Looking for Alaska episode 8 review: Last words
By Meg Dowell
In the final episode of the series, Miles and his friends are determined to solve the mystery of what really happened to Alaska.
This review contains spoilers for Looking for Alaska. If you don’t want to know how the series ends before you watch, come back once you’re all caught up.
“If people were rain, I was drizzle, and she was a hurricane.”
They worked the line in! And it didn’t feel forced! It was beautifully delivered, and it totally worked as dialogue (it was originally from Miles’ first-person narration). And it truly did capture the depth of his grief and the significance of him finally being able to talk about how he feels about Alaska.
Speaking of grief, everyone in this episode is starting to come to terms with Alaska’s tragic death in their own way.
There’s the bench, which many admired, but Alaska’s closest friends knew she would have hated. (It really is the thought that counts, right?) There’s the quote from Alaska’s paper that Hyde uses to make sure her memory lives on through her fellow students.
And then there’s the prank. The ultimate prank, which shall from here on out be known as The Prank That Made The Eagle Laugh.
Somehow, this scene wasn’t nearly as funny in the book as it is in the show. Seeing it happen is insane. And the fact that The Eagle doesn’t react to a surprise male stripper in Culver Creek’s gym in the way you’d expect the dean of a school to act makes it so much better.
It’s the exact prank Alaska would have pulled just because she could. And it’s the perfect celebration of everything that she was — especially the best parts of her. The parts that looked for joy and found it in the most ridiculous things.
This part of the episode is bittersweet. Because despite the success of the prank, grief still lingers. Miles and the Colonel especially need to fully accept the loss and begin to move forward.
So they go for a drive.
Where they avoided it on their way to and from Alaska’s funeral, Miles and The Colonel finally drive by the place where Alaska died. They stop, they hug it out, they cry, and it’s truly beautiful.
The one thing we don’t know still: What were Alaska’s last words?
Part of Miles’ acceptance of Alaska’s death is accepting that some mysteries will always remain.
This is not a mystery they will ever have all the answers to. The only person who knows what really happened that night is Alaska. And she’s not exactly available for questioning.
Miles will never know her last words. But he is finally coming to terms with the fact that, maybe, her last words to him are the ones that matter most.
The show ends with a voiceover quoted directly from the book, which fixes and breaks your heart all at once: “Thomas Edison’s last words were: ‘It’s very beautiful over there.’ I don’t know where ‘there’ is, but I believe it’s somewhere, and I hope it’s beautiful.”
This story would not have been able to capture the true heart of the book onscreen if it had been condensed into two hours or less of content. Even though we waited years for news of some kind of book-to-screen adaption, it’s clear now that a limited series like this was the best way it could have been done.
It was, at least for me, the first time in a long time I felt like a book I loved was coming to life almost word-for-word in front of me. There were some small changes — there’s no avoiding that. But those changes are what made the adaption such an honorable tribute to John Green’s original work.
The final shot of Miles standing alone as the camera slowly zooms out could not have been more perfect. It says everything we’re all thinking as the end credits begin to roll.
Miles is going to be OK. And so are we.
How blessed we are to have been given a chance to fall in love with this story all over again.
Next. Looking for Alaska episode 7 review: Where's Alaska?. dark