Y:The Last Man is about trauma survivorship at its core. It is set in a society that has to rebuild itself after a mysterious plague decimated all mammals with a Y-chromosome (except for two). The premise of the film is: What would happen if there were no cisgender men? You would be wrong to think that peaceful matriarchal rule is the answer. It is a global reckoning that patriarchal views are deeply ingrained in almost all aspects of human existence. After the elimination of cisgender males, many people are left to decide how similar they want their new world.
This is a lot to do with power. Based on the comics series of Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra, and streaming on FX and Hulu, Y: The Last Man sees American power pass to a senator named Jennifer Brown (Diane Lane) by the presidential succession. She is a Democrat and will be taking over from a Republican-led government. While she is capable, she also struggles to reform a government made up of loyalists and allies. A divided population has forced her to serve them after the tragedy. Some people believe that the government is to blame for the plague. Others have formed separatist groups. Some others find spiritual meaning.
Eliza Clark, showrunner, believes that managing anxiety is the core of Y. Clark says that I am interested in how people react to crises. Not just their own, but their communities and their points of view. It was evident with Covid-19, as well as with many other crises we were facing every day. People fear and seek out someone to help them understand the world.
The people who are consulted by Y for answers to their questions look very different from what they see on other TV shows. They are made up of trans women, men and people who are not from the same political party. Clark insisted on rectifying the comic's shortcomings, which included how it dealt trans people. He also added a new main character, Sam (Elliot Fletcher). There are feminists and Democrats, gun-toting self-described Amazons who live in shopping centers, as well as women like Kimberly Campbell Cunningham, the ex-president's daughter, who is somewhat of an amalgam between Meghan McCain or Ivanka Trump. Agent 355 (Ashley Romans) is a member a secret special operations group of the US government. He goes to find Hero, President Brown's daughter (Olivia Thirlby), but instead finds Yorick (Ben Schnetzer), his son and Ampersand, his pet monkey. These are allegedly the only two remaining mammals with Y-chromosomes on Earth.
Yorick-Agent 355 is where Y's strongest points are found. Yorick, who works as an escape artist, is forced to confront his privilege and realize that he is now a minority. However, this is an extremely valuable opportunity. Agent 355 is the one who finds herself in this position constantly. She tells him that you can fuck around with no consequences. A whole life of being just given shit. It is easy to just walk into any room, and take it as a given.
Agent 355 and Yorick are forced to embark on a mission to find Allison Mann (Diana Bang), who is a Harvard scientist who can analyze Yorick in order to discover why he seems to be the only one to have survived the plague. Her role is to explain the outbreak to the audience. She explains that not everyone with a male Y chromosome does not have to be a man. That day, we lost so many people.
