This article contains major spoilers for Make My Day Season 1 Episode 8, including an open discussion of Make My Day’s Season 1 ending.

Across its eight episodes, Make My Day overcomes some lackluster animation and visual design with a deep sense of character and a breakneck pace. All that work in establishing the characters, their dynamics, and the stakes really comes to a head in the finale, making for an action-packed and poignant ending that we’re about to break down as much as we can here.

Make My Day Season 1 Episode 8 Recap

First, though, here’s a summary. The action takes place on Coldfoot, an icy prison planet where humanity is mining a precious ore named Sig with the help of the White Prison’s inmates. The excavations, though, have awoken an orange-tinted, explosive bug race, who threaten to overwhelm the planet and everyone on it.

Our protagonist is Jim, an aspiring artist and part-time prison guard who lives with his grandfather, Ed, and is in love with his neighbor, Marnie, who is pregnant as a surrogate with someone else’s child. During a mission, Jim is stranded with an inmate named Walter, who is later revealed to be a murderer, and with the help of a robocast named Casper, they manage to rescue Marnie from the settlement called the Dustbox.

Heading into the finale, Marnie has just given birth, and the gang, which now includes Jim’s former Captain, Bark, doctors William and Rachel, and Cathy Beck, the public face of humanity’s Coldfoot operations, needs a plan to get off-world without the help of the shuttles, which have all been predictably nicked by the more “important” members of the colony.

How does Jim escape Coldfoot?

Cathy and Bark luckily come with a plan. The former has sent out a distress signal that will be responded to in the next 24 hours, but before then, they need to get a lifeboat into orbit around the system with the help of a boost from the mass driver in the giant Sig depot. However, a giant horde of the larvae creatures is racing them there.

It’s all action from this point on, even conspiring a way to provide a fight between robot mechs, as Robert tries to save himself. The encroaching bugs are a nice ticking-clock device and eventually a last-second launch into space saves the gang from doom.