Summary
Young love — or indeed any love — turns out not to be all it’s cracked up to be, as the gang go their separate ways. At least for now.
This recap of The End of the F***ing World season 2, episode 6 contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.
You can check out our thoughts on the previous season by clicking these ones.
We begin this episode with James and Alyssa parting ways, much to James’s obvious dismay. Alyssa thinks it’s good to know that she and James don’t work — like she thought they wouldn’t. She equates the situation to ripping off a plaster and says sometimes it’s easier just to leave it on. Not the best advice.
Bonnie, meanwhile, gets a taxi to the middle of nowhere and makes her way back to her own car, seemingly more driven — no pun intended — than ever. And then there’s James, in his own car, still lugging around his dad’s ashes — “like a mascot,” as Alyssa said. He’s still parked up where he dropped Alyssa off. It takes Leigh asking him where he’s headed for him to realize that he isn’t headed anywhere at all.
Todd, it turns out, lives with his sister, Iggy, who tells Alyssa to “f*ck off and die” when she tries to see him. This is a very morbid chapter, thus far. It doesn’t exactly get happy-go-lucky during James’s conversation with Leigh, in which he notes having seen both of his parents die now. But at least he decides on somewhere to scatter his dad’s ashes — the place where he and his mum met. He can’t believe he didn’t think of that before, but to be fair all he ever seems to think about is Alyssa.
Iggy has a girlfriend called Silent Lisa, who isn’t mute but just chooses not to speak. They eventually point Alyssa in Todd’s direction. just as James sees Bonnie rocket past him in a car, heading in Alyssa’s direction. He immediately realizes it’s a little bit weird for a woman who was hitchhiking to now be speeding around in a car. Especially a woman who, as we’ve established, is “a bit off”.
Todd’s on a folding chair in the middle of nowhere, being all contemplative. He has something to show Alyssa, a surprise. She reckons he’s probably going to push her down a well or something, which would be “fair enough”. But it’s actually a plot of land where he’s planning to build a house for Alyssa, who chooses that moment to tell him she wants a divorce. Todd hits the nail on the head: “You don’t deserve to be with anyone because you don’t treat people well enough.” I felt genuinely sorry for him here, which is rare for me.
James, meanwhile, follows Bonnie to Leigh’s house, but Alyssa’s mum doesn’t give anything anyway. Not that she could give her any concrete information anyway — Alyssa’s just wandering through the woods, explaining via voiceover how sometimes she gets so tired that she “can’t feel her edges anymore,” a lovely line. She ends up at the diner, where Bonnie spots her entering, and James spots Bonnie spotting, while also worrying about already being essentially stalking Alyssa again after only just leaving. He has a point, though — it’s a bit different this time. When Bonnie enters the diner, armed and ready to execute Alyssa, James goes through her car and finds Koch’s book and note. He puts two and two together with panicked, “Oh, sh*t.” My thoughts exactly.
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