HBO series on free soloist Dean Potter shows footage of his last moments

Editor’s Note: This article may contain spoilers. 

The series finale of HBO’s The Dark Wizard traces something of a redemption arc for Dean Potter while showing the final moments of the BASE jump that ended his life. 

Titled “Transcending Human Limitations,” the story picks up with Potter weeping at the end of an unprotected highline demonstration in China. Potter has done the thing. But he’s also pushed away most of the people in his life who cared about him. 

At this point, Potter is at a low. But he realizes the damage he’s done. He makes a laundry list of people that he needs to reach out and apologize to. This includes his friends and his ex-wife, pro climber Steph Davis, whose voice remains absent. Other media reports say that she declined to be interviewed for this documentary, but this is not made clear in the series. 

However, things seem to change for the better once he runs into Jenn Rapp. Rapp and Potter already knew each other. She’s a publicist for Patagonia, the big sponsor that dropped him following his free solo of Utah’s Delicate Arch. It’s a little bit of an awkward dynamic.

They start hanging out, and Potter and Rapp fall for each other. They raise Rapp’s kids together and, for the first time in his life, Potter begins to have a taste of normal family life. He begins to prioritize relationships, family and artistic expression over competition. He seems content. He even makes amends with his rival, Alex Honnold.

But things slowly take a turn when he befriends Graham Hunt. At first their relationship is of mentor and mentee, but when Hunt begins to surpass Potter in the world of BASE jumping, jealousy starts to seep in. 

Potter sees the riskier proximity BASE jumping that Hunt is succeeding in and feels like he has to keep up. Eventually, the envelope gets pushed too far with a final jump.

It’s here that we see a final heart-wrenching bit of footage from an iPhone strapped to the back of Potter’s helmet that day, right up to the moment of impact. 

The takeaway is sobering. It’s a portrait of a man who had finally seemed to have found contentment. A family, a property, a dog (which he also takes BASE jumping). But his desire to always be the best dragged him back into risky behaviour that, this time around, was above his pay grade. 

The final conclusion of The Dark Wizard is a haunting picture of how someone had finally seemed to have it all, but let it get torn away by ego and a compulsion for competition.

“Transcending human limitations is kind of what I’m obsessed with in life,” says Potter in the film. “And I’m obsessed with it in kind of this flashy way where I fly, but I see that if I could take that and transcend the main things that matter: hate, jealousy, insecurities; all the negative things that pull you down in life. Maybe now I’m thinking about flying but it’s just a metaphor to bring me somewhere else.”

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