Y: The Last Man Showrunner Dives Deep Into That Explosive Finale — And What’s Next

The first season of Y: The Last Man came to a close on Monday, bringing the long-awaited adaptation of Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra’s Vertigo Comics graphic novel to some intriguing heights. Even before the Season 1 finale debuted, there was already an unintentional significance surrounding the episode, following news that FX on Hulu has elected not to renew the series for a sophomore run. Whether this week’s episode serves as the season finale or series finale remains to be seen, as reports have indicated that a revival isn’t entirely out of the question.

Whatever the future holds for Y: The Last Man, it’s safe to say that the season finale left an impact, with unexpected reveals and shocking moments that fans might have not seen coming. Luckily, ComicBook.com recently got a chance to chat with Y: The Last Man showrunner Eliza Clark — who also wrote the episode — about those surprising reveals, about what the future might hold for the series, and so much more.

Graphic Novel

ComicBook.com: What was your familiarity with the Y: The Last Man graphic novel, before you signed on? When did you first fall in love with the source material?

Eliza Clark: I read the entire series in 2009. My husband, it was the first gift he ever gave me. He was, at that point in time, my coworker. We were writing on a show together. He had read some of my plays, and he thought that I would like the book. And I did. I loved it. At that point in my career, I would not have been the person that would’ve been tapped to adapt it. So, I’m glad it took a while to get to the screen. But yeah, I was obsessed with it kind of immediately. It’s my favorite comic book.

COVID-19

How did COVID-19 impact working on the first season? Did you have any moments where it was like, “This feels a little too real, now that COVID has happened”?

I definitely was grateful that the show is about an event and its aftermath, and not an ongoing pandemic, because I don’t really want to watch a show about COVID. I think it made it difficult to film. We couldn’t have more than fifty performers on screen, so we had to use visual effects in interesting ways. It was always the plan to have the story be grounded in characters, but I think it made it even more subjective, and really get in with the characters, because we couldn’t do thousand-person crowd scenes.

I think COVID also just really made the people making the show really close. We became a family, and we were all each other had up in Canada. All of Toronto was locked down. I think that I, and others, were very grateful to be making something that felt like it was commenting on what’s happening in our world right now. It felt good to make something that felt like it mattered.

That’s really interesting about the crowd scenes. I didn’t even take that into consideration. It’s seamless when you watch it.

The White House riot that you see in episode two — where they burned the White House down — that was eight people. 

Source Material

Throughout the first season, you make a lot of changes to the source material — both to update it for the times, and also just for the sake of story. Were there any changes, in particular, that you were almost hesitant to see how it would unfold, or what the response would be?

I felt like I just let my love of the comic book guide me. In some ways, I think, the comic book is so pop culture savvy, and it’s got these moments that are meta, and it’s in conversation with the culture of the time. And, I felt like, so is the series. We’re sort of in conversation with the book. The way I thought about an adaptation of this thing that I love so much, is that comic books are their own medium, and they don’t need to be adapted. So if I love a thing, and I want to see an adaptation of it, I want to see it sort of evolve from the source material. If I want to read Y: The Last Man, I can. It exists. I have it in my home.

I wasn’t worried about it, because I think so much of what the writers and I were doing was just deepening stories that happen in the book. Like the daughters of the Amazon, we just get deeper in. We get to see how they form. To me, it feels like a very faithful adaptation.

Brian and Pia

What was Brian and Pia’s involvement? Did you guys go to them at all, in terms of those changes in adapting the story? Obviously they’ve taken the idea of adapting the story very personally over the years.

I think that Brian and Pia are like dream collaborators, because they they were excited for me to sort of go in new directions with the source material. Brian has talked about the fact that he was 25 when he wrote the story. They were very grateful for the opportunity for the show to kind of broaden our understanding of gender and all of that stuff. They were really excited about those changes. Brian and Pia both felt comfortable, because I really love the book, so they were just like, “Do what you’re going to do. This is yours now.” It was really nice.

And I am a huge Brian K. Vaughan fan. I had to kind of get over that at first, because the first time I met him — ostensibly, it was a job interview. But at the time, I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to talk about Pride of Baghdad. I’m obsessed with him. So I’ve had to learn how to kind of tamp down my fandom when dealing with the show. But yes, I think they felt comfortable, because they know how much I love it.

