In June of 2021 — two months before the Food and Drug Administration approved the first COVID-19 vaccine — Netflix dropped the popular fantasy drama series “Sweet Tooth” about a mysterious global virus called The Sick.
The second season arrived in April of 2023 — just a month before the World Health Organization and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services declared an end to the global public health emergency.
This Thursday, “Sweet Tooth” returns for its third and final season, providing an exciting and touching conclusion to a binge-worthy series that has provided catharsis for viewers as society coped with a real-world pandemic.
Adapted by Jim Mickle and Beth Schwartz from the Canadian comic books by Jeff Lemire, the series follows a half-human, half-deer kid named Gus (nicknamed “Sweet Tooth”), who embarks on a journey to find his mother after the death of his father in a post-apocalyptic world. It’s a perilous journey as his fellow hybrids are being hunted by humans known as the Last Men, who blame the hybrids for unleashing the deadly H5G9 virus known as The Sick.
Born in Los Angeles but raised in Vancouver, child star Christian Convery has grown up before our very eyes. It seems like yesterday that he was just a little kid growing up off the grid in Yellowstone, sheltered from the outside world by his single father Pubba (Will Forte) before befriending other hybrids at the Preserve. Now, a year after his role in “Cocaine Bear” (2023), Convery is the true hero and driving force of the action in season three.
His trusty guardian remains Tommy Jepperd a.k.a. Big Man (Nonso Anozie, “Game of Thrones”), alongside his half-pig pal Wendy (Naledi Murray) and the brave Becky “Bear” Walker (Stefania LaVie Owen), the leader of the Animal Army saving hybrids. Amy Seimetz also has a bigger role this season as Gus’ “mother” Birdie, who lives in Alaska with the indigenous single mom Siana (Cara Gee) and her arctic-wolf hybrid daughter Luka (Ayazhan Dalabayeva).
With Season 2 villain General Abbot dead and gone, the main villain is now the evil warlord Mrs. Helen Zhang (Rosalind Chao), wearing a fur coat like Cruella de Vil in her quest to kill all hybrids and return the world to only humans. She prays that her pregnant daughter Ginger (Louise Jiang) gives birth to a human, while shunning the kids of her other daughter Rosie (Kelly Marie Tran) for being a pack of hybrid wolf boys raised to be rabid killers.
Not only must our heroes evade these monsters, they must also survive avalanches as they travel by foot over the Rocky Mountains, then waves as they board a boat toward the polar night of Alaska. The final destination is an arctic cave containing “the blood of the earth,” which could hold the cure for The Sick. This intrigues Dr. Aditya Singh (Adeel Akhtar), who previously sacrificed hybrids to use their immune blood to keep his infected wife alive.
If you read between the lines of the surface-level action and adventure, the thick social commentary is ripe for comparisons to our current state of the world as bombastic U.S. politicians echo Hitler’s language about the “blood of America being poisoned” by immigrants. In this light, the hybrids of “Sweet Tooth” symbolize future generations of interracial Americans, only in this show, they don’t face segregation — they face extermination.
Thus, the final season hypothesizes that maybe humans are the disease and The Sick is the cure. Maybe Mother Nature is self correcting by having flowers bloom out of dead humans to reset the Earth and give a new hybrid species a chance to roam because humans had their chance and blew it. Hopefully, this TV series forces humanity to look in the mirror amid real challenges of pollution, deforestation, climate change and nuclear war.
It’s rare for such heavy themes to go down so smoothly in such an entertaining piece of pop-culture viewing, but that’s the bread and butter of “Sweet Tooth.” The series finale offers some thought-provoking narration by Josh Brolin, while the falling action is heartwarming for devoted viewers (yes, we even get the little critter Bobby, who is undoubtedly cute but oddly isn’t a hybrid — a choice I still don’t quite understand).
As the final credits roll and you reach for your TV remote, don’t panic if your pinkie finger starts twitching. It’s not a sign of The Sick; you’re probably just tired from staying up all night binge-watching the last of “Sweet Tooth.”
Thanks for the ride, Netflix. I can’t wait for your next Gus spinoff: “Half Baby Reindeer.”
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