Sorna. Here they had originally performed research and bred the dinosaurs, shipping them to the Park once they were mature. This was the focal point of the conflict between Hammond and Ludlow: while Hammond had discovered that the dinosaurs were alive, he had insisted against all InGen’s financial interests that they should be allowed to live freely in this isolated home. Ludlow, on the other hand, did not believe that animal rights arguments applied to this situation. His plan was to retrieve animals from Isla Sorna and use them to populate Jurassic Park’s original location, the long-abandoned park in San Diego. It is unknown how much of Ludlow’s plan Lex was informed about, but she was not a part of the conflict directly.

Ludlow got his chance to seize power in December 1996, when InGen was faced with one more lawsuit. A family of wealthy tourists had landed on Isla Sorna and their daughter had been injured by dinosaurs. Hammond was formally deposed as CEO and President, and within a few months Ludlow assumed the position completely. As the process finalized, Hammond and Ludlow made their final moves regarding Isla Sorna’s fate. While Ludlow had prepared to go through with his plan, Hammond had secretly organized to counter him. The final stage of this was inviting Malcolm to his home in New York City on May 26, 1997. Lex and Tim, now in their teens, were briefly reunited with Dr. Malcolm since they were visiting Hammond at the time. Ludlow was also there, but this was no friendly visit; he was there to finalize the removal of Hammond from InGen. By now, their bitter feud had left an irreparable rift in the family.

Turn of the millennium

1997 saw de-extinction finally come to light in the public eye. Hammond and Ludlow’s feud finally brought the reality of this scientific accomplishment out of the shadows in the early morning when the Isla Sorna expedition returned: the two opposing groups had come into conflict on the island, ruining Ludlow’s plan but putting everyone involved in grave danger. There had been a number of casualties, and in an act of desperation to save InGen from bankruptcy, Ludlow had transported a father and son Tyrannosaurus rex to San Diego for the Park. Naturally, things did not go according to plan, and the adult got loose after being mishandled en route to the city. Malcolm and his girlfriend Dr. Sarah Harding were able to act quickly enough to get both animals safely back to Isla Sorna, but the world had seen the dinosaurs and would never be the same again. Ludlow died during the incident having never made amends with his family.

While hearing about the tyrannosaur incident and seeing it on the news would have reawakened Lex’s trauma regarding the 1993 incident, she at least would have finally had the opportunity to speak about it. No longer would she have to hide what had happened to her. She does not seem to have publicly talked about her experience, but therapy opportunities would be accessible to her and Tim now. This came at the best possible time, as tragedy struck once again; as the year turned over, Hammond passed away. Among his dying acts had been to aid the U.S. government in writing the Gene Guard Act, a piece of legislature intended to protect the dinosaurs from exploitation and place restrictions on InGen.

Within months of Hammond’s passing, InGen sold out. A bidding war erupted between the two main contestants to buy its assets, Tatsuo Technology and Masrani Global Corporation. The latter won, and InGen became a Masrani Global subsidiary. That company’s CEO, Simon Masrani, was the son of Hammond’s longtime friend Sanjay Masrani; after Sanjay’s untimely passing in 1992, Hammond had acted as a fatherly figure to the young Simon. The turn of the millennium brought astounding change to InGen as the company was reformed, saved from bankruptcy by its new holding corporation, and by 2003 it was announced that Masrani Global was overseeing the construction of another park built upon the ruins of the old. Called Jurassic World, it would open its gates for June 2005. By this time, Lex was twenty-four.

Into the modern age

Technology advanced by leaps and bounds in the new millennium, bringing unprecedented change. Both challenges and opportunities arose as a result. Lex’s career during this time is undisclosed, as she appears to have remained more private than other Jurassic Park survivors like Dr. Malcolm, but if she remained interested in computers the modern world would have much to offer. Her other notable interest, animal welfare, also became ever more a hot-button sociopolitical issue as time went on.

