Y: The Last Man has received an official launch date on Disney Plus UK – and British viewers won't have a long wait to check it out.
Revealed as part of a Disney Plus Star branded trailer, the live-action TV adaptation of Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra's acclaimed graphic novel series will land on Wednesday, September 22.
The show's first three episodes will premiere on this date, with new episodes releasing weekly. Check out the trailer below:
Y: The Last Man's Disney Plus UK release follows the news that the TV series will launch on Hulu's FX channel in the US on Monday, September 13.
Given that recent Hulu productions – such as American Horror Stories and Devs – haven't landed on British shores until a month or two after their US debut, UK viewers may have been worried that Y: The Last Man would follow a similar release schedule. Thankfully, that isn't the case here.
Set in a post-apocalyptic world, Y: The Last Man follows cisgender male Yorick Brown (Ben Schnetzer) and his pet monkey Ampersand as they traverse a world where a freak cataclysmic event results in the death of nearly every mammal with a Y chromosome.
The series also stars Diane Lane (Man of Steel, Unfaithful), Amber Tamblyn (Two and a Half Men), Marin Ireland (The Umbrella Academy), Olivia Thrilby (Dredd), Ashley Romans (NOS4A2), Diana Bang (Bates Motel), Elliot Fletcher (Shameless) and Juliana Canfield (Succession).
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Analysis: Like The Walking Dead and Invincible, Y: The Last Man will modernize its source material
Much like AMC's The Walking Dead, Y: The Last Man is based on a relatively recent comic series. The first issue of Vaughan and Guerra's graphic novel arrived in September 2002, so the TV show's release comes less than 20 years after the print series arrived.
Despite the short timeframe between the comics and the TV show – providing you discount the latter's six-year development cycle – though, Y: The Last Man's live-action adaptation sounds like it'll take some creative liberties with the source material.
Speaking during a Television Critics Association (TCA) virtual panel on August 13, which TechRadar attended, showrunner Eliza Clark revealed how the TV series – like The Walking Dead's TV adaptation – would broadly follow the graphic novels. Doing so, Clark explained, allowed her and the show's chief creative team to modernize aspects of the plot, themes and character arcs so that they fell in line with societal values in 2021.
"Our show is gender diverse," Clark said. "We've made the representation of this world, in some ways, very different from the comics. Yorick's maleness is not what sets him apart in this world; it's his Y chromosome. So I think in that way we have we've used the book as a blueprint, and I think fans of the book are really going to love it. But I also think that Brian and Pia were extremely excited about the ways that we could update it."
So it seems that Y: The Last Man's TV adaptation will stick closely to the comic series' main plot points whilst updating its other core elements – something that The Walking Dead and Invincible's TV adaptations have also done, particularly regarding their source material's less inclusive aspects.
Gender identity is a prominent theme throughout Y: The Last Man's comics but, with the series' final issue coming in March 2008, LGBTQ+ representation has come a long way in the 13 years since. The live-action TV adaptation, then, has the opportunity to embolden and build upon these elements of the comics by bringing them in line with modern day societal values.
In doing so, Y: The Last Man follows in The Walking Dead's footsteps: taking its iconic source material, modernizing it for today's audiences and maybe building on what made the comics so great in the first place.
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