You know that feeling when a show you’ve grown up with is ending? Mindy Kaling and Lang Fisher’s coming-of-age series on Netflix, Never Have I Ever was a pandemic baby. When the first season dropped in April 2020, we were all just a month into what was going to be a difficult couple of years. Now, three years and four seasons later, I’ve changed and matured, much like Devi Vishwakumar & Co., who graduate in more ways than one in this fourth and final season. Never Have I Ever Season 4 is a fitting closure for this game-changer of a show. And though I have my own board of pros and cons for this season, as Devi did for dating Paxton and Ben, I am just going to bask in the warmth of its goodbye hug.
Never Have I Ever has consistently aced its lingo and self-deprecating humour. Remember when Devi says that her mom doesn’t tell her how to live her life, Megan Thee Stallion does? Epic! Breakout star Maitreyi Ramakrishnan has always taken these over-the-top lines and delivered the drama in them with the blasé conviction of GenZ, a generation that lives its life in extremes (see her channel Kristen Stewart in Season 4 Episode 1!). Yet, it was never annoying or made me roll my eyes because it felt fake like it does in so many movies and shows about adolescents written by grown-ups, trying really hard to get the lingo right. Oh no, this one I loved it.
The characters being extra is possibly one of my favourite things about the show, whether it is Eleanor (a promising Ramona Young) being the pompous drama club kid for whom all life is a stage or Nirmala (a hilarious Ranjita Chakravarty)—the GMILF (Yes, she calls herself that, because this season she has a ‘white boyfriend’)—who says and does more outrageous things than her granddaughter! Even Kamala’s naïvely spoken truths and Nalini’s exaggeration of every Indian mom stereotype just made you love them more.
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Since this is a goodbye, we have to talk about closure. I must then mention my favourite arc, which has to be—drumroll please—Paxton Hall Yoshida, played by an amazing Darren Barnet. Sure, Devi was the centre of this universe. But the things that Mindy Kaling and Lang Fisher have done with what started off as your basic dumb hot jock trope… I hold it in high regard. In stories like these, you’d have expected only a few supplementary characters, such as the best friends or the love interest to have fleshed-out characters, rarely the jock. But Paxton’s arc goes beyond what Devi would’ve needed for her character growth. His journey becomes a teaching moment for Devi when she’s about to go to college… and it is all so satisfactory!
As someone who has been motivated to do a lot of things because of my crushes, I love how Never Have I Ever decided to make this such an important part of Devi’s growing up. Obsession with a crush can derail and ruin you, but it can be a potent power that makes you introspect, figure out what you really want, and motivate you to do better. Paxton and Devi’s final scenes in the show give cathartic closure to all of us.
Devi gets to explore her sexuality this season, beyond just losing her virginity, with the entry of another hottie, Michael Cimino as Ethan. What happens between Devi and the three boys in her life—Paxton, Ben (a fantastic Jaren Lewison), and Ethan, is where her real growth can be measured this season. We’ve already seen her counter the issues between her and her mother. But this season, we see Devi graduate with honours in an issue that has always been her concern, boys and being secure in her relationships. Of course, it stems from her daddy issues and feeling like she’s never going to be enough. But in Season 4, we see how much the therapy sessions with Dr. Ryan were actually helping her deal with her insecurities.
That being said, I love that Devi’s growth is not absolute. She’s still going to mess up and need therapy, and she remains one of the lesser likeable of all the characters we’ve met. It’s physically hard to defend her when she makes poor choices! But that’s actually a good thing. Most shows give you the protagonist’s redemption arc, but Devi has always continued to learn from her mistakes, react to situations more maturely and accept when it was her fault. She doesn’t stop making mistakes. She simply understands herself better and thereby those around her and reacts accordingly. Isn’t that adulting?
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Devi’s relationship with every character on the show, but in particular with the other women of the Vishwakumar household is something I hold very dear. They’re all quite P.H.A.T. and find the perfect men in their lives a tad too conveniently, even Pati! It’s them as women who are willing to rewrite the toxic traditional values of an Indian family to accommodate the modern world that is worthy of emulating. To think that they all came together in this Californian town because of one man, Mohan (Sendhil Ramamurthy) and how his absence, or the entry of any other men in their lives, doesn’t continue to define them is so beautifully relevant.
I do wish Kamala’s arc in this last season would’ve had some more meat on it. I’ve loved her defiance and the courage to say no to a comfortable life that most Indian women are cajoled into saying yes to. But this season, it all felt very haphazardly wrapped up. In fact, a bunch of characters get that treatment this season, including Eleanor (Ramona Young) and Fabiola (a superb Lee Rodriguez). Aneesa (Megan Suri), a new character introduced in the previous seasons to give Devi some competition in the Ben department is conveniently MIA and only shows up for the final goodbyes.
Only Paxton gets a narrator episode this season (yes, Gigi Hadid takes the wheel once again), and I wonder if this season Ben too deserved one, since he was going through so much himself with college admissions and his feelings about Devi. Furthermore, where is this graduating class’ Valedictorian speech? I was counting on this particular scene making me cry because my tears really never came for this final season. And I’ve cried for both Marvelous Mrs Maisel and Succession ending! I thought I would bawl when NHIE ended because of all the catharsis. And yet…
Some of my biggest issues with Never Have I Ever season 4 has been just how conveniently things get sorted for Devi and her friends in the end. In Devi’s case, both the college and boyfriend scenario working out exactly how she wanted didn’t sit right with me. That has never happened with her before, she messes up, and the show has usually made her face repercussions, including breakups with the boy she loves. The real test of her newly acquired maturity would’ve been when her life would’ve gone off script and she would’ve had to deal with it. Instead, things took a very Bollywood turn in the end.
And I don’t just mean Devi and Kamala dancing to a ‘Saami Saami’ from Pushpa at an Indian wedding in the last episode, which was a total Indian American rom-com cliché. Although the moves were bitchin’, the Indian outfits of the entire cast (barring perhaps Poorna Jagannathan) were giving, as Diet Sabya would say, NRI gate. As bang on as they get Devi’s Western outfits and the regular accessories and hair of the rest of the cast, the stylists really shit the bed with the Indian looks. I wanted to personally dismantle Richa Moorjani’s hairdo for that wedding sequence, because WHY. This is a generation that is on Instagram and TikTok, and I refuse to believe they wouldn’t know what’s in fashion in Indian wear. Or was this an intentional meta-representation of authentic NRI fashion? It’s giving me a headache trying to figure that out.
Also Read: Never Have I Ever Season 4: Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Richa Moorjani Groove To Rashmika’s ‘Saami Saami’ In Series Finale!
Maybe, I’ll just excuse myself from it and choose to focus on something else, the way narrator John McEnroe does when Devi’s doing NSFW things! I once again want to tip my hat to whoever had the stroke of genius to have him narrate Devi’s story. It is, without a doubt, THE best thing about Never Have I Ever, because never have I ever had this much fun with this narrative device.
I am going to miss this show, the gang, and its on-point pop culture references. I cannot wait to see what this bunch of young actors we saw promising performances from will be up to next. And that closing “For now” from McEnroe has me hopeful that someday, we could revisit Devi Vishwakumar’s chaotic life. Until then, NHIE fan out!