The Dark Wizard Episode 3 Review: How Alex Honnold Pushed Dean Potter to the Edge of Sanity
Spoiler warning: This review discusses key moments from Episode 3 of HBO’s The Dark Wizard. The fourth and final episode premieres tonight.
By the time the third episode of HBO’s The Dark Wizard opens with Dean Potter back in Yosemite, the throne he’s spent a career building is already shaking. A young Alex Honnold has arrived in the Valley, and the dynamic shift drives the entire hour. Potter, long the unquestioned king of Yosemite climbing, suddenly finds his signature lines being repeated, refined, and in some cases outright stolen by a quieter, more clinical rival who simply does not care about the politics of legacy.
Watching Honnold in this episode, I kept thinking about The Last Dance. There’s a Michael Jordan quality to him here, a willingness to ignore every social cue and every unspoken code in service of being the greatest of all time. If that pushes other climbers into more dangerous territory, so be it. The documentary never editorializes about this, but the footage speaks for itself, and what emerges is a portrait of a competitive engine so pure it borders on cold.
The episode’s centerpiece is Potter’s attempt to free solo a section of El Capitan with a film crew in tow. The Park Service is so concerned he’ll BASE jump off the top that they assign a ranger to shadow him the entire climb. Then comes the gut punch: Potter plans an audacious linkup, climbing an easier route up El Cap and traversing into the harder free solo section to claim a first. Honnold catches wind of it, slips up there in secret, and does the line himself. Potter is left fuming, and you can feel him starting to fracture.
The final act takes us to China, where Potter accepts a $200,000 contract to free walk a highline in Enshi Grand Canyon. He’s older now, visibly diminished, and openly preparing to die. He stations a friend at the base to protect his body from being tampered with if he falls. He completes the walk, drops to his knees, and breaks down sobbing on a hot mic that the filmmakers refuse to cut away from. It’s the most devastating moment of the series so far. He looks less like a champion and more like an addict who can’t find his way off the drug.
Directors Peter Mortimer and Nick Rosen have made the rare sports documentary that resists hagiography. Episode 3 is the moment the myth cracks open. Tonight’s finale will be hard to watch. I haven’t Googled anything about Potter’s death because I want to live inside this story as the filmmakers built it. On the strength of this episode alone, they’ve earned that trust.
