Y: THE LAST MAN
Me and my monkey
UK Disney+, streaming now
US Hulu, finished
Showrunner Eliza Clark
Cast Diane Lane, Ashley Romans,
Ben Schnetzer, Olivia Thirlby
Brian K Vaughn and Pia Guerra’s Vertigo comic emerged not long before The Walking Dead, has similarities plot-wise, and shared its critical acclaim, but their televisual fates are poles apart. Following a troubled development, the axe has fallen after just 10 episodes.
The spine of the comics’s first 10 issues is retained: a plague kills anything with a Y chromosome, except escapologist Yorick and his pet monkey Ampersand; partnered with the enigmatic Agent 355 and geneticist Dr Mann, they set off to find a research lab; a man-hating “Amazon” cult pursue them to a town full of escaped prisoners.
The additions mostly make good sense. We spend much more time in the governmental sphere, as the President (here Yorick’s mother) struggles to maintain a working state. With a baying mob outside the Pentagon and populist plotting within, these scenes effectively reflect the political tumult of 2021 – and recall Battlestar Galactica’s Laura Roslin.
The show is also shot through with intersectional feminism. Dr Mann takes pains to state that her task is not “bringing back men” but restoring “gender diversity”, then delivers a potted lecture on intersex conditions. And we meet so many transmen en route, it’s a wonder anyone gasps at Yorick’s facial hair. But this hot-button topic had to be addressed more meaningfully than the comic did. And hey, it’s not like they retitled it Y: The Last Cis Man.
This also certainly isn’t a series which posits that if we just got shot of all the blokes, we’d have a utopia. Its most compelling subplot concerns the Amazons and their leader Roxanne, whose misandry is framed as every bit as poisonous as toxic masculinity. It’s a cancellation that’s disappointing on two counts. We’ll never find out if this TV universe includes male astronauts, or a trip to Japan. And we’ll never see the new characters achieve their potential – a shame, as ex-white House staffer Nora seemed set for an arc as evolutionary as Carol’s was in The Walking Dead.
Barry Keoghan, Imogen Poots and Lashana Lynch played Yorick, Hero and Agent 355 in the original pilot.