Y: The Last Man fails to find new home, is canceled for good
The former FX On Hulu series is now officially as dead as the Y chromosome
Aux News Y: The Last Man
After more than a literal decade of attempts to get the series off the ground—only for it to plow, like so many man-piloted jumbo jets, back into the cold and hateful earth—former FX On Hulu series Y: The Last Man is now formally and officially dead. The series had already been canceled at FX back in October, after its first season failed to take off with viewers, but showrunner Eliza Clark has now confirmed that efforts to find a new home for the post-apocalyptic series have failed.
Clark laid out the difficulties in moving a series elsewhere in a long Twitter thread last night, also teasing some of the plot threads she and her team had intended to explore if the show had been picked up for a second season. (Notably, she name checks a story from the original comics the series is based on, about a few surviving male astronauts who are off-planet when everything on Earth with a Y chromosome suddenly died.)
Based on said comic series, created by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra, Y starred Ben Schnetzer as its titular last man—who actually comes off, for most of the show, as a lot less interesting than his sister (Olivia Thirlby) and mother (Diane Lane), the latter of whom becomes President Of The United States after a decent chunk of the U.S. government is killed off in the big event.
Here’s Roxana Hadidi, reviewing the finale of the show’s first season—which will now serve as its final installment—and noting its apparent dedication to never answering the big, central mystery of why everyone with a Y chromosome died off:
Season finale “Victoria” certainly doesn’t offer up much for that particular question, and it’s not like the creative team knew they would be canceled by FX on Hulu when they were crafting this tenth, and potentially last ever, episode. And given all that, it is understandable why “Victoria” ends in an open-ended way that suggests narrative expansion and more to come—in time. But without the promise of more time, and as it stands, “Victoria” is a bit of a letdown.
54 Comments
I didn’t love this adaptation, but it was interesting enough. Too bad it died.
I agree. It was certainly flawed (so was the comic) but had it was solid enough that I wanted to see what is was going to do with the rest of the series.
It was so joyless and dour, I can’t imagine anybody wanting more of it.
yeah its interesting how a show about half the planet’s population dying wasnt a chuckle fest.
Lots of people loved it. A victim of Covid and the takeover of Fox by Disney.
Might want to look up the definition of lots.
Also a victim of not being that good. I loved the comic and followed stories of development of the show for literally years, excited to see it. What we got was not good.
“Lots of people loved it.”
No. Lots of people didn’t love it. Lots of people didn’t even watch it, and the reviews AND audience scores are mediocre.
So, sorry, but you loving it is not equal to “lots of people”. If lots of people loved it, it would’ve have been canceled, or it would’ve found another home.
Very few people loved it. There, I’ve fixed you comment for you. You’re welcome.
Agreed. The comic book had hilarious moments and actual joy. It would have been nice to see that onscreen.
It was a piss poor adaptation of a great comic. I am glad to see it die. Waited all these years for it to finally happen and that was the shit they gave us. Just sad.
It was good enough that I would have watched more. It’s always a little bit of a bummer when you stick with a series, see the cast and writers finally starting to gel with the material toward the end, and then it gets cancelled.
In the off chance public opinion could help bring it back, put me down as having liked it as well. I only watched the first three or so but only because there’s so much content nowadays…
It was a solid grounding season. I wish they could have found a home just to see if they can nail the series with the second.
Maybe they could finish the story in a different medium, like a comic or something.
I half enjoyed this adaptation when it came out, but watching Station Eleven afterward (as much as one can compare: book to screen, post apocalyptic etc) really highlighted the flaws it had, trying to cram all the original plots and inventing new (often boring) ones on top of it, having no distinct atmosphere…It’s too bad!
Glad I delayed starting this one, saved me some time. It didn’t sound great in execution, but plenty of series with good concepts started weak but got better over time.
I remember hearing this show was in development like 4-5 years ago and reading a few updates a year on it since. Kind of crazy to see something take so long to finally get made and then get cancelled so unceremoniously.
See also Cowboy Bebop. Or…don’t.
Eh not really the same thing IMO. Y had a cast announced in mid-2018 and took so long to get made that half of that cast dropped out and was replaced. Y didn’t start filming until almost two years later. Cowboy Bebop had its cast announced in April 2019 and started filming three months later.
The comic went through the same thing, DC/Vertigo didn’t really support it at first but it got the time to find an audience and become Vertigo’s best seller for years. FX was supportive but Disney bought Fox and instead of having it as a TV series put it on the soon to fail FXonhulu and didn’t really push it, also buying Creamerie, a knockoff version of the concept that was able to be made first because Covid didn’t affect NZ as much. Given time it would have found an audience.
That’s a bit harsh on Creamerie, it does have some things in common with Y but it’s definitely it’s own beast, and much more interested in telling a story about three very specific characters. Plus it’s really fun too, so I hope it finds a decent sized audience and gets picked up for a second season.
Hulu buying a second show about a plague killing off everyone with a Y chromosome on Earth except for some hidden men while deciding to keep going with the one it already was supposed to be promoting (and not letting them know that’ll be part of the decision to renew or not) seems like a lousy thing to do.
That’s very, very true, I guess I wasn’t so bothered as I’d read the comics and never bothered with the tv show so wasn’t upset by the cancellation news, but I completely understand why many were. I just hope it hasn’t put people off watching Creamerie as it’s a series I enjoyed an awful lot, and there haven’t been many of those lately.