Jurassic World, which opened on schedule in 2005, was kind of an intersection of these two issues; a crossroads of biology and technology, it was often at the forefront of any changes that science would bring to society. It is not known at this time if Lex ever visited Jurassic World. As a member of John Hammond’s family, it is likely that she and Simon Masrani knew one another at least a little, so she might have been a welcome guest. On the other hand, her personal testimony of the events of 1993 could have generated bad press for InGen, so her silence was probably appreciated.

This third attempt at a park was the first one to truly succeed, and it did so for ten years without major incident. Behind the scenes, Jurassic World struggled financially even with numerous corporate partnerships; the operating costs were simply too high. It was supported thanks to income from other Masrani Global subsidiaries, which also provided the park with cutting-edge technology and experts from all disciplines. In late 2014, Simon Masrani began teasing a new attraction, something the world had never seen before which InGen scientists had been working on for some years. The public knew it was a theropod dinosaur, but only a select few were privy to its identity; Lex was probably not among them. Whatever the new theropod was, its reveal was delayed several times, from May 2015 all the way to January 2016.

The world learned about the new animal in December 2015, but not in the way InGen had intended. Lex (now in her thirties) would have most likely learned what happened from the news, which came in a confusing sequence of events: first of all, Jurassic World closed all of its northern attractions and had visitors return to the hotel area for unknown reasons. Around an hour or so later, a massive flock of escaped pterosaurs converged on the Jurassic World Lagoon, putting them in conflict with the tourists and park staff; there were numerous injuries and at least one death. Later that day, the world learned that the escape had been due to a helicopter crash into the Jurassic World Aviary, and that the helicopter had been piloted by Simon Masrani. Eventually, most likely after the park’s evacuation was complete late that night, it was revealed by eyewitnesses and whistleblower employees that Masrani had been attempting to gun down the park’s mysterious new animal, a genetically-engineered dinosaur that had escaped captivity. The animal, called Indominus rex, had been designed by one of Hammond’s original employees, the skilled geneticist Dr. Henry Wu, but its purpose had been corrupted by InGen Security’s now-deceased head Vic Hoskins. Jurassic World would never reopen.

After this, the dinosaurs’ rights became just one of an increasing number of contentious political issues both in the United States and abroad. Tensions in American politics reached a boiling point in the later half of the decade, often erupting into violence. Animal rights issues were overshadowed by numerous other crises, but Jurassic World did get its place in the spotlight at least every few months. Masrani Global was eager to distance itself from de-extinction altogether and its future with InGen was now uncertain. Isla Nublar was abandoned, still owned by the company but with no one willing to touch it. The dinosaurs’ welfare suffered as a result. Further complications arose in 2017 when it was discovered that the island was experiencing volcanic activity. Isla Nublar became a microcosm for all manner of political issues within the area of environmental policy. Lex’s stance on the debate is not known at this time, but her value of animal rights would have been thrown into conflict with her trauma from the attacks she experienced as a child.

The U.S. government, now under exceptionally far-right management, opted to do nothing. An eruption would kill off the dinosaurs, and as far as the government was concerned this would end the issue. Masrani Global, likewise, took no responsibility for the animals’ welfare by citing costs, but it was fairly obvious that they were of like mind with the government; the dinosaurs becoming extinct would mean one less problem to resolve. Animal rights activists were divided, with some arguing that all life had a right to protection while others countered that genetically-engineered organisms should not use up resources that could benefit naturally-evolved life forms. The greatest advocate for the dinosaurs’ survival was the Dinosaur Protection Group, which lobbied for the animals to be relocated to a safe haven where they could live with minimal interference. The only Jurassic Park survivor to speak out was Dr. Malcolm, who advocated for letting the natural course of events play out; he pitied the dinosaurs’ situation, but considered their extinction to be sadly necessary to avoid setting dangerous bioethical precedents.

