The End of the F***ing World is the twisted romance you never knew you needed in your life. It is a darkly comedic coming-of-age story that was first released on Netflix in 2018. The limited series follows two misfit teens, James (Alex Lawther) and Alyssa (Jessica Barden), as they embark on a road trip in search of Alyssa’s estranged father. James, a 17-year-old who believes himself to be a psychopath, decides to use the road trip as an opportunity to fulfill his desire to kill someone. He believes that Alyssa, a rebellious and outspoken classmate, would be the perfect victim. As they travel further away from their small town, the two teens begin to form a deep emotional connection. Their journey is filled with a series of increasingly dangerous encounters, including car theft, a gas station robbery, and a run-in with a psychotic killer. With a sardonic sense of humor and a penchant for pushing boundaries, the show explores themes of love, loss, and the complexities of growing up. It’s a crafty feel-good watch.
The Netflix series, adapted from Charles Forsman’s graphic novel of the same name, stays true to its comic book roots. The short and poignant dialogue between James and Alyssa mimics the brevity of comic book panels, while the saturated colors and earthy tones used in emotional scenes evoke the same sense of melancholy and foreboding found in graphic novels. Despite the grim subject matter, the show never loses its humor. At the show’s climax, a tense police chase where James risks his life for Alyssa, James delivers a monotone voiceover: “It was a fitting end, a doomed love story, a perfect tragedy.” By having the characters narrate their own story in a bizarre and often sarcastic way, the show maintains the same level of intimacy and introspection found in the original comic book.
Don’t expect to engage with the age-old trope of a dangerous boy who needs a woman’s touch to save him from his darkness. While James does get better, it’s not simply because of Alyssa’s influence. Throughout the series, we see glimpses of the abuse James suffered at the hands of his father—the exact factor that shakes him out of his emotional detachment and forces him to confront the pain and grief he has been repressing.
Alyssa helps him, but her own experiences prove that she is not merely a love interest; when Alyssa’s father shows up unexpectedly at her wedding reception, she unabashedly confronts him about his absence from her life. Despite his dismissive and callous behavior, Alyssa insists that her father acknowledges the pain he caused her. Her fierceness is exalted by her vulnerability and deep-seated desire for connection and validation. She chooses to have this confrontation on her wedding day, willing to risk ruining her own happiness to address this long-standing emotional wound. She is compelling and memorable in a way that James is not: her struggles result in overexertion, not numbness.
James and Alyssa are beacons of honesty in the world of coming-of-age stories. They are outcasts from the beginning of the show, which features a vintage soundtrack of 60s music—perhaps alluding to a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde. Viewers can assume the couple’s fate, but the moments in which they fall in love still resonate, and often even resonate more, with the knowledge that it will all come crashing down.
In one scene, Alyssa talks about her past experiences with men, including an instance of sexual assault. She tells James that she doesn’t want him to touch her unless she asks him to, highlighting the show’s commitment to portraying the realities of adolescence, and not shying away from topics that are often stigmatized or ignored in other coming-of-age stories. But it is made more complicated by James’ internal monologue, through which he consistently admits to having violent urges and struggling to connect with others. Despite the absurdity of some of the show’s elements, The End of the F***ing World remains grounded through its honest portrayal of difficult topics. James and Alyssa are ultimately deeply traumatized and do not respond to their trauma healthily. The script admits this, encouraging viewers to rethink the seemingly endearing aspects of the story.
Above all, The End of the F***ing World is a masterful display of dark comedy, where viewers find themselves both laughing at and with the characters. The show cleverly blurs the lines between youth and violence and forces the audience to confront the harsh realities of growing up. While we root for the protagonists to find love and a solution to their problems, the happy moments are cut short by absurd and abrupt violence, circling back to the show’s overarching emphasis on the inevitability of violence. Death arises commonly, yet James and Alyssa, despite facing countless dangers, never die.
The dehumanizing shots of the characters in nature reinforce the idea that the combination of love and violence is both natural and unnatural. Viewers are left both amused and unsettled by dehumanizing shots of the characters in nature, including a gallop through the woods 30 minutes into their adventure—yet the show consistently manages to be genuinely funny. What are audiences meant to make of the joy they feel in watching it? Or of the fact that the love between these two characters ultimately helps them heal? The End of the F***ing World posits that although the promise of love and comedy is contained in coming of age, so are pain and nothingness.
Toward the end of the series, viewers accompany James and Alyssa to a dull setting: the underpass of a highway, a clear allusion to the fact that their fast-paced journey is coming to an end. James chooses this secret, desolate spot to spread his father’s ashes. And in a deadpan tone, Alyssa addresses his death: “It’s shit being dead, isn’t it? Yeah.”
Maybe she means to say that only death marks the end of the world, that their love story and coming-of-age were as comically pointless as they were excruciating. But maybe Alyssa is just pitying James as he grieves his dead father. Either way, their relationship is honest and dramatic without being excessively unrealistic. If you plan to judge James and Alyssa for their misspent youth from the comfort of your Harvard dorm room, be prepared for The End of the F***ing World to deliver a gentle rebuttal: Nobody knows what the end of the world looks like, so it might as well be a gray landscape permeated by sullen teenagers.
Aissatou Diallo ’25 (adiallo@college.harvard.edu) can’t stop watching TV.