Other Doctor Lives: Sex Education: Season 4, Episode 8 (2023)

*Episode premise spoilers.*

Here we are now, the series finale of Sex Education. And by the way, I was wrong. We haven’t seen Ncuti Gatwa as the Fifteenth Doctor yet. Silly me; when the BBC said, “60^th anniversary specials coming in November!”, I assumed that mean they’d all be, you know, airing in November. Not starting at the very end of November but mostly airing in December. However, I only just realized that we’re getting a Christmas special on top of the 60^th anniversary specials! So before the month is out, we’ll not only see the Doctor regenerate into Ncuti Gatwa, we’ll see his first full adventure too! I’m so excited (even though Fourteen immediately won my heart over!)

But I digress. Sex Education series finale! Here we go.

We go into this episode with a lot that needs wrapping up. We have the results of student councilor election, Otis and Eric’s fight from a couple episodes ago, Adam’s fraught relationship with his dad, Maeve beginning a new future for herself, Aimee and Isaac navigating their feelings for each other, Jean having a reckoning with her sister, Eric preparing to baptized, and Jackson thinking he’s found his biological father. All of these smaller personal plots revolve around two larger events that bring in most of the main cast. It’s the day of Cavendish’s annual fundraiser, so everyone is preparing to get decked out for that. But before the festivities can start, everyone pulls together to help when Cal goes missing.

Even supersized at an hour-and-a-half long, this is a packed finale. I’m not going to try and get into everything. But I like that, while things generally end happily, a lot of these endings aren’t big and triumphant. Some of them are—Maeve probably has the most wish fulfillment-style resolution—but a lot of them just show the characters taking small steps forward, or finding peace about something that’s sad, or gaining perspective on their own problems by reaching out to someone else. I can get a little bored when finales get too over the top, but I think this one mostly feels right for the show.

Another thing that jumps out at me is how nicely this show dramatizes asking for consent. It’s so easy to add moments like, “Is this okay?” or, “Can I kiss you?” (It also shows, though, that those questions aren’t magic bullets. If someone answers “yes” when they’re not actually ready, bigger problems can arise. In both of these situations, we see true enthusiastic consent is achieved only after the characters are honest about their vulnerabilities.) We even see consent practiced in non-romantic situations; I love when Adam’s dad says, “I’d quite like to hug you.”

Within the many things happening in the finale, Eric doesn’t get lost in the shuffle, which is a relief. He spends much of the action away from the rest of the cast, since the search for Cal is going on at the same time as his baptism. But while that means he gets less time to bounce off the other kids, it also means that his biggest scenes are squarely about him. He gets a fine monologue here, and Gatwa plays it for all it’s worth.

And fortunately, Eric isn’t separated from everyone else the whole time. In the second half of the episode, his story intersects with the main one in an important way, and he joins the others at the school fundraiser, where he eagerly makes up for his narrative isolation earlier. This includes some good scenes with Otis, and we also get Eric dancing to “Footloose,” which is delightful.

And that’s a wrap on Sex Education, just in time to clap eyes on the Fifteenth Doctor this weekend. A new era’s about to begin!