An eruption did occur in mid-2018, and at first it appeared that the government and Masrani Global had gotten what they wanted: with Isla Nublar’s food web uprooted and most of the habitat space destroyed, most or all of the animals would be dead soon if they were not already. However, two days after the eruption, news from the Pacific Northwest confirmed otherwise. De-extinct animals were sighted in large numbers near Orick, California, apparently having escaped or been released from a black-market auction at the Lockwood estate. The estate’s owner, Sir Benjamin Lockwood, had been an old business partner of Hammond’s; it is not known if Lex had met him. Lockwood was confirmed to have died of natural causes unrelated to the dinosaurs’ appearance.

Whatever had transpired at the estate that night, the animals were now on the North American mainland and fighting to survive in a radically different world. People, too, would have to acclimate to yet another sudden change to their environment. The populations of the animals were limited, and (with a few exceptions, such as the Pteranodons) for the time only lived in western North America, but sooner or later they would be found in a wider range. Lex, like all of her fellow human beings, would need to decide how to live alongside these creatures.

Skills
Programming and computer use

From an early age, Lex has been very comfortable with computers and was fully competent with the Unix operating system at twelve years old. At that time, she was practicing programming and considered herself a hacker (as opposed to her brother, who referred to her as a “computer nerd”). Computer hacking is not a specific discipline, but rather the practice of utilizing software and occasionally hardware to perform actions that the designers did not intend. In order to be a proficient hacker, Lex would need to familiarize herself with the programming language and operating system of whatever computer she intended to hack. The full extent of her skills at that age are not known, but she was able to quickly navigate an unfamiliar network and locate specific files while under extreme pressure.

Her abilities were demonstrated well during the 1993 Isla Nublar incident in which she activated security, communications, and various other computerized Jurassic Park systems completely on her own while under the immediate threat of disembowelment by raptor. At the moment there is not much information about how Lex’s programming skills have grown as technology developed over the years, but frankly, a performance like the one she demonstrated at the age of twelve speaks to a bright future.

According to the InGen IntraNet website, Lex unintentionally discovered the Site B computer network while using her grandfather John Hammond’s personal computer. This simultaneously impressed and worried Hammond since the network was supposed to be so airtight that not even the Park’s chief programmer Dennis Nedry could have broken in without permission. This accidental breach of security could have indicated a weakness in the Site B network, but on the other hand, Lex is clearly a very skilled hacker. Her preferred computer of choice is not known, but in 1993 she was seen to use an SGI Crimson, which itself was in communication with the eight CM-5 Thinking Machine supercomputers which ran all of Jurassic Park’s automated systems.

Physical ability

In her youth Lex was rather athletic, capable of scaling tall trees and fences with impressive speed and confidence. Her agile build also made her fast and nimble. Computer programmers and gamers frequently have strong muscles in their hands from hours of fast typing, giving them excellent fine motor skills. While she spent much of her time on the computer, it is clear that Lex exercised the rest of her body as well, though her regimen is not known; she often wore a baseball cap, but at the moment it is unclear if she played sports (though her novel counterpart did). Since nothing is known about Lex’s adult life, any suggestions about her present-day strength is pure speculation.

Skill with animals

Although animal welfare appears to have been one of the first major issues Lex had beliefs about, she was not especially skilled at working with animals directly. This is more the realm of her brother’s interests, especially where de-extinct animals are concerned; while at Jurassic Park, she often took his word for identifying dinosaurs and giving information on them. This is not to say that Lex does not enjoy the company of animals. She has a fondness for cows and other large herbivorous creatures, which expanded to include dinosaurs such as Triceratops and Brachiosaurus during her time on Isla Nublar. Notably, she attempted to pet an adult brachiosaur, but was unable to reach it; the animal, which was sick with an upper respiratory infection, sneezed copiously on her instead.

In deleted scenes, she would have ridden on a juvenile Triceratops. An animatronic was even made for this, but the scenes were cut from the film.

