Never Have I Ever: Season 3 Review
The penultimate season of Never Have I Ever was released a few weeks ago on Netflix, which means everyone should be all caught up by now. (If not, beware, spoilers are ahead, starting with the fourth paragraph.)
The Mindy Kaling-produced series not only looks at the every day drama of being a teenager in high school, but is also a beautiful meditation on grief and what it means to lose someone you love. When we first met Devi Vishwakumar (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) she is not only reckoning with her father Mohan’s sudden death from a heart attack during her school concert the previous year, but also with the way that grief physically and mentally affects her. Devi becomes temporarily paralyzed from the waist down, leaving her in a wheelchair for three months and making her something of a school outcast (though thankfully she has two incredibly supportive best friends, Fabiola and Eleanor). Though she recovers from the wheelchair, the series makes sure to never forget that this loss is a significant one. Her relationship with her father has always been strong, while her relationship with her mother, Nalini, now left to care for her as a single mother, is more fraught and tense.
Beyond her grief, Devi has other, more teenage-specific drama to deal with. She has a crush on Paxton Hall-Yoshida, one of the most popular guys in school. She is something of a social outcast. She must find a way to connect and relate to her mother. And, she must reconcile her foreign-seeming Indian culture with the American culture she has been raised in. No easy fete, particularly when her beautiful cousin Kamala, who lives with her and her mother, seems beautiful and perfect in every way.
The final season continued to bring the fun and joy of the previous seasons, including the unique choice of narrators (tennis player John McEnroe for Devi, Andy Sandberg for ultra-competitive Ben, and Gigi Hadid for Paxton) and general Devi shenanigans. The season allows Devi to really see how far she has come, realizing that her grief is a part of her and will always be, but it doesn’t define and control her. She also learns that grief is an expression of love (though this piece of advice comes from a less than stellar source in the end) and you have to move through it.
The biggest downside to the season was that it felt rushed, as if it did not have one more season to go before the series ends. Devi has been pining over Paxton since the start of the series, yet their relationship begins and ends before it really starts. She largely moves past their breakup offscreen and moves on to a family friend, Des seemingly quickly. Then they break up (because of his mother) and she is suddenly interested in Ben again. Ben, meanwhile, has been pining over Devi the entire season, even when he was dating Aneesa, who he broke up with rather early in the season. Fabiola had a girlfriend briefly before breaking up with her, moving on with Aneesa, and then quickly crushing on Des’s friend instead. The only relationship of the series that seems, surprisingly, stable is Eleanor’s with Paxton’s best friend Travis. (Despite nearly breaking up early in the relationship, the pair worked it out and end the season going strong.)
It was nice to see Nalini finally having a friend of her own, though this was another short-lived storyline, which made her friend break up with Rhyah sad, perhaps even more sad that Devi’s breakup with Rhyah’s son Des at Rhyah’s behest. As Devi’s mother told Rhyah all about the rebelliousness and struggles that Devi has, it is understandable that she might be concerned with Devi’s on her own seemingly perfect son, but how it all played out was pretty heartbreaking. Rhyah is the one who gives Devi such good advice about dealing with grief after Devi has a near-panic attack at the first concert she’s performing in since her father’s death. When Devi thought she saw her father in the audience, she understandably freaked out and Rhyah helped comfort her, only to then go to her son and insist that Des break up with Devi because she has a lot of problems. When Devi’s mother finds this out, she stands up for Devi and the two have a heart to heart in which they both admit to seeing Mohan sometimes and that this is normal.
Paxton and Travis face some minor drama around what they will be doing after graduation when Paxton unexpectedly (and with the help of Ben) gets into a school in Arizona. The series showcases how Paxton has grown since we first met him, realizes that meaningless relationships aren’t what he wants , that he can be open and vulnerable, and that if he pushes himself he can achieve more than he ever thought (as he tells the school in his speech at graduation). Whether he is gone for good or will be back in season 4 is tough to say, but this feels like a worthwhile sendoff for his character.
Finally, Devi is faced with a pretty big choice at the end of the season: whether to stay in Sherman Oaks for her senior year or go to an ultra competitive school that could significantly improve her college prospects. Ultimately she chooses to stay, telling her mother that she is not ready to be apart from her. While her decision feels true (and not simply because what kind of final season would it be if we had to start in a new place with new people), the decision feels a little cheapened or tainted by her renewed crush on Ben. Not because there’s anything wrong with Ben. The two temper each other well. But the timing of that realization makes it feel like that may be a factor in her decision and giving up important things in your life for boys, especially at such a young age, is never a good idea.
Photo: Maitreyi Ramakrishnan as Devi Vishwakumar in Never Have I Ever. Courtesy of Netflix.
