Y: The Last Man - Season 1

The writing is on the wall for the future of Y: The Last Man. The series has officially been dropped by FX, with its future dependent on whether any other production companies are interested in snapping it up. Needless to say, considering the live-action adaptation of Brian K. Vaughan's comic book is looking to air the final episode on Disney+ for us in Europe next week, the chance of survival for this post-apocalyptic series - alike the humans trapped in its cruel world - is looking rather bleak.

If you haven't been following the show, Y: The Last Man is set in a world where a global androcide has seemingly killed anything with a Y chromosome, leaving mostly women to pick up the pieces of humanity and scrape together some form of future. The series, as you might infer from its namesake, follows Yorick Brown and his pet capuchin monkey Ampersand, two beings who are thought to be the only male survivors of this catastrophic event, something you learn isn't the truth, as there are various men that survived the cataclysmic event. With this weight on his shoulders, Yorick and Ampersand head out on an crucial journey across the US, with the help of a secret service member known as Agent 355, to find a scientist who might be able to use his genes to determine the cause of the androcide, and potentially even discover a way to ensure the future of humanity.

It's a storyline and series that to me always screamed 'The Walking Dead' during my time watching. Granted Y: The Last Man doesn't have zombies, but the way this show is framed and its post-apocalyptic design often gave me a similar impression that I get when watching TWD: in that it's a high-quality production that has an aura of being forgettable and if anything a little fatiguing to watch.

It's by no means poorly adapted or badly acted, in fact the cast do a great job at providing the characters with plenty of charisma and personality. But at the same time, I feel like the whole post-apocalyptic situation has been truly exhausted when it comes to TV these days, and just as 11 seasons feels like far too many seasons of The Walking Dead, I couldn't shake the feeling that Y: The Last Man was shaping up to follow in familiar footsteps.

Take episode eight for example: Ready. Aim. Fire. This follows Missi Pyle's Roxanne, exploring her backstory and explaining how she became the person she is in the show. The storyline is a little convoluted as it frequently jumps back and forth between the past and the present, making it often jarring to follow. But, at the same time, Pyle does a great job at bringing to life the terrifying leader Roxanne, whose past is dripping in blood of all ages, a performance that just a couple episodes later comes to nothing as you learn she really is just a pawn in the development of Marin Ireland's Nora Brady's story.

The point of picking this out is that this is a perfectly fine show that has peaks and dips that make it both enthralling and also a little dull, and after the full first season, I was left content with the entertainment that it provided. This isn't a series that's going to leave you with a wanting desire for more, and at the same time, it won't leave you with a bitter taste. Y: The Last Man is about as middling as TV comes and that's really not a bad thing, just know that there are plenty of other shows out there that are far more exciting and engaging to spend a few evenings with.

For me, that's about the epitome of Y: The Last Man. If this show isn't picked up for a second season elsewhere, I won't miss it. But if it does find a new home, there's every chance that a second season could grow to become something special, or rather just continue heading down this road of being a mediocre and generic post-apocalyptic tale. Only time will tell.