Y: The Last Man is an American post-apocalyptic drama television series developed by Eliza Clark based on the comic book series of the same name by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra. In the series, a mysterious cataclysmic event simultaneously kills every mammal with a Y chromosome—except for Yorick Brown and his monkey–and follows him as he traverses the new world.
The series began development at FX in October 2015, with a pilot ordered and filmed in 2018. A first season was greenlit in 2019 with Clark replacing original showrunners Michael Green and Aida Mashaka Croal. Filming began in 2020, with several casting changes, including the lead role of Yorick. It premiered on September 13, 2021, on FX on Hulu, and stars Diane Lane, Ashley Romans, Ben Schnetzer, Olivia Thirlby, and Amber Tamblyn. It received generally positive reviews from critics, but was cancelled in October 2021, after one season. The series was removed from Hulu on May 26, 2023.
Premise
Y: The Last Man takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where a mysterious cataclysmic event simultaneously killed every mammal with a Y chromosome but for one man – Yorick Brown (Ben Schnetzer) – and his male pet monkey Ampersand. The series follows Yorick as he traverses the new world, as its survivors struggle with their losses and attempt to restore world society—led by Yorick's mother, who is the new U.S. President, Jennifer Brown (Diane Lane).
Gender effects
In the original comic book series, every animal with a Y chromosome instantaneously dies at the same time, including most mammals. (Birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and invertebrates are unaffected because they mostly use different sex chromosomes.) While transgender people did not feature heavily in the original comic, it was mentioned that trans men survived due to not having Y chromosomes.
The producers aimed to update and expand on the ramifications of this, to reflect changing societal attitudes toward gender in the almost two decades since the comic began. The showrunners specified that trans women with Y chromosomes also died, as well as women with androgen insensitivity who were unaware they possessed Y chromosomes. The showrunners also added a trans male character to the regular cast (Sam Jordan, played by Elliot Fletcher), who does not have a direct counterpart in the original comic, to expand on this world-building.
Speaking at the August 2021 TCA panel, showrunner Eliza Clark said: "Yorick's maleness is not what sets him apart in this world — it's his Y chromosome that sets him apart. Gender is diverse and chromosomes are not equal to gender. And so, in our world — in the world of the television show — every living mammal with a Y chromosome dies. Tragically, that includes many women; it includes non-binary people; it includes intersex people ... We are making a show that affirms that trans women are women, trans men are men, non-binary people are non-binary, and that is part of the richness of the world we get to play with."
Cast member Fletcher said that "In this world post the event, gender is somewhat irrelevant. I think one of the hilarious things about this show is that post the event, Yorick can walk around without a mask on because he's assumed to be trans, rather than pre-the-event, people are assumed to be cisgender. And so, I just think it flips the traditional idea of gender completely on its head, and so I was very comfortable joining a project that knew that ahead of time and committed to it fully."
Societal effects
Showrunner Eliza Clark explained that the writing team tried to analyze the logical ripple effects of what would happen if all people with Y chromosomes died instantaneously. She said she was surprised at how even by 2020, there is still a large gender disparity in many aspects of essential infrastructure, ranging from the electrical power grid to something as basic as trucking to keep supply lines functional: "Basically what I learned is that our entire economy runs on trucks. So, if you're living in a city, you know when you go to a grocery store that grocery store needs two deliveries a day to be stocked for the number of people who are shopping [at] it, and they don't have storage. I think 5% of truck drivers are women."
Clark went on to say, that while all people with Y chromosomes are suddenly killed off, essentially removing the gender binary divide among the survivors, the resulting society that develops over the course of the series is not egalitarian. Other social divisions remain based on race, sexual orientation, politics, or wealth.