Younger season 7 review: Liza follows her heart in the final season

All good things must come to an end is a proverb that nothing good lasts forever. Younger fans like myself are feeling the same way after news broke that the seventh season will be the final one for the hit show. I was lucky enough to get a sneak peek of the first season of the romantic comedy series at a pop-up during New York Fashion Week before its 2015 debut on TV Land.

Imagine my delight at watching a divorced forty-year-old named Liza Miller ( Sutton Foster)  con her way into an entry-level position in the publishing world. Liza is mentored by her twenty-something co-worker Kelsey Peters (Hilary Duff) on how to navigate her career as a fellow millennial.  She lands the job fetching coffee for Diana Trout (Miriam Shor) and continues her charade while flirting with Josh (Nico Tortorella)  a much younger tattoo artist.

Liza’s chemistry with Josh is off the charts as the couple even breaks the bed during one of their steamy lovemaking sessions. The stakes get higher each season as Liza is forced to hide her true age from everyone at work including her boss Charles  (Peter Hermann) and Josh who eventually becomes her boyfriend.

Liza’s scheme to keep her true identity a secret unravels as more people learning the truth when her two worlds often collide. The only person who knows all the details is Liza’s best friend,  Maggie Amato, played by Debi Mazer. Liza and Josh make up and break up over the years, but she eventually falls in love with her boss Charles. Things get complicated in Season 6 when Josh learns that his Irish ex-wife, Claire, played by Bridgerton star Phoebe Dynevor is pregnant with his baby.

The sixth season ends with a cliffhanger at Diana’s wedding to her husband Enzo ( Chris Tardio) when Charles proposes to Liza. The final season had some cast changes due to the pandemic. Series regulars Miriam Shor and  Charles Michael Davis ( Zane) had their roles drastically scaled back to a couple of phone calls.

“They tell us nothing. I am in the dark 100%. We’re so excited when we get each script to figure out where the story is going too. We’re like fans.”  Shor told me at a red carpet event before the pandemic while promoting her Netflix movie Lost Girls.

The season 7 premiere begins at Diana’s wedding, where we still have to find out if Liza decides to marry Charles. “Liza does not immediately answer Charles,” Sutton Foster admits to TVLine, adding, “They’re in love with one another, but they might want different things. Liza and Charles have different ideas about marriage, and that’s going to cause some complications.”

Diana leaves on her honeymoon with Enzo where she remains during the season. Kelsey’s best friend Lauren (Molly Bernard) is promoted as an in-house publicist at the publishing house. Her role was tolerable in small doses but without the wry wit and charm of Diana’s one-liners, this character wears thin and becomes too over the top in every scene she inhabits.

Kelsey has to deal with a demotion at work after her Millennial imprint gets reimagined. She’s hit with another setback when she breaks up with Zane once Mercury was dissolved and he returns to work as her subordinate at Empirical. “Are you breaking up with me because I got promoted over you?” Kelsey asks her alpha male boyfriend Zane over a facetime call.

Billionaire Quinn (Laura Benanti) returns to pitch another book after experiencing failure in her political career. Benanti does a good job playing a vindictive villain as she manages to weasel her way back into the publishing firm she once left bankrupt.

Liza and Charles appear in jeopardy again when Charles proposes a dealbreaker in their courtship. Liza wants to throw out the rulebook on their relationship. But this leaves Charles vulnerable to Quinn’s charms and a Page Six blind item while Liza receives an indecent proposal from a tanned Australian surfing pro.

Shor wouldn’t confirm if there were any musical numbers this season. But Quinn does make a reference to The Sound of Music when she compares herself to Liza.

“You’re Maria Von Trapp and I’m the Baroness. Nobody roots for the Baroness,” Quinn quips. I have seen 11 episodes of the season so I do know that Broadway star Benanti does do some singing. There were a few musical numbers last season. Shor confessed that she loved adding her vocals to the show.

“I don’t know. I loved it too. Getting to sing a Dolly Parton song with Sutton Foster and Hilary Duff…there are a lot of musical people on the show. I know Sutton was like…I will sing as long as you make it so that my character can’t sing. But I was like no…Diana can sing.”

Younger was inspired by the bestselling novel written by Pamela Redmond, but its heroine has grown and evolved over the course of the series run.

“I feel like the show becomes less about Liza’s secret and in some measures more about the secrets that the other characters have,” showrunner Darren Starr explained. “And I think some of these characters, they really have their own secrets. [They] have all deepened and evolved.”

“What is great about this show is it started as a woman who was lying about her age to get back into the workplace. Which would evolve into a great ensemble. There are characters that we all really care about. I think a lot of this season has to do with people who are very passionate about what they do.”

We can still expect to see a quirky cast of characters inspired by pop culture icons like Lizzo and Amy Tan. Greta Thunberg also gets the Younger parody as an overzealous teenage environmentalist named Fupa Gurnhoff.

I must confess that I have always been Team Josh from the moment they met as I watched their sparks fly. But, on paper, Team Charles does look more stable and age-appropriate than a May/December romance. Variety reports that  Starr is working on a Younger spin-off with Hilary Duff’s character so it’s possible members of this cast may come together again.

I’m sad to see these characters fade into the sunset but one thing is certain that Diana does get a happy ending after her wedding day. When I asked Shor about where Diana’s relationship with plumber Enzo is going in the final season, she called the pair “the healthiest relationship in the show”.

“I love Enzo. I love Chris Tardio who plays Enzo. I think he’s a dreamboat of a human. I hope it goes and goes and goes,” she continued. “I kinda hope for a happy ending with them.”

I was given every episode except the last one to review. So I will have to tune in with everyone else to find out who Liza finally ends up with on the series finale. I have spent seven years with this team soaking in fab fashion, romance, and New York City, so it’s tough to say goodbye and close this chapter.

Stream the first 4 episodes of the final season of Younger, on Paramount+ and Hulu. New episodes of Younger will be released Thursdays on Hulu and Paramount+.