Why Maze Runner Makes No Sense

Recap

The video argues that The Maze Runner trilogy revolves around a huge, expensive scientific experiment that seems to accomplish very little—and repeatedly overlooks answers WICKED already has.

After a solar disaster and the emergence of a brain-eating virus called the Flare, WICKED places immune teenagers in a giant maze to study how their brains resist infection. The narrator immediately questions the setup: WICKED builds towering moving walls, deadly Grievers, and an entire research operation to frighten kids, when, as he jokes, a dark room and a loud noise might do the job “by lunch.”

Thomas arrives with his memories wiped but retains practical abilities: he can talk and run, while the Gladers can farm, build, cook, and stitch wounds. The narrator wonders who decided which memories to erase. The boys spend three years in the maze with little changing, making WICKED’s prolonged experiment feel like “the most expensive nothing” imaginable.

Things finally shift when Thomas survives a night in the maze and kills a Griever by trapping it between closing walls. Its body contains a numbered device that turns out to be a key. The narrator jokes that the maze’s solution was apparently to put the key inside a monster designed to kill anyone trying to get it. Then Teresa arrives with an antidote that saves Alby from a Griever sting, prompting the obvious question: why didn’t WICKED send the antidote earlier to save other stung kids?

Soon, the maze doors stay open, Grievers attack the Glade, and Gally points out that everything started changing after Thomas arrived. The narrator agrees: WICKED controls the maze remotely, so the Gladers were safe for three years only because the researchers chose to keep them safe.

Thomas later stings himself to recover his memories, revealing that he and Teresa once worked with WICKED. The video’s twist is that the people accusing Thomas of causing the chaos may be onto something: his memories suggest he helped build the maze.

The escape brings another round of objections. The maze’s rotating sections supposedly form a code, but the narrator notes that a circular pattern has no obvious starting point. The successful code therefore feels less convincing than the possibility that WICKED simply opened the door when it wanted to.

Beyond the maze, the Gladers find a staged laboratory, fake dead scientists, and a recorded explanation from Ava Paige. Gally appears with a gun despite the Glade having no guns, and Chuck dies shielding Thomas. The final scene reveals that Paige and the “dead” scientists are alive and watching the experiment, making the apparent escape another phase of WICKED’s test.

In The Scorch Trials, the survivors discover that WICKED has run multiple mazes and is draining immune teenagers for something in their blood that can slow the Flare. The narrator points out that this makes the maze’s focus on studying their brains seem even more misguided: WICKED could have taken blood samples from the start.

Then The Death Cure delivers the biggest punchline. Teresa discovers that Thomas’s blood cured Brenda rather than merely slowing the virus. Thomas had worked inside WICKED before his memories were erased, yet the organization apparently never tested his blood. Meanwhile, Minho is being drained for the wrong substance.

The narrator sums up the trilogy as WICKED spending enormous resources on mazes, monsters, facilities, and captured kids to find an answer it already had access to. Even Gally’s return after being speared in the chest gets a brief, incredulous mention.

The video’s verdict: the story doesn’t make much sense, but the premise of a kid rising in a lift with no idea what awaits him is entertaining enough to carry it.

People Mentioned

• Thomas
• Teresa
• Alby
• Minho
• Gally
• Chuck
• Ben
• Ava Paige
• Janson
• Aris
• Mary
• Brenda
• The narrator/commentator