Y: THE LAST MAN – Season 1 Episode 10 – SPOILERS

Dr. Allison Mann and Agent 355

Agent 355 (Ashley Romans) sleepwalks again, leading to a conversation with Dr. Mann (Diana Bang) about that and a few other things. While talking about species we are about to lose, Mann mentions the Sunda Rat, which is very large and has a longer than usual lifespan for a rat. This may hint at Mann’s approach to solving the “no male” problem. Male rats have only one X chromosome, no Y at all. It is believed that, through evolution, the region of the Y chromosome that causes male cell differentiation was relocated in that species. (For further information, see: the Science Daily article: What causes rats without a Y chromosome to become male?.)

Rats appear on the show for the first time when Christine Flores (Jess Salgueiro) and her boyfriend encounter them unexpectedly in the first episode (before the Event). Click for .gif

355 explains to Mann that the only thing that has ever kept her from sleepwalking was a ten pound sandbag strapped to her arm. Mann’s reaction to this was to sleep with 355, using her body as an even more emphatic sandbag. 355 did not seem displeased with this development, however, on waking, 355 spots a Culper Ring tracker on her windowsill. Since she had smashed the one she was previously carrying, it was apparent that she and the others were being watched. Gunfire erupts and Yorick (Ben Schnetzer) flees with Sonia (Kristen Gutoskie) with whom he had slept the previous night.

Sonia had the best lines of the episode, describing her non-linear theory of time: “You think that all the moments in your life are dots on a line and the line’s moving forward. One thing leads to another, right? Well I guess that when you’ve done bad things you hope that’s really not how it is at all. Because if it is, it’s just the moments before and the moments after…if time was more like an ocean, then you can’t just pick one moment out. It’s all mixed together, the good and the bad.”

Hero (Olivia Thirlby) takes her name from Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing“. “Hero,” she tells Nora, “is the one getting married, the ingenue. Her fiance gets tricked into thinking she’s a whore and abandons her at the altar. It’s a comedy.”

A stetson-wearing Hero on horseback (Olivia Thirlby) catches up with the two of them in a soybean(?) field. When Hero recognizes her brother she stops shooting. Yorick stops Sonia from shooting his sister, who tells him their mother is dead, and Sonia is shot in the head by another Amazon. After that Yorick, 355, and Mann regroup at a grain elevator. Yorick is upset over Sonia’s death and the (false) news of his mother’s death, so 355 explains how she lost her family and they discover that they have something in common — survivor remorse. Then Yorick (perhaps taking Sonia’s non-linear time theory to heart) says that he’s willing to help save the world. “I don’t want to be a liability anymore. Or a pawn,” he says. “Or a Y chromosome with legs. If we do this I can’t be helpless. You have to teach me. I’m a quick learner.”

Sonia

In town, the battle continues until Roxanne (Missi Pyle) tries to reload; her gun jams; and Nora (Marin Ireland) looks around at the wounded and dying and takes the opportunity to surrender. (In the comics, the Amazons are imprisoned after the battle, but here they are allowed to leave with a warning. The last thing the ex-prisoners of Marrisville would want to become is jailers. Beside, if they imprisoned the Amazons, they’d have to feed them.) Roxanne violently disapproves of the surrender, and later, Roxanne and Nora have a confrontation that results in Nora revealing the name she was born with (Victoria). Nora then shoots Roxanne dead in front of the remaining Amazons, and when Hero decides to stand with Victoria, all the Amazons fall in line. Victoria tells them: “We don’t have to reinvent ourselves. We don’t serve Roxanne. We don’t belong to anyone. The world will learn to fear us because we’ll show them exactly who we are.”

Marrisville leader Janis (Mimi Kuzyk) and her lieutenant (inset) April (Juno Rinaldi) are the first to greet the invading Amazons in front of a pawn shop that once sold guns. Both Kuzyk and Rinaldo are regular characters on WORKIN’ MOMS

Meanwhile in Washington, Kimberly (Amber Tamblyn) and Christine (Jess Salgueiro), wake to find themselves in a barn, unharmed and alone. Elsewhere in the area, Jennifer Brown (Diane Lane) and Beth (Juliana Canfield) are hiding in a house. Beth tells Jennifer she should shave her head to disguise herself, but the President-in-hiding declines emphatically. Then somehow Sam (Elliot Fletcher), who was last seen in an Ohio schoolhouse, turns up at their door. Right after that, they are told they are surrounded, and the three of them are taken to some sort of holding facility where they are observed remotely by Fran (June Carryl) and Agent 525 (Lou Jurgens), who asks if they should be brought in. “Wait until she’s on the move,” Fran responds, clearly referring to 355.

Eliza Clark – Clark tweeted on 17 October: “We have learned that we will not be moving forward with FX on HULU for Season 2 of Y:THE LAST MAN. I have never before in my life been more committed to a story, and there is so much more left to tell.”

Outside Marrisville, 355’s new tracking device leads her to a Culper Ring-provided vehicle with a full tank of gas and equipment for Dr. Mann, along with map, probably to Fran ‘s location. A full tank of gas in a not terribly fuel-efficient station wagon (20 gallons @ 20mpg?) would carry them about 400 miles. The fictional Marrisville is likely somewhere near Columbus, Ohio which is almost exactly 400 miles from D.C. Beth is looking more and more like a Culper Ring agent. Yes, she and Ben have been together since they were young. but 355 was recruited at a young age, and in a flashback to pre-apocalypse times, we find out that Beth planned to turn down an opportunity to pursue her PhD. She likely needed to stay around to protect Yorick and only left (was reassigned?) on the eve of the Event.

In the closing shot, the road forks and forms a “Y” as Yorick, Agent 355, and Dr. Mann head to the secret location where the President is being held.

It is unclear just how Sam fits into all of this, but how did he manage to locate Brown and Beth where they were hiding out when he was last seen in a schoolhouse in Ohio, and why did he turn up just before they were taken into custody by the Culper Ring? Did Principal Hetty Blackwell (Nicky Lawrence) get him involved? Or might he have been watching Hero the whole time just like Beth was watching Yorick?

It could be that Beth arranged the incursion into the Pentagon knowing that a coup attempt was imminent. Regina Oliver (Jennifer Wigmore) being shot dead was probably a coincidence because the shooter was not a trained agent. (She threw up after the shooting.)

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