For those who have managed, by some miracle, to escape the conversations about it, Sex Education is a comedy series following the lives of the students of Moordale Secondary. The focal character is Otis, a virginal loner who finds he has obtained his mother’s sex therapy skills, and starts an oncampus clinic to win the approval of mysterious Maeve. Through Otis’ sessions with his classmates, the creators of the show expose the difficulties of modern-day youth in an unapologetically witty capacity. Important discussions of consent, sexuality and gender identity have made the show one of the most popular series on Netflix.
At the end of the penultimate series, the residents of Moordale must find themselves a new school - their sexually expressive campaign causing the school investors to pull funding from Hope, their ironically named Headmaster. The central characters find themselves thrust into Cavendish School, renowned for its student-led approach and no tolerance for bullying. It’s a seemingly perfect school where everyone is equal. All the Moordale students seem to revel in this opportunity - apart from Otis - who finds he has a rival sex therapist, O. Otis battles with a lot this season; a new sibling, a long-distance relationship with Maeve and the attempt to regain his notoriety.
This doesn’t prevent him, however, from fiercely competing to ‘out therapise’ O. To win back approval, Otis has a session with popular kids Abbie and Roman - a queer couple much beloved by the school. The introduction of these characters allows discourse surrounding the rarity of openly queer individuals in school to be introduced. This creates a nice moment for Eric (one of the only openly queer people at Moordale) to find his crowd. With the new school, I felt right from the first episode like this was a relaunch of the series: with new characters and individual storylines, it didn’t feel like a final season. As it is the final series, however, I believe it has some questions to answer, and a duty to give the audience some closure for the characters we have grown to love. We are given some closure from original cast members, such as Aimee attempting to regain self-love after her assault, Adam trying to find his feet in his relationship with his dad, and Eric’s relationship with sexuality and religion. I felt with too many subplots needing completion, the addition of so many new storylines - whilst important - meant a reduction in the overall appreciation of the series. One inclusion in the season that was particularly important, however, was the discussion about the disabled students at Cavendish and the school’s failure to provide support for them. This led to a conversation about real inclusivity within the school, which I felt was widely important, but ultimately rushed due to the amount of other subplots. The creators of the show do so well to have these conversations that others shy away from that I felt the season needed more episodes to do justice to each storyline. Is this season worth a watch? Definitely. If you have watched the previous seasons, the show still manages to handle various relationship and identity issues in a tender, sensitive capacity - or a widely humorous one. Although I felt the number of episodes compared to the number of important student stories left them somewhat rushed, ultimately, I think this show is still unmatched in its ability to have these difficult conversations. If that isn’t a reason enough to watch, stay tuned to find out what becomes of Otis and Maeve!