Season 1 of Netflix's supernatural teen drama series I Am Not Okay With This concludes with a major cliffhanger to whet viewers' appetites for season 2. The show stars Sophia Lillis (Sharp Objects) as Sydney Novak, a teenage girl struggling with her father's suicide, her complicated feelings for her best friend, and the fact that she has telekinetic superpowers.
I Am Not Okay With This is based on the graphic novel of the same name by Charles Forsman, but while season 1 ends in a similar place to the book's ending, it also diverts sharply from the source material. The series also features Lillis' IT co-star Wyatt Oleff as Syd's neighbor, Stanley Barber, who has a big crush on her. Sofia Bryant plays Syd's best friend, Dina, whose relationship with school alpha jock Brad (Richard Ellis) ends in disaster. In I Am Not Okay With This' season 1 finale, Brad spills details from Syd's stolen diary at the school's homecoming dance. Before he can reveal the secret of her superpowers, Syd uses them to make his head explode.
A blood-drenched Syd flees the school and runs to the top of a watchtower on a nearby hill. As she struggles to cope with the enormity of what she has done, she is approached by the mysterious smoke man who has been stalking her. Syd doesn't appear to recognize the man, which means it's probably not (as viewers may have suspected) her father. She asks him if she should be afraid, to which he replies, "They should be afraid." He then tells her, "Let's begin." So, what could does ending mean? Let's take a look at the events leading up to it.
Though it's set in modern times, I Am Not Okay With This has a distinct eighties vibe and references older movies like The Breakfast Club and Carrie. In keeping with this trend, Syd's powers are reminiscent of David Cronenberg's classic 1981 sci-fi horror Scanners, about a group of people with powerful telepathic and telekinetic abilities. Though the abilities of the characters in Scanners varied, the most memorable of them was the power to make people's heads explode - a power that Syd demonstrates at the homecoming dance. So far Syd's powers have been strictly limited to telekinesis, such as knocking down bookshelves, hurling bowling balls through the air, and making chemical vials boil over. However, she could end up discovering more powers in I Am Not Okay With This season 2 - like the smoke man's power to dematerialize and rematerialize.
By the end of I Am Not Okay With This season 1, Syd firmly believes that her dad had the same powers as her and she inherited them from him. A significant event in her father's life was an explosion that he survived during his time in the Marines, which killed everyone in the vicinity except for him. Whether her father caused the explosion with his powers or whether the explosion somehow gave him the powers is left unclear. It's also possible that Syd's dad is a complete red herring, and she got her powers from somewhere else.
In I Am Not Okay With This, both Syd's powers and the abilities that she thinks her father had are symbolic representations of things that they tried to hide from the world, but which end up bursting out of them nonetheless. In Syd's case these things are her grief, her anger, and her closeted sexuality. For her dad, what he was trying to suppress were symptoms of depression and PTSD caused by the trauma he experienced during his military service.
It's worth noting that Syd's belief that her father was like her has not been confirmed in the show (yet). The key detail that convinces Syd that her powers are inherited is that, according to her mother, he used to run out of the room when his emotions got out of control - like he was about to throw up. Syd connects this to the way that she herself flees when she feels her powers about to erupt. Yet this behavior in her father could have been caused not by magical powers, but by panic attacks. It may well be revealed in I Am Not Okay With This season 2 that Syd's dad didn't kill himself to escape the burden of telekinetic powers, but rather to escape a more mundane mental anguish.
After Stan discovers Syd's powers, I Am Not Okay With This dips into comic book tropes to set up the idea of an older mentor figure appearing in Syd's life and teaching her how to use her powers. Stan aspires to be her Mr. Miyagi, but his sole attempt at training her ends with Syd almost removing Stan's head with a bowling ball. It seems that the smoke man is Syd's true mentor figure, and his declaration of "Let's begin" implies that he's about to start her training.
The graphic novel version of I Am Not Okay With This doesn't offer any clues as to the possible identity of the smoke man. A smoky shadow monster does appear in the book, but only as a visual representation of Syd's powers. The obvious possibility is that Syd's dad isn't really dead and that he's the smoke man, but as mentioned previously the fact that Syd doesn't appear to recognize him blows a hole in that theory. If Syd's dad really did get his powers from the explosion that he survived during his time in the army, it's also possible that he wasn't the sole survivor, and the smoke man could be a fellow soldier who's now looking out for his former comrade's daughter.
I Am Not Okay With This is a pretty dark show, but the original graphic novel is vastly more depressing - especially when it comes to the ending. In the book, it's revealed that Syd actually killed her father. She found him curled up in the basement one day and became aware that the two of them had the same "gift." Realizing that he wanted her to relieve him from the pain of living with it, she used her powers to put an end to his life. This death is mirrored in the ending of the book. Like in the show, Syd accidentally kills Brad using her powers, and she also runs away to the tower. However, no smoke-man comes to find her. Instead, she decides to commit suicide in order to escape her life and her powers, describing her death as a gift to her mother and brother. Syd then uses her powers to make her own head explode, and that's where the story ends.
It remains to be seen whether Brad's death will be blamed on Syd in I Am Not Okay With This season 2. There were certainly a lot of witnesses to his head explosion, but people may not automatically assume that it was the result of telekinetic powers. There's also the matter of Syd's diary, which was spotted by Stan being kicked away among the fleeing crowd. If someone else gets their hands on it, it won't take them long to make the connection between what Syd has written in it and what happened to Brad.
Meanwhile, if the smoke man really is Syd's mentor in superpowers then we can expect to see her gaining more control and power in I Am Not Okay With This season 2, as well as learning more about where her powers came from. Perhaps instead of trying to free herself from them, she will ultimately decide to embrace them.
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