Did End of the F***ing World Need Another Season?

Warning: This article is filled with spoilers

End of the F***ing World. [Netflix Original, 2017]

There is gut-wrenching anguish when you find out that a TV show is being ripped from our screens before the story is fully finished. The character arcs and plots are left unresolved leaving the viewer forever in limbo. Most shows need a second or third season to finish up the narrative in a cohesive sense that does the story justice. But The End of The F****ng World was not one of those shows.

The End of the F****ing World had an almost perfect first season. There was the right amount of character development, humor, action, romance and they even threw in a killer soundtrack. It was no wonder the critics were raving and it quickly became Netflix’s darling.

The television show was based on the comic by Charles Forsman. The first season largely follows the plot of the comic book where the two main characters, James (Played by Alex Lawther) and Alyssa (Played by Jessica Barden) embark on a road trip with James intending to murder Alyssa. However, along the way, they murder a man and go on the run instead. The rest of the season plays out reminiscent of Bonnie and Clyde. They wreak havoc and commit more crimes before the police finally catch up to them in the show's finale. We last see James running towards the horizon to spare Alyssa of any of the legal repercussions of their crime spree. We hear a single shot go out and the screen turns black.

It’s a perfect ending that wraps up both of the character arcs of James and Alyssa phenomenally. James, who begins the story wanting to kill Alyssa, makes the ultimate sacrifice by giving his life for hers, showing the amount of growth that he’s gone under as a character. “It was a fitting ending. A doomed love story. A perfect tragedy” says James in a voiceover in the second episode of season two.

And it would have been a perfect ending, but then James didn’t die and we got season two instead.

Don’t get me wrong, season two isn’t horrible by any means. We have the same stellar performances, soundtrack, and humor— but it just feels unnecessary. It reuses the same themes and tropes that were done so effectively in season one. We have kooky strangers and road trips, but it just seems a bit more stale this time around. What was so fun and refreshing the previous season just feels like the same reused material.

In season two, we are introduced to a new character, Bonnie (Played by Naomi Ackie). She’s a woman who was manipulated but in love with Dr. Koch, the same man Alyssa and James murdered back in season one. The main driving action of the season revolves around Bonnie planning to murder Alyssa and James.  Although Ackie creates a compelling and beautiful performance as Bonnie, the narrative just isn’t as tight or as cohesive as season one.

Season two is without a doubt wonderfully executed, but a lot of it feels like filler. With how season one wrapped up everything so perfectly, adding a season two just gives us more of the same material with barely any new content. The End of the F***ing World is in the small minority of television shows that wrap up their first seasons so well that there is absolutely no need for a second one. The main driving factors that made season one so great and memorable are now gone.

One of the only redeeming factors of this season is their depiction of PTSD (Post-traumatic stress disorder) within the main characters. Alyssa is constantly shown as a shell of her former self and repressing her emotions. She even states that: “I’m always in that house. I’m always in that room. I can’t get out,” which shows the large impact the events of the first season really had on her psychology. In contrast, we see that James chooses to give his life a sense of meaning through different things, whether it be Alyssa or the vase with the remains of his father. Both characters are attempting to work through the aftermath of the traumatic events that took place in season 1, however differently. And while PTSD is important to depict in media, I don’t think that The End of the F***ing World warranted a second season just to do this.

The finale of the season shows James and Alyssa both admitting that they love each other while holding hands. This scene encompasses how lackluster and anti-climatic this season has been as a whole. The entire season feels as if you’re waiting for something big and exciting to happen that ultimately doesn’t come. And as sweet as this ending is, it seems a little boring and cookie-cutter for this show. The End of the F***ing World season two is extremely well executed but that can’t change the feeling that this entire season lacked what made season 1 so charming.

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 Mahirah is a second-year journalism student at Ryerson University. She loves art, film, drawing, and writing.