Views
On de-extinction

Before the incident at Jurassic Park, Lex had little interest in dinosaurs or paleontology in general, though her brother’s fascination with the topic probably lent her a decent understanding of it. At the moment, we know little about when she first learned about her grandfather’s endeavors to bring dinosaurs to life or what her early opinions on this were, but she was certainly excited to visit the Park. During the tour, she was thrilled with the technology on display as well as the possibility of seeing such exotic animals, but noted some welfare concerns such as InGen’s practice of feeding livestock to the carnivores while the fodder animals were alive and conscious.

Within a little over half a day, Lex rapidly witnessed the full range of what de-extinction meant for human life. Awe and wonder at seeing these animals alive for the first time quickly changed to terror when they were set loose; she encountered massive apex predators and highly intelligent and vengeful hunters, being put in mortal peril on two different occasions. After the first attack, she was even frightened of the less aggressive dinosaurs, and remained wary of animals she encountered for the rest of the incident. At the same time, Dr. Grant tried to encourage a healthy respect and sense of fascination with the dinosaurs in both of the Murphy children, reminding Lex that these were simply animals living as their instincts told them. Lex was also present to witness the first-ever evidence of dinosaurs exhibiting protogyny, changing sex in order to breed; they were able to do this as an unintended side effect of genetic engineering. Since it is virtually impossible to reconstruct an ancient genome without substituting DNA from a gene donor for decayed segments in the original organism, genetic engineering is an unavoidable part of the de-extinction process and remains one of its most controversial bioethical issues. However, Lex has remained mostly quiet on these topics, staying out of the spotlight during major debates in more recent times.

On gender roles

Lex’s chief personal interest is computer programming, a field in which men have historically outnumbered women by a large margin. Neither her interests nor her personality are traditionally feminine. She had already rejected stereotypical social norms at the age of twelve in 1993, and we can assume that she has remained steadfastly an individual, pursuing her own goals in life rather than those imposed by society. There are those who claim that technology is a man’s field, but it is highly unlikely that any of these people have ever used their programming skills to singlehandedly save themselves and five other people from being eaten alive by dinosaurs in under a minute, so they do not have much of a leg to stand on in this debate.

In addition to the above, Lex’s views on gender roles are reflected in her fashion choices and ideal relationships. As a young girl she could often be seen wearing tank tops and baseball caps, preferring jeans to dresses or skirts. Her first known crush was the paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant; while he is a handsome man, his intellectualism seems to have been what really caught Lex’s interest. This is explicitly stated in deleted dialogue seen in the Jurassic Park script. As she grew older, Lex would have continued to form an idea of what she wanted in a romantic relationship. We can assume from her precocious first crush that she seeks an intellectual equal, someone who is an analytical problem-solver like herself.

Dietary preferences

As of her youth, Lex Murphy was a vegetarian, but not a strict vegan (for example, she would eat foods containing animal byproducts such as Jell-O). It is not known if she has maintained or altered these practices as an adult.

Relationships
Family

Lex Murphy is the granddaughter of Scottish entrepreneur Dr. John Parker Alfred Hammond, but her mother’s name is not known; her father’s side of the family is assumed to be from the United States since she has an American rather than Scottish accent. For most of her life, Lex has lived alongside her younger brother Timothy, who was born when she was about three years old. Their interests differed from a fairly early age; Tim was interested in paleontology, and while Lex appreciated animals she was always more fascinated by technology. Despite their differences, Lex and Tim got along fairly well with little more than the usual amount of teasing between siblings.

Their maternal grandfather was always a place in which their interests converged, since he was interested in biotechnology. His company, International Genetic Technologies, used cutting-edge scientific techniques to perform genetic engineering; its ultimate goal was to perform de-extinction. By the mid-1980s, InGen had succeeded. At some point by the early 1990s, Lex learned about what her grandfather had accomplished. Hammond was not the only family member at InGen; Lex’s first cousin once removed, Peter Ludlow, also worked there. Ludlow’s mother was Lex’s maternal great-aunt.

