If this season finale of No Tomorrow ends up being the series finale of the show, there are worse ways to go out. Everyone sets off on a new path, confident of the direction their lives are taking. And Evie and Xavier recognize that they want different things out of life, at least for now.
Whether those lives last for a couple more months or many more years is not, ultimately, that relevant to the plot of the show. Evie offers a pretty succinct explanation for why signs and fate are not really worth basing your life on, telling the creepily perfect Graham that fate “takes away all agency.” What the finale suggests is that even if you do know what that fate might be, as Evie, Timothy, and Xavier all do at various points of the episode, it shouldn’t stop you from making the choices you want to make. Take ayahuasca, move to the Philippines, accept your dream job. If there’s one thing No Tomorrow succeeds at in this episode, it’s overcoming a whole series of rom com tropes to prove they’re unnecessary. Evie doesn’t need to end up with the dream guy. No one needs to give up on their careers for each other. Being single has its own rewards.
It’s this last point that the show most clearly telegraphs as being the heart of Evie’s journey. Xavier may have sent her down the path, but the moment where she enjoyed the northern lights, alone, suggests that she might be happier continuing down it without him. And Tori Anderson radiates a whole series of conflicted emotions towards the end of the episode when Xavier says he hopes to see Evie in a few months. Is Evie excited about the concept, or aware that she might have to let him down at that point? No Tomorrow, wisely, lets both possibilities exist in that moment. Xavier might have been the right man to get her to go after what she wants in life, but he also might not be the right partner for her long term. And the show convincingly argues that that’s just fine.
While the asteroid plotline keeps Xavier busy, and lets Evie have her epiphany, it does make the goings on at Cybermart seem awfully trivial. A battle over soda seems like it came from an episode early in the season, not this stage of the story arc. Didn’t all these people just move to Tacoma? Instead of some sense of culture clash, or the introduction of any new company employees, it almost could have been a story about the Seattle branch, minus the fact that the word “Tacoma” appears on the wall. And it rehashes a Hank and Deirdre plot, which resolves in virtually the same way again: Deirdre asks for Hank’s support, and he tries to offer it and then immediately succumbs to temptation. In this case, it all points towards Deirdre’s big reveal about being pregnant, but along the way, these are some pretty familiar story beats.
Whether No Tomorrow gets a miraculous last minute save remains to be seen, but in the meantime, it’s worth appreciating it for what it was, which was a story simultaneously about a group of people learning to truly know themselves, and also about the end of existence. It was at times an odd balance. The seriousness of the overarching plot in these last two episodes has clashed with the silliness of the Cybermart plots, as Evie and Xavier almost seemed to be in another show. But face it: Whether you started creating your own apoca-list or not, it probably made you think a little bit about your priorities, didn’t it?
Stray observations
- Remember when Evie had a sister? Ah, memories.
- “Beard, lots of man jewelry” was a pretty apt description of Xavier.
- Wow, cousin Jesse really ruins a lot of stuff.
- I always enjoyed how much the writers/directors/etc of this show loved matching scenes up together, like a discussion of Hank’s affection for noises transitioning to Xavier loudly moving dishes around, or Hank and Timothy working together to recite the lyrics to “Kokomo.”
- Deirdre wanted to avoid sugar, but is apparently fine with not recycling.
- Sure, Graham was cute and charming, but he was a little pushy, no? Evie made her lack of interest pretty clear.
- “Turns out recycling is a great thing to do. For money. When your speakeasy gets shut down, but you still need cash for a sex resort.”
- Can you really ride an inner tube down Mount Rainier? I have been visiting my Seattle friends in the wrong season, if so.
- If nothing else, I’m pleased a show existed where I wrote notes like “Timothy grew a mustache of rebellion.”
- Thanks for reading along! Until we meet again, at the latest Timothy and the Noise concert.