Netflix Series With Stephen King Star Deserves Season 2

The Netflix original stars Sophia Lillis, best known for her role as young Beverly in IT (2017). How fitting that an actor who got her big break in a Stephen King movie would go on to play a modern-day version of his first heroine?

The series was written and developed by Jonathan Entwistle, the director of The End of the F-ing World. Like that series, it was based on a graphic novel by Charles Forsman. Also like that series, it surpasses the source material by fleshing out the characters and situations.

The show follows teenager Sydney as she deals with her father’s suicide and her romantic feelings for her best friend, Dina. Both burdens weigh heavily on her teenage soul until the pressure reveals her latent psychokinetic abilities.

For Stephen King‘s Carrie White, it was getting her first period. For Sydney Novak, it’s PTSD and her burgeoning lesbianism.

Either way, High School sucks.

Sydney starts innocently enough by giving Dina’s boyfriend a nosebleed. But by the finale of I Am Not Okay With This, she’s shaking trees and exploding heads.

In an homage to Carrie, the series ends with its protagonist covered in blood at a dance. This time, however, it’s chauvinist pig blood.

There was a time when Netflix was renewing and throwing money at everything under the sun just to beef up its library of original programming. Then the pandemic hit, causing the streamer to slow down and think twice about what it did or didn’t produce.

I Am Not Okay With This was far from the only casualty, but that doesn’t make its cancellation sting any less.

For one thing, the B-plot of a mysterious stranger stalking Sydney was left hanging without a resolution.

Even more unfortunate, Entwistle changed the graphic novel’s ending specifically so he could make multiple seasons. In the original, the exploding head at the end is Sydney’s.

While the director is undoubtedly no fan of suicide, if the project was limited to one season from the beginning, it’s possible he may have incorporated the original ending into the series in some way.

Entwistle had suggested continuing the story in the form of a novel, but so far, nothing has been announced. Even if Netflix tried to revive I Am Not Okay With This, now the actors have surely aged out of their parts.

So, for now, one season is all we have. But don’t let that scare you away from checking it out. I Am Not Okay With This is streaming right now on Netflix and you should absolutely give it a watch.

Just try not to let the series’ unfulfilled potential make your head explode.