I really don’t have anything against the creators of the show itself or any other shows with similar concepts like Station Eleven or The Last Man on Earth or even World Harem. This is on hulu.
Yeah, it was a time when a pandemic and a fascist stumbling into the presidency were valid plot points.
Hell, Shia was a attached to some version of this like over a decade ago.
If there were also male astronauts who survived, I have to wonder how much the comic factored into Last Man on Earth, though I guess there’s only so much you can do with this storyline. The comic book spoilers from the internet also did not help.If anyone is hankering for more (almost) all-men-are-dead… Creamerie from New Zealand, also on Hulu, is a comedy that is at least as interesting as Y: The Last Man, though I’d say even more. One of the more frustrating aspects of Y were all the people online who insisted on giving the characters real world counterparts. You will not get any of that from Creamerie. I highly recommend.There is also a low budget mockumentary called No Men Beyond This Point on Prime that gets good user reviews and looks interesting, but it’s still just sitting in my queue and I haven’t gotten around to watching it yet.
hulu had bought broadcast rights to Creamerie, a show with the same premise as Y The Last Man when it was making the decision on a second season. Feels like someone breaking up with you and then dating your twin.
And unless I missed something, in the world of Creamerie trans people don’t exist.
“And unless I missed something, in the world of Creamerie trans people don’t exist.”
Unless you missed it? So either they announced, on-screen that there are trans people or you missed it? Those are the only options?
Fuck. Yourself.
What, you mean viewers weren’t eager to take their minds off of a real plague by watching a show about an imaginary one?
Is it me, or has there seemed to be an unusual abundance of TV shows about world-destroying plagues based on comics/books in the last couple of years? ‘Sweet Tooth’, ‘Utopia’, ‘Y: The Last Man’, ‘Station Eleven’. Obviously, these are properties pre-dating the real life plague, but I don’t remember a bunch of shows like this before COVID, and now there’s a bunch at the worst possible time.
I don’t know which is worse, these fantasy shows about world ending plagues, or the spate of well-intentioned, though ultimately opportunistic indie dramas about people coping with the COVID lockdown. Not to mention all the goddamn documentaries. I’m a filmmaker, and it sickened me the way people in my profession damn near rushed to make films about COVID even when it was just beginning. It was tacky and the films they made weren’t even good.
I don’t care what genre it is, I have no interest in any movies or TV shows about COVID. I’m not sure what possible insight is available there that isn’t clear to us as we actually live through it. Maybe the people of fifty years from now might get something out of it.
Yeah same. There are some things that I don’t care to revisit in film. Like after 9/11 you had films that either dealt with it directly, or borrowed elements of it for 9/11 infused catastrophes (like War of the Worlds). I thought it equally crash, and I had no interest in watching them.
oh i’m very excited to see what people who are young now have to say about it in the future, but yeah i don’t care about judd apatow’s take on it right now.
Whenever something out-of-the-ordinary happens, you can damn-well bet the fame-seekers will jump into that hole like lemmings.
I feel that. I don’t even like seeing characters wearing masks in TV shows or movies. I would rather get covid than watch a work of fiction about it. And that goes double for anything staged via Zoom. Oh, how clever…
Maybe let things be their own things. The comic was mostly great, never understood why people so wanted a screen adaption. Similar to the live action Cowboy Bebop.
I don’t think anyone wanted a live action Cowboy Bebop. People just wanted more Cowboy Bebop, and Netflix misunderstood.
I liked some of the republican white feminism commentary, that definitely would be a threat. And the agent 355 was fun, I hope that actress at least gets to use this show as a springboard because she was great. Otherwise snoozy.
I liked Yorick too. Unless he wasn’t supposed to be irritating and pathetic. But I think that was the point and he did great in that regard. Not a snarky comment.
355 was the only actor who was interesting. Everyone else was pretty blah.
Good, show as pretty terrible.
I’m not surprised. It was a terrible adaptation.
It just wasn’t very good.
The acting, directing, even the music were all a little off. There’s so much out there right now you need to be better than this was to get another season.
regardless of the quality, people just were not interested in this show. it created no buzz, seemingly even among the people who liked it.it’s one of those too little, too late things. i think if it had actually come out during the late 2000s/early 2010s it could have been a hit and connected, but the timing was all wrong.
I figured it wouldn’t get picked up. The cast were no longer under contract and it was an in-house FX production. If it was an outside production, there might have been more of a chance for it to get picked up elsewhere.
When I realised the Last Man was a pathetic crybaby- and every other character was embroiled in political nonsense… nope.
Alas, poor Yorick.
Somehow I managed not to give a flying rat’s ass about this the entire time
In a world where Station Eleven exists, there’s no way I would greenlight another season of Y. If you want me to watch a pandemic show during a pandemic, it had better be as good and as cathartic as Station Eleven.
Tbh, it was pretty bad. Sweet Tooth has the same problem that so much of the drama comes from the character doing really stupid things, but at least there the character doing it is a kid. Here, Hero seemed like a total zero, the show was enamored with twists like to Missi Pyle’s character that undermined rather than enhanced the story, little internality to the characters particularly Yorick’s ex…Diane Lane was good but otherwise it just wasn’t there.
i watched the first ep or 2 and i felt the quality was roughly equivalent to Preacher…. kinda middling. Really depressing since I used to love those books.