Critic Reviews

I walked into these six episodes hoping that the creators found away to adapt this as richly as “Watchmen” but entertained enough that they found something close enough to the first couple seasons of “The Walking Dead” to keep me watching.

This dystopian drama isn't about the spectacle of chaos but how that chaos brings out the best and worst of those enduring it. You can say the same of any show about the end of the world, but here the reliance on character feels much more essential.

This is an inevitably traumatic introduction to the comic-book series’ world, but here well-drawn characters and propulsive storytelling hint that brighter days will come — if this lot can just survive the immediate post-apocalypse.

Diane Lane as the de facto President is as good as ever, noble and kind but never West Wing preachy in her rectitude. ... Ultimately though, this is TV machine-tooled for the times we live in. It is trying to build a “world” populated with multiple characters whose interlocking stories can run and run. It looks like a Marvel movie and it shares those films’ amalgam of astonishing narrative efficacy and yet total fatuousness.

The premiere is an inspired weaving together of creeping dread and disaster movie spectacle, laced with a quirky sense of humor. The subsequent episodes don’t quite live up to that promise, though. ... There’s a really good show somewhere in here, but it keeps getting bogged down by the weight of its own ambitions.

“Y the Last Man” purposefully does not provide easy answers, knowing that explaining the situation away would defeat the impetus of proposing such a scenario in the first place. ... It’s not the comic, but that’s probably a smart decision in 2021, the adaptation opting to mine from the bones of its societal concerns to shape a story better suited for our present.

"Y" is a deeply ambitious, engrossing epic that doesn't quite achieve the mastery and impact of its source material but is certainly a worthy adaptation.

“Y: The Last Man” works in pieces and with the establishment of its first season it’s easy to see where things could be stronger as it goes on. Episode 3 is a great piece of television. Lane, Tamblyn, and Romans are stellar and worthy of anchoring this show on their own. If only there could be a stronger balance between the authenticity and the action, then we’d really be cooking.

For now, what’s most compelling is Y’s specific lens on one of the most familiar post-apocalyptic tropes: how disaster not only brings out the best in us, but also the worst. Or, put another way: Maybe men had it coming, and maybe we all did.

It’s only at this point, five or six episodes in, that Y begins to counterbalance all the necessary, if needlessly plodding, exposition and world-building with more stimulating explorations of character and themes both gender-related and not. ... Y: The Last Man improves so much over the course of its first six episodes that its potential feels limitless. If audiences can weather its apocalypse, the show might well become something special by the time rebuilding commences.