The FX on Hulu original series, Y: The Last Man has walked a very narrow line for the entirety of its inaugural season. It feels as if Eliza Clarke and the other people in the show's writing room are more interested in telling the story of the people left behind in the world after a mysterious disease/event/killer microbe wipes out every mammal with a Y chromosome. That's a bit of a departure from the graphic novels the Hulu series is based on. That story was quite a bit more about sending the only cisgender human male on earth, to find out exactly why he was exactly that alongside his monkey, Ampersand.

The streaming series doesn't appear to be moving towards finding the cause or the cure. There's a way to do that and make a very good hour-long watch. To be fair, the graphic novels didn't really seem to know how to wrap up the "how do we fix it" story other than to just find a cure. There wasn't really a great explanation as to what happened. So it's understandable that the show isn't spending a ton of time examining "what happened."

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However, in order to basically have a story stand still the way Y: The Last Man has in episode 7 and episode 8, there has to be something else for viewers to really get engrossed in. It doesn't feel as if the showrunners have managed to find a way to hold attention. In the latest episode, the way Clarke and company tried to hold the audience's attention was to really shed a light on what might end up being the "big bad" as the season comes to an end. It's been said that the show used a kind of supervillain origin story that was certainly interesting. However, even when the backstory behind Roxanne was engaging and interesting, it felt like perhaps there was enough there that eventually they could move off the point.

The Point Has Been Made

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There's also the point that generally when a show goes to such great lengths to show the origin story of the big antagonist, it means that there is going to be a showdown with the show's protagonist. If the protagonist of Y: The Last Man is Yorick Brown, then how is that showdown going to happen? There hasn't been any sort of storytelling devices laid out there that makes it seem as if Yorick and his group are anywhere near where Hero and her group are holed up. In fact, the best guess would have the two parties moving in different directions if the "Amazons" end up moving at all.

The argument can certainly be made that the real hero of Season 1 is actually going to be Hero. But it doesn't seem as if enough work has been done on her redemption arc just yet. She's still in the "needing to heal" phase of her character development. That was one particularly good part of this last episode. The argument between Hero and Sam about how she refused to allow herself to think she's a good person was compelling. There was even some tension when it became obvious Roxanne was going to step in. But, as the show does a bit too often, the air was let out of the balloon and Sam just left.

Almost two full episodes have now been spent on Hero and her new friends. It could be argued that more time has been spent on this plotline than any other. So, again, there's evidence that Hero was always supposed to be the protagonist. If that has been the goal though, it doesn't feel like there's enough time to get there. In fact, if Y: The Last Man is going to go back to running parallel to the graphic novels, she's got a way to fall yet before her redemption.

That doesn't mean there won't be that showdown anyway. While the series has had some very good writing, there have also been some missteps. There was a microcosm of that when the full backstory of Roxanne was shown. It felt like there were about 10 minutes of explanation that didn't need to be there. It was obvious why it was being included because it was piling evidence on top of evidence as to who she really is, but it felt like the evidence was continued to be assembled once the verdict had already been reached. There's something to be said that despite quite a bit of backstory being revealed, there were still some scenes in this episode of Y: The Last Man that didn't make a ton of sense. That's a problem when there is so much "fleshing out" of a character or plotline.

How Can There Be A Conclusion?

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While it maybe shouldn't be, the fact that Y: The Last Man has been canceled on Hulu tends to color how the writing and direction of these final episodes feel. The entire story seems to be written as though there is going to be a second and/or third season. Unless another streaming service picks it up, that's now definitely not going to happen. There are two episodes left in the series at this point and the story continues to feel as though it's not really moving along. An entire episode was just done where the "main character" didn't make an appearance. There was also a brand new conflict teased in Washington, DC that was completely ignored in this episode. It may not be fair to judge one episode on the ones that are going to come after it, but this is supposed to be a coherent, tied-together run and it feels as though perhaps the writers changed direction mid-stream. It's almost as if Clarke and company decided they were bored by the Yorick Brown plot and decided to just leave him in the dust. That could even work if the entire show wasn't premised on his existence. While Y: The Last Man Episode 8 had compelling moments the writers seem to be getting more confused about what they want the show to be the further into the season they go.

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