Aired 03 December 2016

Parents are almost inevitably some of the most complicating and limiting factors of a teen drama series such as Class; after all, the parents need to be present to ground this world in some semblance of reality without being the focus, but there is also only so much that the protagonists can experience and achieve without the parents noticing and intervening. Class has tried its best to mitigate this fact by limiting the amount of parents in the background with Charlie the last member of his species, April’s estranged father a man she would rather not associate with, Ram’s mother unseen and presumably elsewhere, Tanya’s father dead, and Matteusz’s parents unwilling to accept the fact that he is gay. While certain of the parental figures still present have provided some intriguing plot and character development earlier in the series, however, they haven’t really had the opportunity to truly develop in their own right and show beyond assumption how integral they are in their children’s world. As such, the decision to centre ‘The Lost’ around the violent deaths of Tanya’s mother and Ram’s father at the hands of Corakinus fails to deliver the emotional impact it should beyond what caring about the protagonists allows, just one mistake in a crowded and tonally jarring finale that attempts to achieve far too much.

Of course, one of the problems that ‘The Lost’ is unable to rectify is that Corakinus and the Shadow Kin remain far too generic and clichéd as villains to come off as anything other than being evil for evil’s sake. With four appearances in eight episodes, the Shadow Kin have already worn out their welcome, and there sadly remains no exploration to give further depth to these foes’ motivations or the potential symbology of the attempts at good but necessary evil needed to defeat them. However, it’s also the speed at which ‘The Lost’ moves that robs the episode of the power that preceding episodes have contained. This is a group of teens has been through so much together and formed an incredibly tight bond, but there is simply no time for them to support each other as the personal and public horrors and tragedies mount. Likewise, while all of the core cast members have proven remarkably adept at delivering a truly engrossing range of emotion, the script asks them to compress the tumultuous feelings of despair, grief, rage, and confusion into incredibly brief periods that are implausible for the characters and unsuitable for the story as a whole. There is so much potential drama to be mined from, for example, Ram trying to find meaning in a world that has lost all meaning to him, but instead putting the focus on so many different ideas and technobabble makes the leads much more one-dimensional than ever before.

‘The Lost’ ultimately comes down to whether or not Charlie will use the Cabinet of Souls, but there ironically is little heart or soul to this episode or characters as a whole in what amounts to a major misstep and disappointing finale for a series that had achieved so much in such a short period of time. There’s plenty of ambition as the characters’ plots progress, and April’s shared heart as well as a pregnant Quill training Tanya are particularly fascinating threads, but the episode is filled only with hints at what could have been with a more purposeful pacing. With the final scenes showing the Governors to be in league with the iconic Weeping Angels of Doctor Who, the series ends on an uneasy suggestion that this has all been setup for a more streamlined second series fronted by engaging and nuanced villains that far outshine anything the Shadow Kin were able to deliver. There are some genuinely nice moments interspersed through ‘The Lost’ despite what seems like a harsh review, and the talented leads do an incredible job within the episode’s constraints, but this is not the ending that this engaging series deserved.