The Dark Wizard of Perfection

The new HBO Max documentary series, The Dark Wizard, chronicles the adult life of the creative adventurer Dean Potter. In addressing his extreme personality, it addresses life’s extremes, extreme reactions, and extreme decisions. And it peers into the extreme emotions of its admirable subject. Dean was plagued by extreme highs and lows, experiencing frequent bouts of depression, which seemed to coincide, at least in part, with his failures.

Dean was obsessive and perfectionistic. Arguably, he had to be in his world since mistakes while free soloing tend to imply death. But his obsessiveness stretched beyond survival; as any other perfectionist, he needed to be the best. In his youth, his competitiveness served him, since there wasn’t much competition. He routinely shattered records, creating a legacy years before his passing, or so it seemed. As Alexander the Great did, Dean stood, figuratively and literally, on the mountaintop and wept, for Dean, at a stage in his life when he truly had no worlds left to conquer. As time went on, as he aged, a younger, faster, and more agile Alex Honnold, who once admired Dean, chased and broke each of Dean’s records. Alex even went on to complete several firsts, climbs Dean dreamed of, and some he even planned for. In the span of a few years, Alex didn’t shatter Dean’s legacy, but he greatly diminished it.

Dean spent his life controlling the world, mastering it along with others’ perceptions of him, all to have it change so quickly. He used external mastery as a means of managing his highs, lows, envy, resentment, rage, and fear. Like Alexander, he perceived the world as an extension of himself, apparently created for the sole purpose of making him feel better; it really was as though life was for him. In some sense, he was its master, until he wasn’t. There are so many great lessons in this series, on flexibility and adaptation, as well as on the consequences of excessive pride. The fundamental question of it is: What does life look like when success is at the forefront? Maybe, even more important: What does it look like when you’re no longer number one?