by Jake Bourgeois, Contributing Writer
The crew is back for one more semester, as Netflix’s Sex Education returned for a fourth and final season.
Initially drawn in by Asa Butterfield and Gillian Anderson as the mother-son duo of sex therapist and son who starts his own clinic for students at his school, the show has become an insta-binge every time a new season has dropped, with characters and relationships that I’ve become invested in. It’s a show with a sex-positive message that adds plenty of depth to the raunch on the surface.
As with any final season, you just hope to see the characters you’ve come to connect with get the sendoff they deserve. Leaving off with the crazy fallout from last season, we find Otis (Butterfield), Eric (Ncuti Gatwa), and Aimee (Aimee Lou Wood) embarking on a new journey in a new school for the final leg of their education. Meanwhile, Maeve (Emma Mackey) is in America studying abroad and Dr. Jean Milburn (Anderson) is dealing with the trials and tribulations of a newborn.
At its heart, the story has connected with me thanks to the relationships between Otis, Maeve, Eric, and Aimee. Thankfully, that sings as well as ever. Maeve gets called back to town, so we don’t miss the connections between her and Aimee or her and Otis the whole season, which is nice. Otis and Eric have some throwback friendship moments early, before drama intercedes as well. Even when they’re not together, each of them has some really good character moments. Otis, despite being infuriating at times with his behavior and decision-making, is still at his best when he’s allowed to pursue his passion for therapy. Maeve really gets to go on a journey of self-discovery this year, and is given some heavy emotional moments that Mackey pulls off well. Eric continues to explore his identity — particularly his Christianity — in interesting ways. Aimee, whose creative pastries have thus far been an outlet for just her bubbly personality, gets to explore her creativity. Each character is given their moment to shine over the course of the eight episodes.
With the massive repercussions of the third season, there’s a new school life to get adjusted to, and it’s out there. There’s always been a heightened reality that the show operates on, but this new, student-led place of higher learning, and adjusting to a new environment, has its pros and cons.
On the positive side, the members of the student body that carry over from the old school to the new is streamlined (with some students getting assigned to a different school), allowing the writers to really focus on the character storylines that they care about the most as they work to resolve the show. Outside of our big four, the storyline that continued to have me the most invested was Ruby’s (Mimi Keene). For the second season in a row, I found myself surprised at how well Otis and Ruby’s dynamic worked. It builds off where things were left in Season Three with that surprising relationship, and the little bit of background we get on her character adds quite a bit of depth. We also got a little more of the old-fashioned Otis and Eric relationship to start, before they went off on their own stories.
One person they do follow that doesn’t continue in school is Adam (Connor Swindells). That whole family’s never been a storyline I’ve been as invested in. Each season, there are storylines for various students that I don’t connect with, and that remains true here. The Groff storyline was one of those and the one that has the most screen time devoted to it.
Having to reorient myself to a new school and a new set of students took a little bit of getting used to, and it took a couple of episodes to get my feet under me, but I was able to find some connections after a few episodes. The newcomer I found myself drawn to immediately was O (Thaddea Graham), a student who already has a sex therapy business set up on campus and becomes a bit of a rival with Otis. From the first introduction of the character, I loved her air of confidence and how she interacts with Otis and others as the season progresses. There’s also a fun, “dodgy” cameo that I quite enjoyed, and Dan Levy has a fun supporting role as Maeve’s teacher.
When it comes to Anderson’s storyline for the final season, I enjoyed getting to see someone so confident and assured go through some adversity, and having to balance being a working mom of a newborn. She gets a radio show and we get introduced to her sister, and all of that I found to be an interesting twist.
I’ve largely focused on the characters, because that’s what’s always been the draw for the show, but it remains technically impressive as well. As more and more Netflix shows have the cracks showing when it comes to backgrounds and settings, Sex Education never fails to look good. It remains well lit, and there’s some real artistic flair. Plus, the show has always known how to needle drop well, and that remains true in the final voyage.
As Sex Education comes to its end, I find myself less sad about its ending and more excited about what the future holds for the cast of characters, with everyone in their own little bubble, and streaming numbers being hard to truly gauge at times. However, the reaction of casting directors is what has me assured of the show’s positive reputation. Butterfield was the star that sort of got me intrigued, along with Anderson, but look at the other projects that Otis’s classmates have been involved with recently. Practically half the cast (Mackey, Gatwa, and Swindells) appeared in Barbie, Mackey starred in the ensemble of Death on the Nile, Gatwa is the new Doctor Who, and Wood starred alongside Bill Nighy’s Oscar-nominated performance in Living.
For a show that’s got a legacy of not only consistent quality and representation, with the cast getting picked off for major projects left and right, the fact that what they all go on to do from here could be the show’s true legacy says quite a lot.
I, for one, am excited to see what projects they graduate to in the future now that school’s out.
Rating: Liked it
Sex Education is currently streaming on Netflix
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