Y: The Last Man review: Episode 9, “Peppers”
Y: The Last Man inches closer to the season (and possibly series) finale with “Peppers.” While the intensity of the episode was turned up to a fever pitch in several key moments, the series still feels disjointed and it remains to be seen how the story will wrap up.
“Peppers” spotlights three main stories: there’s Yorick’s journey with Agent 355 and Dr. Mann; Hero and Nora’s story with the newly minted Amazons; and Jennifer Brown’s rapidly deteriorating situation back at the Pentagon.
“Peppers” sets up the Y: The Last Man finale
Yorick and company seem to have settled in the utopian village created by the former residents of the women’s prison down the road. Agent 355 is having flashbacks to her childhood and the trauma that comes with becoming the double agent she is today. Yorick seems quite content among the women, but Dr. Mann is eager to keep traveling.
Roxanne, under Nora’s guidance, sends the women to raid a nearby camp. The idea is to gather supplies and give the Amazons a feeling of power again, but when the women start destroying the encampment — destroying boxes of food and bottles of clean water — Nora jumps in. Roxanne doesn’t see anything wrong with what the women did, which gives Nora the sense that remaining with the Amazons is not a long-term solution. They’re more dangerous than ever.
Back at the Pentagon, Jennifer’s big secret about Yorick is out and she’s about to be ousted from power when Beth’s rebel group blows up a series of bombs under the building. The leaders are evacuated but end up in the rebels’ hands. When Regina starts asserting herself as the president and goes off about party politics instead of addressing the rebels’ demands she’s shot in the head. When the rebels start losing control of the building (remember all of those people outside the gates?), Beth grabs Jennifer and tries to protect her while Kimberly grabs Christine. Kimberly kills a woman, promising Christine that she will do anything to protect her and the baby.
Y: The Last Man still hasn’t figured out why it exists
If it sounds like a lot, it is. This was a really intense episode. The big question is how it all fits together. The Pentagon has fallen, the government has fallen apart and Jennifer Brown’s kids are both out there living very different lives. But what does it all mean? I’m still not sure.
There’s no question that Y: The Last Man has picked up the pace in the past two episodes, which is a relief because after a strong debut the season really started to drag along in the middle. It’s not that the episodes were bad. The acting is sharp, the stories fresh. The problem is that I don’t know what’s happening. What’s the point of everything that we’re seeing? What’s the goal?
It’s disconcerting to see Regina go into attack mode, both inside the Pentagon operations room and inside the tunnels. If you didn’t know better, you’d think she was in a fight on the Senate floor and not fighting for the survival of the human race.
And that’s kind of the problem, isn’t it? Somehow these characters have lost sight of the bigger picture, which is why it’s exceptionally hard to figure out what the game plan is. Jennifer, Roxanne and Agent 355 all have agendas and they don’t seem to line up at all. So where are we going?
In the penultimate episode of the season, I’m not sure we’re any closer to answers. The season/series finale will have to be pretty tight to tie up some of these loose ends, especially if the series hopes to find a new home at another network or on a streaming platform.
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