*Episode premise spoilers, which include a few spoilers for the end of season 3.*
Sex Education is back for its fourth and final season. Given that it’s about sixth formers and its 20-something actors are looking for and more adult, this is for the best. And of course, we know that Ncuti Gatwa is moving onto much bigger things! I hope the last season is able to bring things together in a satisfying way. The premiere certainly demonstrates that it’s going to be shaking things up.
Okay, so some quick spoilery catchup from season 3: after the students launched a major protest of Hope’s repressive management of the school, Moordale lost its funding and the kids were forced to find a new school for the remainder of their last year of sixth form. Most of our main students have ended up at Cavendish College, where Otis has a difficult time getting a new sex therapy clinic off the ground. Not among them, though, is Maeve. At the end of last season, she was accepted into a prestigious academic program in the U.S. She’s enjoying her new school, but she’s extremely hard-up without Otis, who she’d just started dating. And Jean is maybe slightly over-optimistic about the prospect of starting a new job with an 8-week-old baby.
The opening scene, which features Maeve’s sexual frustration when she’s an ocean away from Otis at her new school, is pretty amusing. She’s set off by a couple going at each other in the library, but her walk across the grounds back to her dorm is a minefield of lustful activity, from numerous couples making out to a little dog humping a ball! The story between her and Otis this episode as they struggle to navigate the challenges of their long-distance relationship is good—as Otis agonizes over how to respond to a nude Maeve sends him, one of the replies he workshops, honest-to-god, is, “Many thanks, really nice breasts.” Never change, Otis! That said, I’m also looking forward to Maeve’s time in the U.S. in general. Her writing teacher is a famous author played by none other than Dan Levy, so that should be neat.
There’s also an unexpected guest star in Jean’s plot. Comedian Hannah Gadsby plays a producer who meets with Jean to hear a pitch for a possible radio show. And yeah, Jean is clearly frazzled and nowhere near ready for this. Baby Joy was a preemie, and with Otis at his new school, Jean is less able to rely on him to pick up the slack.
Cavendish College has all the trappings of a stereotypical state-of-the-art progressive school. They’re paperless—tablets for every student! There’s a small stage and a projector in the student lounge where anyone can come up and express themselves! Gender-neutral bathrooms as a rule and queer kids everywhere! But already, we’re seeing the signs that not everything is as rosy and enlightened as it seems. Isaac also attends Cavendish; stuck in the lift with another character, he grouses, “They’ve got enough money for a meditation room, but not for a lift that works,” adding that he’s complained about this multiple times.
One more important familiar face to note. I won’t get too much into the details of the character today, but in Otis’s story at Cavendish, we meet O, played by Thaddea Graham (a.k.a. my beloved Bel from series 13 of Doctor Who!) This plot definitely has potential, and I’m excited to see where it’s going.
As for Eric, going to a new school has him giving off vibes similar to early season 1. He’s in a very different place as a character in terms of his self-confidence and expression, but we see a familiar mix of eagerness and anxiousness here, ready to dive in and make new friends but just a little panicked that he’s going to do something uncool. As always, though, he has the best reactions of the bunch. Walking into Cavendish, he exclaims, “Oh my god, is that a slide?” and later enthuses, “And all the gays, everywhere!” When he and Otis learn that the school is paperless, Eric snatches Otis’s homemade clinic flyers out of his hands and frantically stuffs them in the trash, insisting, “We can’t be seen as tree killers!”
There are a couple hints here of what Eric’s main plots might be for the season, and I’m especially intrigued by what his experience at Cavendish is going to be like. But even when he spends a good chunk of the episode in comic-relief mode or in supportive-best-friend mode, Gatwa’s performance remains iconic. Eric displays his usual full-service loyalty to Otis—when Otis experiences an extremely embarrassing mishap in public, Eric shouts, “Cover your eyes!” and tries to physically block people’s view. And following this major crash-and-burn moment for his best friend, Eric tries to salvage…something?...by applauding, doing a little spin, and then running away. Those are the type of moments that make me think of how much I’m going to enjoy Gatwa’s Doctor.
Speaking of which, we don’t have any hard-and-fast dates for the 60th anniversary specials beyond “November,” and I’m still not sure how many of them, if any will actually feature him, or if we’re only going to be getting the regeneration scene at the end. But no matter what, I will have definitely seen Gatwa’s Doctor before I finish reviewing the last episodes of Sex Education, and that’s exciting to me!
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