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Y: The Last Man: What to know about FX’s adaptation of the post-apocalyptic comic classic
It’s been a long road to see an adaptation of the 2002 comic book classic Y: The Last Man actually make it to the screen. FX on Hulu has finally made it happen, however, and will be airing the first season of the television series adaptation in just a few short days.
Here’s what you need to know about FX's Y: The Last Man, the show based on the Eisner Award-winning comic created by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra, before the show premieres.
How to watch
Y: The Last Man will air on FX on Hulu, the dedicated content hub that streams over 40 series from FX. The new series will only be available on this platform, which all Hulu subscribers have access to. That means if you want to watch the show, you’ll need a Hulu subscription, which varies from $5.99 to $11.99 a month, depending on whether you buy the no-ad version or not.
The first three episodes — “The Day Before,” “Would the World Be Kind,” and “Neil” — are set to drop on FX on Hulu on Sept. 13, 2021. The remaining seven episodes will drop one at a time every Monday.
Hollywood has tried to adapt Vertigo's 2002 through 2008 comic for years. The first effort was in 2007, when New Line looked into adapting the story for a feature film. Several drafts — including one from Vaughan himself — failed to convince the studio execs to move forward. The film rights to Y: The Last Man eventually reverted back to Vaughan and Guerra in 2014.
FX first began development of the show in October 2015. Michael Green (American Gods) was initially on board as the showrunner along with writer-producer Aida Mashaka Croal (Luke Cage, Jessica Jones). In April 2019, however, the two left due to creative differences and Eliza Clark (The Killing) came on board to showrun instead.
What Y: The Last Man is all about
The premise of the comic and the upcoming television show is that one day, all living mammals who have a Y chromosome drop dead except for one guy, a would-be escape artist named Yorick Brown, and his male pet monkey, Ampersand. With roughly half of the population suddenly deceased, the world descends into chaos, as most positions of power are suddenly left empty. Needless to say, Yorick finds himself to be a rather unique individual, who's wanted — both dead and alive — by an array of newly empowered females.
While the television show is based on the comic, Clark has said that it will vary from the story in certain ways. One way is that it will be less gender essentialist than the original material, and will include trans men in the narrative. “I was so interested in getting past that binary way of thinking," Clark said in an interview with Polygon. "I never wanted the story to feel like 'Women are from Mars and men are from Venus.' People are just so much more interesting than that, and the way women treat each other is really interesting to me. And the relationships women have to other women are fraught and complicated, and romantic, and beautiful."
The show still focuses on Yorick (Ben Schnetzer) and his pet Capuchin monkey, and also stars Yorick’s sister, Hero (Olivia Thrilby), their mother, U.S. Senator Jennifer Brown (Diane Lane), and Agent 355 (Ashley Romans) who becomes responsible for keeping Yorick safe.
The potential future of Y: The Last Man
While FX has only greenlit Season 1 of the show, Clark has big plans for the series. "Five or six seasons is what I'm thinking," she said in the Polygon interview. "Without giving anything away, the comic is a great template, but the show will have its own twists and turns. Generally speaking, I feel like television is best at about five seasons."
Whether Clark will get additional seasons remains unknown. You can catch the first season of Y: The Last Man, however, when the show premieres on FX on Hulu starting Monday, Sept. 13, 2021.
