Summary
After Life Episode 6, the final chapter of the series, sees Tony going full circle and finally accepting his position in the world in a heartwarming ending.
This recap of After Life Episode 6 contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.
In a wonderful opening to After Life Episode 6, Tony (Ricky Gervais) watches a video of Lisa. She explains that she’s had the best life, with the best bloke, but that she always wants him to meet someone else.
As the last episode of the series, we also get the funniest journalism gag – a story about a baby who looks like Adolf Hitler. After learning that the parents purposefully made the baby look like the dictator, Tony points this out as a non-story because anyone can make a baby look like Hitler – the parents respond with, “not if they are black”.
After Life Episode 6 sees Tony no longer miserable but philosophical about life. He tells his colleague that life is worth living, even if you are an atheist. He also makes an effort with his father in the elderly home, providing the most emotional moment of the series as his dad briefly remembers him as seven.
The most impactful moment from the last episode comes when Tony fires his therapist because “he’s a dick”. The therapist loses his cool and reveals Matt’s (Tom Basden) marriage is going downhill. Worried, Tony confronts Matt about it but also confirms that he isn’t going to kill himself and apologizes for being a pain. He thanks all his colleagues but gives the most sincere thank you to Matt for not giving up on him.
In the end, Tony decides to use his sarcasm, his miserableness and his way of making jokes as his “superpower” as he puts it. He only wants to use it on people who are bad, not those who are good. He also makes the sex worker feel better about herself and secures a date with his father’s nurse, which makes him well up when she accepts.
I think in the end After Life is about being nice to people because life is too short. Everyone has problems, but that does not excuse being unkind. Tony was a miserable, nasty man at the start of the series, but ended up seeing the goodness of life by the end. Like Gervais’ previous content, After Life Episode 6 ends with kindness.
