The Y series: The Last Man puts women at the center of the world [review]

What would become of the world if all men suddenly disappeared? A post-apocalyptic series that integrates all the codes of the genre to better divert them.

In complicated gestation since 2015, the series Y: The Last Man finally coming out of development hell. A small miracle for this adaptation of the fabulous (we weigh our words) comics by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra, where all carriers of the Y chromosome on the planet die in a few minutes from an inexplicable evil. All except Yorick (Ben Schnetzer) and his male capuchin, Ampersand. Why them? What is the origin of the virus? How to rebuild the world when more than 50% of its population has taken up arms on the left? Enough to put the matriarchy to the test of fire with a life-size test, but Y: The Last Man aims at something else at the same time.

It is a question of auscultating the state of our societies through the relations between men and women, and to what extent these regulate – or disrupt – the moral compass of each one. The series does it less finely than the comics (at least in the three episodes that we were able to see) but remains firmly anchored in its time – it evokes almost from the start the questions of gender and transidentity -, while avoiding the trap of the manifesto.

The stakes are high, the many characters never artificial. And on the visual level, the series, rather frisee, builds a credible and quite spectacular universe when it dwells on ghost megalopolises. It is in this mix between post-apo(litic) roller coaster and intimacy that Y: The Last Man has its best part to play. Let's hope she succeeds throughout the season.

Y: The Last Man, starting September 22 on Disney+.