Series Finale Of 'Big Mouth' Deserves An Award

TV & Film

Jun 24

When a series finale airs, the final episode can end their respective series with a bang or a whimper. Given the importance of a series finale, Netflix’s Big Mouth took a different approach for their finale. With the principle characters entering into a void-like light encompassing their town, Big Mouth asked its viewers to imagine the future for Andrew, Nick, Jessi, Missy, and their classmates. The question was one with no “correct” or “wrong” answers, a reflection of how the main cast and fans might have felt entering their own respective futures unsure yet embracing whatever might come along.

Throughout the eighth and final season, creators Andrew Goldberg, Nick Kroll, Mark Levin, and Jennifer Flackett had their characters navigate the trials of high school as freshmen such as trying to navigate their way to new classes, looking for new groups of friends, relationship trials, and the other horrors coinciding with puberty (i.e. body odor, growing pains, and more over-the-top displays of emotions).

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Leaning more on relatability and educating while still retaining its crass moments, Big Mouth’s final season brought many moments full circle. Behind the sense of belonging, Big Mouth at its core was about a group of teenagers coming to terms with their chaos.

From the beginning, Big Mouth established itself as a coming of age show about a core group of teenagers deep-diving into the embarrassing, gross, and uncomfortable parts of puberty.

Quickly, the show was criticized as crude, visually unappealing in terms of animation style, over-the-top, and unnecessarily vulgar. While the criticisms had some validity, fans came to the conclusion that the uncomfortable dialogue and situations the characters got into were purposeful. Growing up and dealing with puberty hardly ever is easy and not full of embarrassment. Not many can say they got their first period at the Statue of Liberty, but there might be many girls who lost a pair of white shorts due to unexpected periods.

Perhaps there were many young boys who felt like they were “behind” in terms of growing up and reaching milestones. Not to mention how many of us received questionable and (most likely) false information from parents and friends. Big Mouth was there for its viewers to verbalize and be honest about the parts of puberty and growing up that get skipped over.

While the trials of friendship were briefly tested during summer camp, the final season brought the familiar discomfort of puberty into the dog-eat-dog world of high school. Entering a world where class schedules are impossible to read and cliques determine social status, the Big Mouth gang took larger steps into self-discovery. Missy slowly overcame her sense of dread to join her friends in high school rather than staying home-schooled, joined the robotics club, and found a new relationship with a boy who is essentially Teen Nathan Fillion. Jessi began hanging out with the burnouts (a la Freaks and Greeks) and retains a healthy relationship with Camden, her boyfriend, after a several fights.

Andrew comes to realize who is true friends are while confronts the moment where he will no have Maury as his hormone monster (i.e. the end of puberty). Nick undergoes the most transformative arc physically and mentally—growth spurt, the hubris of newfound popularity, and interpersonal relationships going through more peaks and valleys. In the end, each of the characters found their way back to each other. Even Jay and Matthew have their moments helping each other within the realms of their identities.

The final episode, The Great Unknown, gave the Big Mouth crew the chance to finish their character arcs with infinite possibilities. With the main cast’s arcs on their final legs, there remains a sense of dread as an “unknown void” slowly consumes everyone and everything within Westchester County. The void itself doesn’t appear to be visually threatening. What makes it vital is how no matter how many times Jessi, Missy, Andrew, or Nick run or try to ignore the void, the void remains. While it mainly consumed buildings, the void is set to consume the gang. Realizing there is no escaping their fate, the characters decide to face the void together. Given how much they went through together, they didn’t go into the void alone.

Spending one last night in their old middle school before it’s demolished, memories and nostalgia flow. Embarrassing moments are remembered fondly and former classmates are missed by all. Andrew and Maury reminisce as he will be soon Nick’s hormone monster. Jay, Lola, and Matthew help each other out their separate relationships. How the characters go into the void reflects their journeys and who they appear closest to. Missy, the first one to say the void was the future, enters it with Jessi. Both girls have gone full circle in their identities and learned to be comfortable in their own skin. Missy, scared of the future, ran into her past self who reminded her that Missy is the girl her past self gets to look forward to. Jessi, not knowing if she will go to a prestigious college like her mom wants, decided to embrace whatever may come (a sort of go-with-the-flow attitude she got from her dad) with an unexpected period. Matthew and Caleb enter the void after Caleb offers suggestions on how Matthew can talk dirty to his new boyfriend. Lola and Jay, with all of their breakups and reconciliations, break up again as Lola wants “to be single in the void” much to Jay’s annoyance. In the final moments, Nick and Andrew hold hands and walk into the void with hopeful smiles.

Like the monsters watching in the background, viewers watched the trials and tribulations of “their little perverts”. While many moments were uncomfortable to watch for a variety of reasons, Big Mouth revealed an emotionally intelligent and frank truth: there was and is so much viewers never learned about when growing up and even as adults. Show creator

Andrew Goldberg mentioned how he “learned a lot” and felt like “[he and the other creators] really created something where the things that [he and the other creators] learned” brought new levels of representation and personal touches from the creator’s lives. Given these personal touches, there is an implication that the series finale needs to be epic and perfect. But the future isn’t perfect. Show creators knew this, and allowed the ending to be open-ended.

Jennifer Flackett stated,

“When we had our final table read and all those kids walked off, everyone was crying. So, I think that also a big part of it, too – being funny, emotional, and that we really wanted to do well by these characters. We wanted to feel like the future was pretty bright for them.”

A bright future means endless possibilities. Each character entering the void as their concept sketches mean their stories once starting at Bridgeton Middle School can be redone any which way. There are no right or wrong life choices to make. Andrew Goldberg posed the question “how do you tell the end of a story about kids who are just starting out?” The answer: he didn’t know. Therein lies the beauty of not knowing.

It’s okay to not know. Even as grown adults the creators don’t know where their lives will go, so the expectation for a teenager to know is misguided. While some characters didn’t get to see the finale, viewers can see them immortalized in re-watches. Their legacy doesn’t end once the credits roll.

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