“The End of the F***king World” is a hilariously bizarre British television program that was originally released in England on Channel 4 in Oct. 2017 and then released internationally as a Netflix original early this year. It consists of eight whirlwind episodes that are perfect for binge-watching.
Each episode is a little less than half an hour and acts like a chapter in the story. The show is based off a book of the same name, minus the asterisks by Charles S. Forsman.
The program follows 17-year-old James, played by Alex Lawther, who believes he may be a psychopath. James does a terrible job connecting with other people, including his overly involved dad. He claims he never feels anything and even stuck his hand in a fryer as a child trying to make himself feel something.
James has a hobby of killing animals and dreams about taking on something bigger, like a person. He decides he’d like to try killing a human and goes through the process of trying to choose who it will be until he finally settles on a fellow classmate, Alyssa (Jessica Barden).
Alyssa is a very rebellious teen who kind of hates her family and pretty much everything. She’s a little insane, according to James, and talks him into going out with her.
James decides to play along in faking a relationship, so he can get close enough to her and eventually kill her. Soon she ends up convincing him to run away with her. They’re kind of clueless about the entire thing but — spoiler alert! — he ends up punching his father in the face, something he’s always wanted to do, stealing the car and fleeing town.
While on the run they go through a lot of insane situations like crashing the car, hitch-hiking with a very creepy man, blackmail, breaking and entering, finding a serial killer, armed robbery and a whole lot more. James is still contemplating when he should kill Alyssa but continues to make up excuses to wait.
He finally realizes that Alyssa is making him feel things like he never has before, and he might actually be falling in love with her. At the same time, Alyssa thinks she has the potential of falling in love with James, even though he’s quite infuriating most of the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbiiik_T3Bo
“The End of the F***king World” flows through their messy and somehow beautiful relationship as they go through a lot of crap together and end up on the run from the police. Both actors are amazing at playing these extremely flawed characters that go through a wide range of emotions and experiences throughout the series.
When it was first released in the U.S., it initially received a perfect 100 percent score on rotten tomatoes. While this would initially lead people to demand for a second season, most fans have stated that they love the fact it’s only a single season and that there’s really no need for a second.
The last episode has a very ambiguous ending where you’re not entirely sure what happens to James. Most people tend to find giant cliffhangers at the end of a season to be really annoying because it means waiting another year or more to find out what happened, but with “End of the F***king World” the ambiguous ending somehow fits with the show.
The entire premise of the show is that life is incredibly messy and confusing and having an ending open to interpretation continues this theme. If they were to have a second season tying up loose ends, the show wouldn’t seem genuine anymore.
The fact that we don’t know if James lives or dies and what happens to Alyssa through it all is exciting. The audience can come to their own conclusions and think how each character may play out. If there were a second season, it would just be far too predictable and the entire point of “The End of the F***king World” is that it’s completely unpredictable the whole way through and you never really know what the teens are going to do next.
Season two would could really only go two different ways. If James died at the end of season one, then season two would follow Alyssa mourning him and being confused over feelings.
James is the best part of the show because he’s so odd and not being able to see the way he thinks anymore would ruin the show. If James lives through the end of season one, then the second season would show him in a jail cell.
Alyssa would probably find herself getting arrested too because the show writer wouldn’t let James take the full blame for the events in the first season. The season would probably follow them trying to escape prison and finding their way back to each other and it would all be very cheesy when they ended up together again.
The first season was so packed full of insane events that there really doesn’t seem like there is much left for a second season, so it would just flop entirely. Sometimes adding unnecessary seasons to a TV show makes the whole series decrease in value. “The End of the F***king World” is pretty perfect the way that it is.
James and Alyssa had a messy story that didn’t make a ton of sense most of the time but really that’s life and not everything has to be tied up neatly with a bow. The fact that we have no idea what may or may not happen next just makes the world within the show seem to keep spinning in any way we want it too without a second season ruining it all.
