Y: The Last Man Series - Review

After receiving critical acclaim and multiple awards, Brian K Vaughan and Pia Guerra’s sixty-issue Vertigo Comics series, Y: The Last Man, spent years in film development under New Line Cinema, one of Vertigo’s sister companies, until the project dissolved in 2014. Now, almost twenty years after its comic debut, FX Productions and Color Force have released the first five episodes of their television adaptation of the post-apocalyptic story. So continues the strange tale of Yorick Brown and his Capuchin monkey Ampersand who together struggle anew to survive through a global mass-androcide event, albeit in an updated medium. It is laudable and fitting to note that FX contracted a largely female writing staff to adapt the comic series along with its creators, and that the showrunner is Eliza Clark, a woman with heavy writing and production credits behind her name. While remaining largely true (thus far) to the structure of the original comic series, Y: The Last Man promises to be as shocking and enthralling in its tv series format as it was on comic pages.

Opening the series is a floating pastoral winter wide-shot of a barn surrounded by snowy fields that cuts to a close-up of a fallen buffalo half-covered in snow with blood soaking the fur around its dead eye— establishing right away that there will be a great deal of imagery juxtaposition and pain in the telling of this story. We then see a montage presumably of cities across the world, streets and buildings littered with smashed vehicles and fallen bodies, until a small monkey skitters over a row of abandoned cars followed closely by a person wearing a gas mask. These two, we find out, are Yorick and Ampersand, and they are picking their way through a fallen world three weeks after a catastrophic event. The show patiently takes us back through the day of the disaster and reveals more about Yorick and his strange circumstances.

We learn that Yorick is a struggling amateur escape artist dating a woman named Beth who is about to leave the country on a research project to Australia. His mother, Jennifer Brown, is a Senator engaged in partisan bickering with the Republican President whom she accuses of catering to right-wing extremists across the country. Yorick has a sister named Hero who is an EMT, has been attending AA meetings by court order after a DUI conviction, and is also sleeping with a married co-worker. Things get worse from there out for the entire Brown family, it seems, as cracks emerge in Jennifer’s marriage, Yorick’s attempts to grow closer with Beth are rebuffed, and Hero’s love triangle implodes by her own impulsive and heinous actions.

As in the original comic, perhaps the most arresting character is Agent 355, the tight-lipped government operative of the secretive Executive branch task force called the Culper Ring. In fact, her character grabs our attention instantly as she builds a bomb for a would-be domestic arms dealer, then betrays him and his homegrown terrorist clients only a moment later. After accepting a new mission described as “a marathon,” 355 changes her appearance and assumes a new identity as a Secret Service Agent assigned to the President’s detail.

The doomsday event itself cuts across everyone’s lives with brutal swiftness and a shockingly immediate horror. What was once a seemingly far-fetched catastrophe drawn across six comic pages plays out over an agonizing ten-minute sequence in which we see the disaster as all of the scattered characters experienced it. Simultaneously, all mammals on Earth with a Y chromosome fall victim to a sudden and bloody death, including all human males. One of the most symbolically terrifying shots during the tragedy frames a military top-brass dead at his station in the War Room while pooling blood sweeps across a map of North America beneath his chest. For reasons unknown, both Yorick and Ampersand remain unaffected by the event and survive— the only remaining males alive on Earth, as far as we can tell.

While a swath of post-apocalyptic stories and shows abounds, there are not many with a plot like Y: The Last Man. This one develops slowly, deliberately, and with a sensitive menace. Seeing the ramifications of an event like this play out across the country and the world, how the survivors process the panic and outrage and threats, is enthralling while also terrifying. Survivors are immediately confronted with the reality that many critical positions in society have been held by men whose knowledge and skills largely died with them. In the wake of the disaster, the Presidency falls far down the chain of command to Senator Jennifer Brown, mother of Yorick and Hero. The former President’s surviving wife and daughter grieve not only the loss of their respective husband and male children, but also their loss of access to power and voice and audience. Public unrest haunts President Brown’s America as symbols of national strength and power begin to crumble in slow-motion amid conspiracy theories and open rebellions.

It’s in this light that the show begins to build what the comics couldn’t as the actresses portraying the former President’s wife, daughter, and press advisor all do incredible work breathing life and depth into their somewhat cardboard personas as Republican women, either jaded, up-and-coming, or burnt out, respectively. These were easy characters to both hate and dismiss in the original series, yet are now moving, talking humans with a myriad of personal qualities either admirable or contradictory or incendiary. Along with the reemergence of the former President’s HUD Secretary, once presumed dead and with a claim to the Presidency, these women rise unsteadily through the fallout as a sinister and powerful political block. They act not only as a foil to Diane Lane’s President Brown but also reflect the extremism that American politics breeds and leverages for its purposes.

Any die-hard fan of the comics will point out that there are major differences already visible between the original story and the FX adaptation. The comic portrayed Yorick as a talented but unknown escape artist while the tv show cast him as a more bumbling and reticent but emerging talent. Thus far, a major plot point from the comic involving a female zealot from the Israeli military seems to be completely absent. As well, we don’t meet the Harvard geneticist Dr. Allison Mann in quite the same timeframe or fashion as we did in the comic. The specific details of 355’s arc intersecting with Yorick’s have been similarly retooled. Also, Beth was already in Australia in the comic, and Senator Brown was actually a Congresswoman. Beyond these somewhat cosmetic and superficial differences, Eliza Clark and her team certainly earn our trust and our attention in how they strike a delicate balance between diving deep and moving us forward through the tattered landscape of Y: The Last Man.

Crisscrossing subplots and excellent acting carry the first five episodes of this slow-burning emotional thriller. Familiar post-apocalyptic themes and circumstances face a range of new and urgent questions around gender and global politics. This show masterfully builds out one of the greatest puzzles from the comic, and wonders how to recreate a better world in the face of ideological differences, insurmountable challenges, and ever-worsening odds. As Yorick navigates a population increasingly hostile to his continued existence, his unfolding mission to help 355 find an explanation behind the disaster and possibly a way to reverse it (and reunite with Beth on the way) is tense yet delivered in a way that newcomers to the brand and fanatics alike can respect and appreciate. This show is definitely up and running, and its creators have done their homework to pull off what took decades to accomplish, all with a sense of daring.