In the early 1990s, the Murphy parents began to divorce. Hammond did his best to comfort his family during such a difficult time, including bringing the children to Jurassic Park on Isla Nublar. The Park was already seeing its first visitors for an onsite inspection, and having Lex and Tim along would help Hammond convince the experts to endorse the Park. The children represented the Park’s real target audience. While this could help the Park to open without further delays, it would also bring the children away from the divorce for the weekend. Hammond had always been a doting grandfather and wanted to help keep them happy and entertained. He and the children were excited to see one another again, and he saw them off for what was intended to be an exciting tour of the Park’s animal exhibits.

The Park was sabotaged by a disgruntled employee during the tour, plunging everyone into chaos. Lex and Hammond did not see each other again until after the Park had suffered so much damage as to be unrecoverable, and her life had been put in peril during two different animal attacks. Hammond was shaken not only by the suffering that had come from his life’s work, but by nearly losing his beloved grandchildren; from that day on, he became a changed man. Lex would have had few confidants to help her cope with the trauma inflicted on her, but the best ones she had were family.

On the other hand, Ludlow had not witnessed firsthand the disaster at Jurassic Park and pushed to continue the project. He blamed Hammond’s failure as a leader for everything that had happened, causing a rift in the family which was never resolved. Lex, as well as Tim, was visibly uncomfortable around Ludlow as she took Hammond’s side in the schism. This ended with Ludlow’s attempt to save Jurassic Park and InGen, which was sabotaged by a team sent by Hammond; this resulted in de-extinction being revealed to the public in another incident that ended Ludlow’s life. Hammond also passed away at the end of that year.

Jurassic Park endorsement team

When Lex and Tim toured Jurassic Park, they were accompanied by a team of experts from outside InGen whose job was to observe the Park and, if they were satisfied of its integrity, give their endorsement. Then the Board would allow Hammond to resume construction. The first member of this team was Donald Gennaro, a lawyer representing InGen’s investors; an accident at the Park had caused the insurance underwriters to express doubts about the Park’s safety and the investors were considering pulling out of the project. Gennaro’s job was to give or withhold his endorsement based on whether he believed it to be in the best interest of the investors. Three scientists were also members of the team: mathematician Dr. Ian Malcolm, vertebrate paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant, and paleobotanist Dr. Ellie Sattler. Lex and Tim met all of them upon their arrival to the Visitors’ Centre. Hammond not only wanted to get Lex and Tim away from their parents’ divorce; he also hoped that their presence would help the adult guests experience the true wonder of Jurassic Park through awestruck children’s eyes.

Lex quickly became friends with Dr. Sattler, who saw Lex as somewhat of a younger version of herself: full of spunk, happy to buck trends, and participating in a field of science historically dominated by men. Sattler was dating Dr. Grant, who Lex also found to be handsome and intelligent. Lex quickly developed a crush on Grant, which Sattler happily encouraged; this was one of the ways in which Sattler enjoyed teasing Grant. Although Sattler tried her best to get Lex and Tim to ride in the same tour vehicle as Grant, he managed to evade both of the Murphy siblings, leaving them to ride with Gennaro while the scientists took the other car.

Gennaro was not a particularly exciting traveling companion and he seems to have had fairly few interactions with the children during the tour. At one point he teased Lex about being uncomfortable with one of the animals eating a live goat; she retorted that she was a vegetarian. Lex, along with Tim, took the first opportunity to resume accompanying Grant when the tour was unexpectedly brought to a stop by Grant leaving the vehicles. While in the field, they encountered a sick dinosaur, Grant’s childhood favorite Triceratops, and he was able to reconnect with his own inner child. From here on, he was less uncomfortable with the children, though he still did not ride with them. Sattler remained in the field while everyone else returned to the tour. Inclement weather led to the control room staff cancelling the rest of the tour and planning to show the remainder of the Park tomorrow.