Beth

One change that I found really interesting was with Beth. In the graphic novel, she’s in a completely different sort of status quo. I was curious if you could speak to making that change, and what the reasoning was behind it.

There are a couple reasons. The first is that I have this incredible actor in Juliana Canfield, and I just wanted to be able to utilize her. I think she is super talented and interesting. She’s just great. So I wanted to see her. I didn’t want her to just be in Australia far away, to where we would wouldn’t see her until the end of this series.

The second reason is — I think part of what the series does is make the story an ensemble. And really, though Yorick is obviously a huge character in our show, and is beautifully portrayed by Ben Schnetzer, some of what we’re doing is getting kind of deeper into the lives of the women around him. I think it’s interesting to take roles like “girlfriend” or “mother”, and kind of flesh them out a little bit more. [I wanted to] give Beth a story that has nothing to do with Yorick, and give Jennifer a story that has nothing to do with Yorick — or that Yorick is a complication within, but is not the main thrust of. So I think that was what was behind kind of having Beth have this other story within the story of Y: The Last Man.

Fan Response

Leading up to the finale, what has surprised you the most about kind of the fan response? What have people been gravitating towards or like reaching out to you about, that you wouldn’t have necessarily expected?

I feel like people have really embraced the gender diversity of the show in ways that I’m really excited by. I’m not necessarily surprised by it, but I’m really happy to hear people talking about how Sam is their favorite character.

Most of the fan response has been super positive. Occasionally, I get the angry Twitter person, who’s angry that there’s so many women on his television or whatever. But in general, I think people have been excited about the character-driven storytelling. So I’ve been happy about it.

In a more lighthearted sort of way — did you see Weird Al’s reaction to you guys mentioning him?

I did! I love Weird Al. It’s a real sign of affection hat he gets an episode titled after him. So I was glad that he saw it that way.

Flashbacks

In the finale, I love structuring of both the present day, and also the flashbacks to the dinner party. I was wondering if you could speak to kind of that creative choice, because it really is impactful as the episode goes on.

Thank you. I don’t know if you’ve ever read Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, but she talks about — the way I think about it is like that speech that Sonya gives to Yorick, where she talks about how maybe time’s an ocean, and it’s all of the moments of our lives. They’re not moving forward on a line, but maybe it’s sort of all pile mixed in together, the good and the bad. I felt there was something kind of impactful happening with the non-linear storytelling, of using that one night in their lives, the last night that the Browns were all together as a family. For me, the show, especially in the first season is so much about identity, and who we were before the event and who we become.

One of the identities that we wear as people are the identity that we have within a family. And you see it in the good mother — Jennifer is the famous person, around which this family kind of rotates. Then you have the selfish daughter, with Hero, and that’s part of what she’s grappling with the whole season, her own self-hatred. And some of that is imposed by this idea of who she is that’s been given to her by her family.

You see the way that Yorick operates. He is the goofball who’s like trying to keep things light. And then the dutiful girlfriend and the cheating father — I think these are these identities that we have when we’re with our families, that bleed into who we become outside of that. I think that was the idea of using that night, kind of just give a little bit more context to why each of these characters operates this way outside of the family.

Hero

Hero’s arc across the finale definitely impacted me — the place that she ends up at the end of the finale is just so fascinating. I was wondering if you could kind of speak to that of where her journey ends up. 

I think Hero is a person who has really struggled in her life. She, I think, has addiction issues. She obviously has a self-hatred that she’s dealing with. I think she feels immense shame and immense guilt about the pain she’s caused other people. I think that’s part of what you’re seeing in those flashbacks, is how angry she is with her mother and her father, how she lashes out at her brother, the way that the person who she kind of abandoned with Sam, how he comes to her rescue. I think it’s why she lets Yorick go in that moment.

But I also think there’s something really scary about the fact that Hero decides to not go with her brother, but to return to Nora, who’s going to become Victoria. She’s made a real connection with somebody who she feels like sees her. And I think Hero has a little ways to go before she can be redeemed.

Amazons

I also wanted to ask about the Amazons. The Nora/Victoria reveal was so well executed. I think you guys just did that so brilliantly. And then killing off Roxanne was such a powerful moment as well.

One of the things that I changed from book to series was the creation of the Amazons. I was excited about a character like Roxanne, who enters the story and who’s really thriving in this post-apocalyptic world. We see that she didn’t have a lot going on for her before the event, and so she just uses this sort of apocalyptic moment to step into a new identity.

