Station Eleven and the sweetness of life on Earth

The apocalypse show, which aired its finale Thursday, is strangely and beautifully hopeful

Station Eleven.
(Image credit: Illustrated | HBO, iStock)

The first season finale of Station Eleven, the extraordinary, lushly realized HBO Max show based on the bestselling 2014 novel by Emily St. John Mandel, was both immensely satisfying and faithful to the intricate universe the limited series created. Tragically separated protagonists are reunited, simmering grievances are buried, and an army of child suicide bombers is disbanded.

The episode, first available in the app at 3 a.m. Eastern on Thursday, is a fitting end to for Station Eleven, a series that depicts the extinction of human civilization as we know it yet somehow managed to be the year's most hopeful work of art — a complex, heartfelt narrative poem that affirmed the ineffable beauty of being human in a broken world.

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David Faris

David Faris is an associate professor of political science at Roosevelt University and the author of It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics. He is a frequent contributor to Informed Comment, and his work has appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and Indy Week.