Along the way back to the starting point, the power was cut and the vehicles stalled next to the tyrannosaur paddock. It was here that the goat finally lured the predator out of hiding, but with the electricity shut down, the dinosaur quickly learned that it could escape its paddock and wasted no time in doing so. Gennaro abandoned the Murphys in a panic, leaving a horrified Lex and Tim to try and save themselves. The scientists came to their rescue, Grant managing to get Lex out of the damaged car while Malcolm nearly sacrificed himself distracting the tyrannosaur. Gennaro, despite his attempts to save himself, was dismembered and killed during the attack before Lex’s eyes. As far as any of them knew, Malcolm might have died too. Grant managed to save Lex by rappelling into a moat next to the tyrannosaur paddock and saved Tim from the vehicle wreck, then brought the children to a safe place for the night.

Over the course of the next day, they trekked westward across Isla Nublar, encountering escaped dinosaurs along the way. Grant’s expertise kept them safe until they finally reached the Visitors’ Centre. Grant assuming the role of protector led to him devoting himself to the children’s safety, discarding any remaining discomforts that he had about them. Velociraptors assaulted the Visitors’ Centre later in the morning, but Sattler also rejoined the group and she aided Grant in protecting the children from danger. Lex returned the favor by restarting the physical security systems that had been deactivated the previous afternoon, enabling them to call for help. As they evacuated the island, the children were happy to see that Malcolm had survived his ordeal despite the severity of his injuries. Lex, Tim, Grant, Sattler, Malcolm, and Hammond all left the island together.

Over the course of the next few years (and presumably beyond), Lex and Tim did keep in touch with their fellow survivors. Out of all of them, Malcolm was the only one to break his nondisclosure agreement, speaking openly about the incident and sacrificing his career for his troubles. Ludlow, who sought to wrest control of InGen from Hammond due to the latter’s failure of leadership, was largely responsible for ruining Malcolm’s reputation and portraying him as a fraud in the public eye. Lex and Tim seem to have sympathized with Malcolm, and to some degree, so did Hammond himself. This eventually led to Malcolm’s vindication when the public was presented with evidence he had not been lying.

While Lex and Tim have stayed out of the spotlight in later events related to de-extinction, there is no reason to believe that they have not remained friends with Grant, Malcolm, and Sattler as time has gone on. In fact, as the situation grows ever more complicated, it seems likely that these five survivors of 1993 would continue to be supportive of one another.

InGen employees

Although her grandfather was a founding member of InGen, Lex did not know many of the employees herself. She may have known Hammond’s partner in business, Sir Benjamin Lockwood, who helped found the company; however these two men parted ways on bitter terms in the early 1990s. While visiting Isla Nublar in 1993, she was brought in by helicopter, most likely one of the InGen Construction helicopters commonly used to ferry VIPs from the mainland. Once onsite, she was probably driven via Jeep to the Visitors’ Centre, where she and Tim were left in the care of Hammond and his guests.

She did not meet with many staff members after this since the Park ran on a skeleton crew for the weekend. The two most important employees on her journey, though she never met them, were chief engineer Ray Arnold and chief programmer Dennis Nedry. These were the two men who had designed the tour program she used to see the Park; Arnold was observing them the entire time for any issues in the program. He initiated the tour and attempted to lure out the tyrannosaur by delivering a goat to its paddock, explaining this over the PA system. Nedry, on the other hand, was distracted during the tour; he had been bribed by a rival corporation to steal InGen trade secrets while everyone else was occupied with the visitors. Lex briefly met the chief veterinarian Dr. Gerry Harding, who ended up going on to have his own experience during the next two days, but he would not interact with Lex again.

Nedry sabotaged Jurassic Park, intending to return and resolve the situation before anyone realized the power fluctuations were deliberate, but he never made it back. Instead, deactivating the security systems and other programs caused Lex and the other visitors to become stranded in the Park. Neither Arnold nor Nedry survived the ensuing events, dying separately for unrelated reasons. Aside from the helicopter pilot who carried them off the island, Hammond was the only remaining InGen staff to leave Isla Nublar on June 12.

