The live-action adaptation of Brian K. Vaughn and Pia Guerra's acclaimed Vertigo comics series, Y: The Last Man, has been in and out of development for years with many fans assuming that it would never actually see the light of day. But the wait is finally (almost) over and the show is most assuredly real--Y: The Last Man is coming to FX on Hulu on September 13.
Y follows Yorick (Ben Schnetzer), the last human with a Y chromosome in the world following a mysterious and sudden plague that wiped out all Y chromosomal organisms--this includes animals and some women who may have not even known they were intersex and androgen insensitive at the time of the event. Yorick is joined by his pet capuchin monkey, Ampersand (done entirely in VFX), who is the last surviving animal with a Y chromosome. To make things more complicated, Yorick's mother, a former US senator, has become the president of the US after the entire chain of succession broke down during the event. Oh, and there's also a clandestine secret agent in the mix named only 355 (Ashley Romans), a handful of big political players like the former president's daughter (Amber Tamblyn), an outcast government employee (Marin Ireland), and Yorick's semi-estranged sister Hero (Olivia Thirlby) all trying to maneuver around the apocalypse.
Most of these characters will be familiar to fans of the comics, but others will be less so--whether they're entirely new for the show like Sam (Elliot Fletcher), a trans man and friend of Hero's, or just updated and changed from the source material. This is where Y really starts to shine as an adaptation. Throughout the six episodes provided for review, it proved time and time again that it wasn't afraid to deviate and modernize the original story, which finished its 60-issue publication run in 2008 in a very different political and social climate.
Though issues like trans identity were briefly touched upon in the comics, the show takes pains to explore the differentiation between biological sex and gender, introducing multiple trans masculine characters and allowing several monologues from scientists and geneticists to explain that the extinction of Y chromosomal organisms isn't just about "losing the men," it's a major impact to biodiversity on Earth that effected women with things like androgen insensitivity, intersex people, and trans people alike. This helps deliver the conflicts at the heart of the show--not only is the world a post-apocalyptic nightmare with corpses left laying in the streets and infrastructure failing, the surviving people are left grappling with whatever ideological, social, and religious hang-ups they may have had prior to the end of the world.
For example, there are multiple instances of Yorick being able to move among crowds unmasked because he is able to assert himself as a trans man, or he is assumed by a trans man, which is an interesting inversion of the reality many trans people live in their day to day lives. Moments like this make the show's world feel rich and complicated. For the most part, this is a huge asset, bolstered by the expensive-looking production design and massive scale, but it can also be something of a double-edged sword. Certain moments, especially with the characters bunkered down in DC, trying to keep the government from falling apart can be extremely hard to watch, if only because it gets a little too close to the nerve of actual reality.
Unfortunately, these complications also make for a thoroughly mixed bag of episodes. Y's biggest pitfall is its uneven pacing. Though the performances are strong--Romans as 355 and Fletcher as Sam are the standouts of the ensemble but there are no weak links in the mix--the character arcs themselves can feel awkward and abrupt while also being difficult to keep track of. The show is linear, but entire episodes will pass without checking in on core characters and their motivations have such wildly differing stakes--personal quests, political intrigue, the future of the entire human race--that it gets extremely difficult to weigh what's important from episode to episode.
This issue will probably be less of a sticking point for fans of the comics who, despite the changes and updates made to the show, will still be able to see a familiar blueprint and follow along.
Having read the comics will probably make the CGI monkey running around a little less distracting, too. Ampersand is cute, but absolutely the sort of quirky animal companion that works much better on the page than the screen. Having him be entirely digital was clearly the better, safer call for both the actors and the animals, but that doesn't mean he's immune to the uncanny awkwardness of being the lone digital insert in an otherwise entirely live-action show, especially if you're coming into the story cold and have no idea why there's a monkey running around as this guy's pet.
Still, those issues aside, Y: The Last Man is an interesting and well made show that will definitely delight the fans who have been waiting years for this moment to finally arrive--and, ideally, keep those same fans guessing with new takes on familiar characters and stories.
