TL;DR – How do you build community when you fear the world outside?

Disclosure – I paid for the Stan service that viewed this series.

Earth Abides Review –

Earth Abides has been a very interesting show so far, in many respects, in how it can blow through time yet still make it feel like a coherent whole. Alone was about Ish’s journey to find himself in a world alone, and then The Space Between discovered a world where there are now two. But you need more than two for a community, but with community comes benefits and potential dangers.

So, to set the scene, it is now Year 6 of a world without humans or most humans, and nature has started to reclaim much of the world that once was. However, as the human world shrinks to nothingness, those few connections that remain become even more critical. This is what forces Ish (Alexander Ludwig) to race after a young child he sees in the woods. However, as time passes, their small community will face their biggest challenge, which is a throuple. We will be looking at the episode as a whole from here, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead.   

One of the themes in this week’s episode is how you yearn for the community, but you can also be deeply afraid of it. I deeply sympathised with Ish when he said that sometimes he misses when he was alone. In a situation like this, you need more people to be able to survive, but more people means more people to trust, and people have a habit of letting you down. You can feel that tension throughout this episode, which had some of the same impact as The Last of Us’: Long Long Time. In the end, letting people in was probably the best option, even if that means that the way things worked before has to change now. Also, if the end of the episode is anything to go by, having a doctor around might have been a good idea.

We also get that exploration of trauma. Evie (Milania Kerr) has chosen to stop talking even when a loving family takes her in. Jean (Hilary McCormack) struggles with prepartum depression as she struggles with the idea of bringing another life into this world. All the while, nature is slowly reclaiming everything that once was, as is shown in the episode titles. Scavenging will only last so long, and such is the case with houses that are not being maintained. Indeed, it is probably only luck that a wildfire hasn’t ripped through everything. But danger lurks at every corner, and I have to admit that Alexander Ludwig’s performance when finding out what happened to Lucky broke my heart.  

So, in the end, do we recommend Earth Abides: World Without End? We would. It is incredible how much time passed during this episode, yet it still felt like a contained whole. I think a lion bookending the episode might have helped there. But now I am wondering where we can go from here.  

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

Have you seen Earth Abides yet ?, let us know what you thought in the comments below, feel free to share this review on any of the social medias and you can follow us Here. Check out all our past reviews and articles Here, and have a happy day.    

Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Earth Abides
Directed by – Rachel Leiterman
Written by – Tony Spiridakis
Created by – Todd Komarnicki
Based On – Earth Abides by George R. Stewart
Production/Distribution Companies – Bright Light Pictures, Lighthouse Productions, Peak TV, MGM Studios & MGM+ & Stan
Starring – Alexander Ludwig & Jessica Frances Dukes with Rodrigo Fernandez-Stoll, Elyse Levesque, Luisa d’Oliveira, Hilary McCormack, Birkett Turton, Milania Kerr, Jenna Berman, Leah Belle MacDonald, Amarah Taylor, Kawhi Hollywood, Denzel Onaba, Eamon McBride, Luke Alfred Bateman, Samson Peake-Ondego, Adelyn Bruce & Isaiah Ramirez