During Hammond’s final months of life, the Murphy siblings were often at his bedside, as was the family friend Simon Masrani. It is likely that Lex and Masrani met at some point. Before the incident in 1993, Masrani’s father (who had been a close friend of Hammond’s as well) passed away, and Hammond took on a father-figure role in his stead. After Hammond’s own passing, Masrani bought InGen, allegedly with Hammond’s blessing. Masrani went on to rebuild Jurassic Park with a new look and new name, Jurassic World, bringing InGen back from the brink. At this time, it is not known whether Lex visited Jurassic World, or what her relationship with InGen has been going forward.

InGen animals

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, John Hammond and InGen performed de-extinction research with the intent to bring back Mesozoic life forms through genetic engineering. They succeeded, though the fruits of their labors remained under wraps until 1997. Lex was privy to this knowledge well before the rest of the world, and along with Tim, she was among the only guests ever to visit Jurassic Park. Their route from the helipad to the Visitors’ Centre may have taken them through paddock areas; if this is the case, they may have witnessed their first dinosaurs here. Species found in those areas included large herbivores, chiefly Brachiosaurus and Parasaurolophus.

 

On their tour through the Park, two of the carnivorous dinosaurs did not make appearances. These were Dilophosaurus and Tyrannosaurus; for the latter, Park staff even tried to lure it out with a live goat, but the dinosaur still remained hidden in the jungle (rather to Lex’s relief, as the goat’s well-being concerned her). Finally, while continuing along, Grant took an unscheduled jaunt into the field, where Lex saw her first up-close dinosaur in person. She was not a dinosaur enthusiast like Tim and so did not know the names of most of the species, but even she could recognize the famous three-horned Triceratops. Although she hung back while Tim, Grant, and Sattler investigated the animal’s health alongside a Park veterinarian, she still appreciated its beauty from a distance.

A far less wondrous encounter awaited her on the way back to the Visitors’ Centre. Along the way, power was lost and the tour program was halted. While they waited for power to be restored or for someone to come get them, the tyrannosaur finally emerged, but with the fences deactivated there were no barriers keeping it contained. The apex predator made its escape and claimed the main road as territory, investigating the vehicles and people there. Lex’s life was put in peril as the theropod made her vehicle its plaything, causing irreparable damage to the car and wounding Lex. She witnessed Gennaro killed and Malcolm grievously injured; only Grant’s quick thinking saved her life. This attack left her battered both inside and out, existing in a state of shock well into the night.

They bedded down in a large tree far above where the tyrannosaur could reach. During the evening and the following morning, they were visited by the only dinosaurs tall enough to reach them, the Brachiosaurus. Lex was frightened that they were in danger again, but Grant reassured her that these were not predatory. These animals were so huge that humans would not present any threat, so the brachiosaurs remained peaceful and even curious. She began to feel more comfortable around them, comparing them to more familiar animals like cows. In the morning, Lex overcame her fear enough to try and pet an ailing brachiosaur that was feeding nearby, but the animal sneezed copiously on her, thwarting any efforts on her part to be friendly with any more dinosaurs.

Isla Nublar did not take much time to go feral once the fences were shut down. Along the way back to the Visitors’ Centre, she witnessed a kind of artificial ecosystem take shape on the island; a flock of Gallimimus encountered them on the grassy plains, being chased by the tyrannosaur. While the stampede was threatening and the tyrannosaur as intimidating as ever, Lex avoided harm; the Gallimimus swerved to avoid the humans and also held the tyrannosaur’s attention. This time, they were not the target. The tyrannosaur selected a larger, meatier food source, and Lex escaped safely with Grant and Tim.

