The first three episodes of FX on Hulu’s adaptation of Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra’s seminal graphic novel Y: The Last Man got off to a… steady start. It’s a show with plenty of problems — some changes to the source material that won’t all be appreciated, an overabundance of exposition in the first two episodes, the relegation of the ostensible protagonist to almost a supporting player, and so on, and so forth — but oodles of potential if things are handled correctly, and you can already see glimmers of brilliance in the some of the performances (Diane Lane!) and new ideas. Y: The Last Man season 1, episode 4 is only around the corner, but before that, let’s round-up what happened in the first three episodes:
- For one thing, everyone with a Y chromosome is dead, which is a pretty big deal. Amateur escape artist Yorick Brown and his pet Capuchin monkey Ampersand are seemingly the only male survivors.
- In the sudden absence of men, the world has descended into chaos, with an all-female Cabinet led by Yorick’s mother, Jennifer, now the President of the United States, left to try and deal with the fallout.
- Agent 355, a representative of the shadowy Culper Ring, has been assigned to the situation for nebulous purposes.
- Yorick’s sister, Hero, is stranded in New York with Sam.
- By the end of the third episode, Yorick, suddenly realizing his own importance, has been sent to Boston with Agent 355 to track down a geneticist who might possess a solution.
Y: The Last Man season 1, episode 4 release date
“Karen and Benji” will premiere on September 20, 2021, at 12 am EST on FX on Hulu.
Where to watch online
Y: The Last Man is exclusive to FX on Hulu, and a subscription is required to watch it.
Predictions and potential spoilers
It’s a while since I read the graphic novel, and I wouldn’t want to spoil anything for those who haven’t, so any predictions about where the show might go moving forwards are based on the preceding episodes, treating this adaptation as its own singularly entity, apart from one instance which will be flagged as a potential spoiler. With that in mind let’s do some speculating:
- Yorick and Agent 355 are Boston bound on the hunt for geneticist Dr. Allison Mann, but whether or not they’ll find her in “Karen and Benji” is anyone’s guess. It’d probably make more sense to properly depict how far and how rapidly society has fallen by having Boston be difficult to navigate in and of itself.
- The politicking between Jennifer and Kimberly is liable to continue, but don’t be surprised if this subplot takes something of a back seat in the fourth episode. It was prevalent in the third, but now is the right time to expand the show’s world, and that’s best achieved, at least for now, through Yorick.
- And, of course, through Hero and Sam. This one is difficult to predict since, in the comics [comics spoiler warning incoming] Hero joins and is subsequently brainwashed by the Daughters of the Amazon, a group of fanatics who send her to kill Yorick. I don’t see how the story can necessarily work without this element, but there’s a lot of ground to cover, so it’d make sense to introduce it sooner rather than later. I think we can probably expect to see the Amazons debut in “Karen and Benji”.
