This article contains spoilers for the final season of “Never Have I Ever.”
“Never Have I Ever,” the series created by Mindy Kaling and Lang Fisher, is now streaming its final season on Netflix. Those 10 episodes prove that the show was never really about which boy Devi Vishwakumar (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) is dating. In the fourth season, the love triangle between Devi, Ben Gross (Jaren Lewison), and Paxton Hall-Yoshida (Darren Barnet) dissolves into a single line pointing in one very clear direction: Ben.
(TV and film writers, including those who worked on “Never Have I Ever,” are currently on strike over pay and working conditions.)
To understand how the show pulls off the perfect slow fade of the teen love-triangle trope, it’s necessary to go back to the beginning. The pilot episode opens with Devi praying to the Hindu gods before the first day of her sophomore year. She desperately wants to be normal and asks for three things typical of a 15-year-old: to be invited to a party (with alcohol), to look different (thinner arm hair), and, most importantly, to get a boyfriend (but not a nerd from one her AP classes; she wants a guy who plays sports and can “rock her all night long”).
When she’s praying, Devi’s grief is fresh. Her dad died in the spring after having a heart attack during her orchestra concert. In Season 1, to cope with the trauma of losing the parent to whom she was closest, Devi focuses on a very unlikely but possibly attainable goal — to have sex with Paxton. He’s the most popular guy in school, and pursuing him becomes the distraction Devi needs.
“I’m gonna have sex with Paxton” is also the only thing she writes in the grief journal that her therapist, Dr. Ryan (Niecy Nash), gives her to process her pain.
I understand Devi’s obsession with Paxton during the first season because I understand her grief. My mom — the parent who understood me best — died a year and a half before “Never Have I Ever” first aired….
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