This encounter had presented more of an indirect danger, not an active threat to them. They were not so lucky at the Visitors’ Centre, where they were accosted by a new species: the highly intelligent Velociraptor, a dinosaur that had exhibited behavioral problems at the Park and were difficult to keep contained. In the jungle, Grant had discovered eggs belonging to this species, and now Lex and Tim encountered adults. Two raptors stalked them into the Visitor Centre’s kitchen and hunted them down among the counters and cabinets. Tim was particularly vulnerable, exhausted from his many ordeals and freezing up in fear; Lex put herself at risk to save her brother’s life by distracting the raptors so that he could crawl to safety. She was targeted by one of the raptors and tried to hide in a cabinet; she could not get the door shut in time, but fortunately the raptor mistakenly targeted her reflection and was stunned by a head-on collision. Lex then went to aid Tim again, succeeding in locking the other raptor in a walk-in freezer and escaping before the stunned raptor could recover enough to attack.

With Sattler and Grant’s help, Lex restored power to the security systems, and they fled toward the Centre’s exit through crawlspaces and ventilation ducts in the ceiling. Lex was directly threatened by the raptor along the way, as it pushed its head through the ceiling tiles directly underneath her; she was again saved by Grant. In the Centre’s main rotunda, the alpha raptor joined the hunt, and for a moment their situation appeared hopeless as they were cornered. Luck was on their side one last time, though: the alpha raptor was being hunted by the tyrannosaur, which appeared to ambush the alpha raptor through the Visqueen tarpaulin hanging over an unfinished wall. The alpha raptor was crushed to death in the larger predator’s jaws, and the subordinate became enraged enough to attack the tyrannosaur. Lex and Tim were herded out of the Visitors’ Centre to safety while the tyrannosaur fought for its breakfast.

No further trouble slowed their escape from Isla Nublar. The last dinosaurs they encountered were the far-off brachiosaurs, whose voices could be heard singing before Lex and the others boarded the helicopter.

While there is no direct evidence of Lex encountering any more de-extinct creatures, they would have continued to affect her life. The incident at Jurassic Park left her with traumatizing memories. These should have faded as the dinosaurs died out naturally, but Hammond discovered that the dinosaurs had not died at all and were instead flourishing. In 1997, shortly before Hammond passed away, a male tyrannosaur and its offspring were brought to San Diego in a failed attempt to save InGen; Lex’s cousin Peter Ludlow, who had ousted Hammond from InGen and taken his place, was killed during the ensuing disaster. The dinosaurs were sent back home alive, but the world was now aware of their existence, and encounters between humans and dinosaurs became more frequent.

Jurassic World was constructed between 2002 and 2005, opening that summer and seeing hundreds of thousands of visitors over the course of each year it operated. It is unknown if Lex was among them, and if she did go, which animals she witnessed. This second park operated for ten years before a major incident occurred, but when it did, the park closed indefinitely. The dinosaurs’ lives were jeopardized not long after this when volcanic activity threatened to wipe them out; they were “saved” by the illegal wildlife trade and many were released into the Pacific Northwest. It is not known where Lex currently lives, but sooner or later, de-extinct animals will probably become a part of her life again. Whether they arrive simply as animals moving around of their own volition, or are brought there by humans with more ethically dubious agendas, has yet to be seen.

Portrayal

Lex Murphy is portrayed by Ariana Richards. She is loosely based on the character of the same name in Michael Crichton‘s novel, but many aspects of her personality are changed. In the novel, Lex does not enjoy dinosaurs or computers, with both of these attributes belonging to Tim (although Lex grows to appreciate the dinosaurs as she encounters them). Additionally, their ages are swapped for the film. The novel’s version of Lex is meaner to Tim, a trait she learned from their abusive father, and serves mainly to be an obnoxious burden to Tim and Grant. Changing her character for the film was meant to make her more sympathetic and likable, as well as give her something important to do by restoring the security systems. The only trait from the novel’s Lex that fully carries over to the film is her tomboyish sense of fashion, such as her baseball cap.

Her cameo in The Lost World: Jurassic Park was made up completely for the film, with her novel character only being briefly mentioned by name.

Disambiguation Links

Alexis “Lex” Murphy (C/N)

Alexis “Lex” Murphy (JN)

Alexis “Lex” Murphy (CB-Topps)

Alexa “Lex” Murphy (IDW-JPR)