Picture this: you wake up one morning, and every cisgender man on earth drops dead. Every single one. That includes your creepy boss, fuckboy exes, and the vast majority of people in positions of authority. It may sound like a utopia to some, but it also means the death of beloved family members, significant others, and lots of people who do jobs that require civilization to function. In the long-awaited TV FX on Hulu adaptation of the graphic novel series Y: The Last Man, the remaining women of the world have to figure out a way to exist as the only sex on the planet — But don’t worry about the impending collapse of society because President Diane Lane is taking care of business.
Lane (Unfaithful, House of Cards) stars as Senator Jennifer Brown, who, due to quirks in the Constitution’s presidential line of succession, becomes the new default leader of the free world. And the world she inherits is absolute chaos: half of the population died of a mysterious plague on the spot, leading to a cascade of car accidents, planes falling out the sky, and lots of corpses. As mothers wake up to find their sons missing, Brown doesn’t yet know that her son Yorick (Ben Schnetzer) is the only man left on earth. Well, Yorick and his pet monkey, Ampersand, who also is male.
Naturally, as the only source of viable XY chromosomes left on the planet, Yorick becomes a hot commodity. As women band together to survive in this new reality, factions splinter off, each with their own means and motive, and for the sake of reproduction, everyone is looking for a piece of Yorick.
It is unknown if the show will address differences in biological anatomy in terms of gender expression. The original comic books, written and illustrated in the early 2000s by Brian K. Vaughn and Pia Guerra, respectively, did not address transgender and gender-variant people, or physical variances in genital anatomy. Every man was assumed to be cisgender, and thus subject to the plague — including embryos and fetuses containing XY chromosomes, as well as sperm cells. In 2021, it is scientifically inaccurate and irresponsible to make that presumption, so it remains how the show represents the male species, and which ones they decide to kill off.
Does this sound fascinating? Well, this all happens in just the first episode, and the source material spans 10 collected paperbacks, so there’s quite a bit of story to cover. Alas, poor Yorick. He’s in for a rough ride. Check out the trailer below. Y: The Last Man premieres on FX on Hulu on September 13.