I’ve been waiting for a stellar Y: The Last Man adaptation for over 15 years. That’s how long I’ve been a fan of Brian K. Vaughn and Pia Guerra’s idiosyncratic post-apocalyptic tale. I was in love with Vaughn’s irreverently dark wit and masterful plot construction and Guerra’s beautifully human art. I was fascinated by the series’s sprawling look at women driven to adapt in a landscape suddenly devoid of men. Most of all, I adored the bond forged between the intrepid Agent 355 and her charge, the titular “last man,” Yorick Brown.
Y: The Last Man was a saga deeply reflective of the fears, anxieties, and prejudices of its time. Now in 2021, FX has finally brought the graphic novel to life in a grim adaptation that takes incredible pains to update the source material’s gender politics for today. The catastrophic plague that immediately kills all men has now been laser focused on eradicating those with a Y chromosome, allowing for the representation of transgender men and nonbinary people in this world. This is great. One of Y: The Last Man‘s blind spots was indeed its facile approach to a gender binary. However in devoting so much time to bringing the perspectives of characters like Jennifer Brown (Diane Lane), Hero Brown (Olivia Thirlby), Kimberly Campbell Cunningham (Amber Tamblyn), and Sam Jordan (Elliot Fletcher) to forefront, the show has lost its grasp on what makes Y: The Last Man… Y: The Last Man. And that’s Yorick Brown (Ben Schnetzer).
Y: The Last Man first hit comic book stores in September 2002, which was a weird time to be alive. The trauma of September 11, 2001 had manifested itself in a myriad of ways, from a rise of gung-ho patriotism in some corners of the country to a strain of outrage over America’s on-going foreign forever wars. The fear of another major terrorist attack still hung in the air like a floating Acme anvil stalking Wiley E. Coyote. And Brian K. Vaughn’s unique approach to storytelling was taking the comics community by storm. For Marvel, Vaughn would soon develop an all-new young adult series called Runaways, focused on a group of affluent teens who discover the parents they trust are actually supervillains. For Vertigo, he would write two then-heralded works: the aforementioned Y: The Last Man and Ex Machina, a series where a “real world” superhero is elected mayor after saving the second Twin Tower from collapse.
Vaughn’s work was popular because his dialogue was crackling, his characters realistic, and his gorgeously planned plots often probed the frenzied fears and not-so-suppressed guilt of the post-9/11 landscape. Were the people we had trusted to protect us actually the bad guys? Did “heroism” in the fact of tragedy really equate to sound leadership? And what good were traditional views of masculinity in the face of a world that could face apocalyptic ruin at any time?
That last concern was explored in Y: The Last Man through the eyes of all its characters, but most pertinently, Yorick Brown. Part of Vaughn’s genius was that in crafting a scenario when only one man and his monkey would survive his gender-biased Thanos snap, he didn’t pick a “manly” man as his would-be hero. Yorick Brown is an aimless twenty-something with a liberal arts degree and the wild dream of being a professional escape artist. He’s sensitive and non-threatening, preferring to speak in self-deprecating quips whenever possible. His name is a nod to Hamlet’s dead jester and proof of his upper middle class background. His father was a professor, his mother an influential Democratic senator. They saved the cooler Shakespeare name, Hero, for his sister.
Yorick’s survival is treated by the characters of Y: The Last Man as both miracle and conspiracy, but Vaughn seems to look at it as a joke. Yorick lacks the active energy of a hero or the skills to save the world. While most chosen one narratives assume their protagonist will grow into the task of leadership, Y: The Last Man subverts this. Yorick is in constant need of saving, mainly from Agent 355 (played in the FX series by Ashley Romans). Yorick’s charm — and whole deal — is that he is the subversion of what American masculinity looked like. And readers loved him for it.
Ironically, FX’s Y: The Last Man nails its Yorick, but doesn’t know how to use him. Ben Schnetzer’s Yorick fiddles with straightjackets and blusters his way through adult life. He struggles to survive and refuses to take action. It’s only when Agent 355 plucks him from his doomed home that the show feels vibrant. Sort of.
In wanting the 2021 series to meaningfully address the full scope of gender and sexuality, Y: The Last Man mistakenly gives supporting characters more time than their central character. And I get it! Focusing an ensemble show on the journey of its one straight white male character feels extremely off-key in 2021. However it’s also the point of Y: The Last Man. Vaughn structured his post-apocalyptic saga to be woefully ironic. Yorick never dominates the women he encounters. They dominate him. He never is able to lead folks to salvation. They drag him to it. Yorick doesn’t even get the girl he spends most of the series fixated on!
What’s interesting about Yorick Brown is he’s not cut out to be the lead of a story of the scope of Y: The Last Man. FX’s show kicks off by assuming that means it’s better to shunt him to the side. It’s not. The whole point of Y: The Last Man is that any arguments about the superiority of the straight white male over women collapses when we look at Yorick Brown fumbling across America. Pushing him off-stage doesn’t further this point. It just makes the world of Y: The Last Man feel staged with a whole cast of people not cut out to be the hero.
Y: The Last Man has a Yorick problem and it’s that there’s not enough of him in the show.
Where to stream Y: The Last Man