End of the F ** King World Review
Offer a new ending (that's not really an catastrophe) and a new story (that'southward a lot similar the sometime ane), Charlie Covell's sequel season proves the worrywarts correct.
As is the standard with binge civilization, the chat effectually "The End of the Fucking World" Flavour 1 was almost entirely dominated by its ending. Despite all eight episodes offer food for thought on abuse, violence, and beloved, Netflix audiences' quick consumption habits prepare their sights on what is, subsequently all, a shocking finale — 17-yr-old James (Alex Lawther) is presumably gunned downwardly by the police while trying to save the honey of his young life, Alyssa (Jessica Barden), from being blamed for their recent crime spree. I say "presumably gunned downward" because the final shot cuts to black before nosotros tin actually come across James' death, but his ugly fate could exist safely assumed given a) it's the logical culmination of his tragic arc, and b) information technology'southward the catastrophe in Charles Forsman's original comic book.
But considering of the series' added ambivalence, plenty of chatter focused not only on the ending, only whether or not it was the ending. Netflix viewers wanted answers: Was this the end of "The Cease of the Fucking Earth" or just the cease of the first season? Were they supposed to find closure and make peace with these eight episodes, or could they hold out hope for James? Was this love story a modern day Romeo & Juliet, where the teen couple'southward abusive families and cruel world ruined their unblemished dear, or could Romeo spit out the poison earlier it sends him to the other side?
Enter Season ii. Charlie Covell, who wrote the entire first flavour, returns to expand on the original story, as does Jessica Barden, to farther deepen Alyssa's hard maturation. Crimes are committed, love is rekindled, impairment is exacted and exhumed; there's also a new character, Bonnie, played by Naomi Ackie, who gets an episode all to herself at the top of Flavour 2 and thus sets the plot in move.
Sadly, that plot is largely redundant, reworking the story beats from Flavour i to make explicit everything that was implied. Past the time you get to the cease of Flavor 2, very picayune vital progress has been made, likewise moving the characters abroad from that traumatic final moment on the embankment, and in doing so, upending the bite of Season 1'southward tragedy and replacing information technology with something much more palatable and much more than commonplace. What happened before may have been ugly, sad, and atrocious, but all of those emotions were used to highlight the dear these two messed up kids discovered — which was truly special.
Naomi Ackie in "The End of the Fucking World"
Netflix
[Editor's Notation: The following portion of the review contains spoilers for "The End of the Fucking World" Season 2, including the ending.]
Season two makes two big choices to ready itself in movement, and neither proves worth the trip. The first is Bonnie's purpose: Given the full first episode to plant her backstory, Bonnie is shown equally some other wayward youth who comes from a cleaved home where she learned misguided lessons about dearest. Her mother'due south strict tutelage — she makes Bonnie swallow her lipstick because it'south a distraction from schoolhouse — has an emotionally slow outcome, making Bonnie believe she deserves to exist punished equally much as she believes extreme punishments go hand-in-hand with proving your love.
This is meant to explicate her relationship with Dr. Clive Koch (Jonathan Aris), the same homo who tried to rape Alyssa in Flavour 1 and James later on killed. Bonnie becomes infatuated with the professor, even as he uses her for sex and strikes up similar relationships with other young women; then obsessed, she'due south manipulated into killing ane of his other paramours when Koch claims she took advantage of him. While in prison house, Bonnie learns of her matrimonial'southward decease, and sets her sights on her next victim: Alyssa.
Or is it victims? For the first episode-and-a-half, the audience is kept in the dark about what happened to James, but before long enough you notice he survived. That'south right. James wasn't killed at the finish of Season 1. "It was a fitting end," James says via voiceover. "A doomed love story. A perfect tragedy. And then I didn't die." He survived the gunshot, recovered in the hospital, so got probation after the judge ruled Dr. Koch's murder an act of self-defense.
"The Finish of the Fucking World"
Speaking literally, this is what "The Stop of the Fucking World" fans who didn't want to see a Season two were most worried most — rewriting a great, sad catastrophe in order to tell a longer, less constructive story. And what happens adjacent is both less effective and seemingly designed to keep going into Flavor iii. Information technology'southward easy to watch. Information technology'due south well-acted, particularly by Lawther. It's even touching in small moments, when it's not existence manipulative. While Covell keeps the episodes at tight, less-than-30-infinitesimal clips and lets his characters mature into the wiser rebels they were primed to become at the end of Season 1, everything that happens in Season 2 feels primarily focused to keep telling a story that refuses to appoint with its original cocky.
In the beginning, what James and Alyssa fight to escape is reality itself; theirs were so horrid that illegal road trips with psychopathic boys intent on killing you (or rude, demanding girls who wanted to apply you for your car) seem similar enticing alternatives, and what they plant in each other was the aforementioned matter they found in themselves. The honey saved them, even when it was too late to relieve them.
The same can't be said subsequently Flavor ii, and worse notwithstanding, at that place'southward even less to be said as well bitching about the end of this "Fucking World." Standing Alyssa and James' odyssey in friendlier pastures neutralizes the urgency and power of their original endeavor. Forcing more drama onto them after they've left only feels forced. It'southward a lose-lose scenario, and while I'll always contend there'due south a adept way to keep telling many stories, this isn't information technology. Season 2 is an empty trounce of an epilogue that still usurps what information technology should be propping up.
Class: C+
"The End of the Fucking World" Season 2 is streaming now on Netflix.
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Source: https://www.indiewire.com/2019/11/the-end-of-the-fucking-world-season-2-review-netflix-spoilers-1202187313/
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