A four-part documentary called The Dark Wizard landed on HBO Max in April, and it's already sparking conversations far beyond the climbing world. Its subject: Dean Potter, the Yosemite legend who died in 2015 at forty-three, alongside twenty-nine-year-old Graham Hunt, when their wingsuit flight through the valley went wrong.
If you only know the name from old magazine covers, the film is a proper primer. Potter made his reputation on what he called his dark arts — ropeless free solos of Half Dome and El Capitan, highlines strung over enormous drops, BASE jumps off cliffs, and eventually a hybrid discipline he pioneered called FreeBASE, climbing solo with a parachute strapped to his back. The doc leans on his own journals, voice memos and archival footage, and it doesn't flatter him. We see the poetic, gentle side, but also an ego that estranged his wife, Steph Davis, and long-time partners like Timmy O'Neill, who recalls being pushed away the moment his own success started to shine. Even Alex Honnold — who cited Potter as an inspiration — found himself treated as a rival. Hunt's own rise in wingsuit flying stoked the same jealousy, and the film argues that need to keep up contributed to the fatal flight.
The director's edit from Alpinist magazine adds a thoughtful counterweight: not everyone who courts danger is running from something. Tommy Caldwell, who set the Nose speed record with Honnold in under two hours, balances risk with family life and environmental advocacy. Canadian ice climber Guy Lacelle, who died in an avalanche in 2009, soloed terrifying routes while living quietly and planting trees for a living. The takeaway for anyone drawn to the edge — whether that's a via ferrata or a black diamond run — is that risk itself isn't the problem. It's whether you're honest about the demons you bring along.
Why should a traveller care? Because Yosemite Valley, the stage for most of this story, remains one of the most accessible big-wall arenas on earth. You don't need to solo anything to feel what Potter felt — hiking to the rim above Lost Arrow Spire, where the writer once watched ravens dropping off the cliff and riding the updrafts, gets you surprisingly close. The documentary is a good companion piece before a trip: it captures a particular era of climbing culture, the late-90s Mountain Dew frontier, while showing how much the sport has matured since.
For climbers, BASE jumpers and armchair adventurers alike, this is essential viewing — a complicated portrait of a man the community still loves, flaws and all.