But always in the background is this character of Nora, who is, slowly over the course of the season, hardening and realizing how angry she is, and then sort of crystallizing that anger into something that ultimately creates the action that she takes in Episode 10. 

I just think it’s really cool that it’s the origin story of a villain, and it’s not the villain you think it’s going to be. Nora is going to become the leader of the Amazons. Going forward in the series, you have this person who is much smarter than Roxanne, and in some ways scarier. If Roxanne is a little bit of a loose cannon, I think Nora is a much more powerful antagonist in this story.

Yorick and 355

I love Yorick and 355 — I got to speak to Ashley a couple weeks ago, and I told her how that dynamic feels like the heart of the show in so many ways. They’re just so great together. Their last scene in the finale is just so impactful and just such an interesting shift in their relationship. I was curious if you could speak to where they’re at, by the time kind of the dust settles of all of that.

I think they’re both dramatically different people than they were at the beginning of the story. I think Yorick, at the very beginning, he is a person who kind of hides behind his role as Beth’s boyfriend. I think he’s scared of everything. He’s dealing with an immense amount of survivor’s guilt. By the end of the season, I think he realizes what it means to be the sole survivor — or the second survivor, him and his monkey. I think he is finally stepping into the role that’s been thrust upon him. And I love that he asks 355 if he can become not just cargo on the journey, but actually a contributing member of this trio. I think he’s growing up.

And then, I think for 355, it’s taken her an entire season to grapple with what her role in this shadowy organization of the Culper Ring really was. This was something that she kind of blindly followed, and suddenly when she gets a little space from it, she’s starting to question, “Was I an agent of good, or an agent of bad?” Right at the moment where she has chosen to kind to break her tracer and break her ties with the Culper Ring, that’s, of course, when the Culper Ring reaches back out to her. In season two and beyond, we’ll have to see what happens for her and whether she’ll be sucked back in.

At this moment at the end, she’s had her first good night’s sleep. She’s got these kind of budding, maybe romantic feelings with Allison. She’s warming up to the people she’s traveling with. She’s also having to learn that maybe she can’t just order people around. Maybe she actually has to let them in, be vulnerable, let them help her. I think both of them have learned a lot in ten episodes.

Culper Ring

With the Culper Ring, by the end of the finale, they have impacted a number of the characters going forward. What can you say about where that storyline would go from there?

I think what’s cool is you’ve got Jennifer and Beth and Sam in this Culper Ring facility. And we don’t know where it is. And then we also know that we have Yorick, 355, Ampersand, and Dr. Mann on their way to a Culper Ring facility — perhaps the same one. What does the Culper Ring want? I think you have to wait to find out, but I think we’re about to kind of explode open the world a little bit more.

Perhaps in the first episode of season two, the Culper Ring might be in possession of both the last known survivor of this plague and the president of the United States. What kind of power does that give them in this new world? Who will 355 be loyal to? Her new friends, her budding romantic interest in Dr. Mann, or the only family she’s ever known?

Season 2

News of the cancellation has really kind of impacted people. I’ve seen such a fan movement online of hashtags, and people trying to stir up more momentum for the show. What has your reaction been to that, of seeing people want this show to continue on.

I’m obviously very glad that people do. I also want the show to continue on, and so does the cast and crew. I feel incredibly passionate about this story, and I feel like it’s an important story or to be telling right now. And I was really sad about the cancellation, although the stuff that’s been reported about it, I think, is accurate. I don’t think FX would have wanted to make the decision as quickly as they had to. COVID pushed things in ways that put everybody in a really difficult position. There’s not really a bad guy in this scenario. It’s a really unfortunate set of circumstances, but I’m really hopeful that we’ll find a new home because I think the show only gets better from here.

It’s only more propulsive and exciting. The first season is everybody at the very beginning, clinging to the version of themselves that they were before this event. By the end of the season, for better or for worse, they’ve come to terms with the fact that that world is never coming back. They’re going to have to transform. So that’s where we leave them at the end of the first season. Season two is off to the races. No longer are they just surviving. Now, they’re kind of learning what this new world is going to be, and they are who they’re going to be inside of it. I think that’s exciting. There’s a lot of adventure and twists and turns to come.