In the eighth and final 10-episode season of Big Mouth, the adult-animated comedy created by Andrew Goldberg, Nick Kroll, Mark Levin, and Jennifer Flackett, the kids at the center of the story have reached high school, aka ground zero for puberty mania, emerging sexuality mania, and shifting friend group mania. Or, most of the major manias that have driven this show’s potty-mouthed perspective on adolescence since it began. Nick Birch (Kroll) and Andrew Glouberman (John Mulaney), Jessi Glaser (Jessi Klein) and Missy Foreman-Greenwald (Ayo Edebiri), Matthew MacDell (Andrew Rannells) and Jay Bilzerian (Jason Mantzoukas): these teens are all facing changes in their lives, and their bodies. But luckily and/or frustratingly, they continue to be accompanied by hormone monsters who butt in with opinions on everything. Season 8 additions to the already impressive Big Mouth voice cast include Holly Hunter, Cynthia Erivo, Natasha Lyonne, Steve Buscemi, Quinta Brunson, and Kristen Wiig.
Opening Shot: As we’re welcomed back to Big Mouth by a narrator with a British accent, it’s with a view of Bridgeton High School. Most kids in there are finding new groups to hang with – like Jessi (Klein) with the burnouts – but Andrew (Mulaney) misses Nick (Kroll), who attends a private school.
The Gist: “Did we get a British narrator?” Jessi asks Connie (Maya Rudolph), her furry hormonal shoulder monster. But Connie chalks up the snooty voiceover to how zooted Jessi’s getting on weed vapes. And sitting alone in the cafeteria, Andrew watches a TikTok Nick made with a friend at his new school. To add insult to injury, Nick’s new friend is also named Andrew (Zach Woods). He is quickly dubbed “Other” or even “Evil” Andrew.
Matthew (Rannells) has new friends, too, the more sexually-experienced older kids in the “B-High Quee-Choi,” led by Ocean (Billy Porter), who sing songs in tribute to the private parts of Evan Hansen. And Missy (Edebiri) would probably wish to do something like sit alone in the cafeteria – instead she’s currently being homeschooled by her father Cyrus (Jordan Peele), and his pestering is driving her up a wall. For Andrew G, missing out on fun with Nick, and Matthew, worried about his lack of sexual experience – expressed in Big Mouth through his anxiety over blow job quality – and Missy, who sees Jessi hanging with her stoner crew, what’s forming in their minds is a big ol’ case of FOMO. Or, as fear of missing out is characterized by Matthew’s shame monster Maurice (also voiced by Kroll), “Oh crap, you have Homo FOMO.”
The final season of Big Mouth is plotted generally around those big moments in the high school calendar – like Homecoming dances, driver’s ed courses, and discovering porn. The kids will make mistakes along the way, support each other as friends (but also be at odds as friends), build new romantic relationships, and become more aware of what their futures might hold. All along, they’ll get advice from their hormonal creature companions, a crew that will also grow and change along with the kids themselves. (Holly Hunter will help manifest Compassion, a new feeling for the adolescents.) And they’ll always, always, always be on the lookout for the meddling of the Shame Wizard (David Thewlis), who is to these kids’ travels through puberty what the Mind Flayer is to the Stranger Things crew.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Over its two seasons, the Big Mouth spinoff Human Resources expanded on the world and workplace of the monsters in charge of human emotions. And Inside Job, also on Netflix, found lots of laughs in its skewering of politics and the so-called “deep state.”
Our Take: There is a sweetness to some of Big Mouth, when its version of the coming-of-age sentiment typical for a show with this premise surfaces. But it’s not the driving force. No way. Jokes filled with swearing, and jokes filled with swearing about sex and body parts — in Season 8, there is somehow more than one dumb bit about wet and dry assholes involving cats and humans — is the focus here, as it’s been since Big Mouth began. The title of Season 1 Episode 1 was “Ejaculation”; the title of Season 8 Episode 1 is “Homecumming.” You see what they did there? If Big Mouth did focus more on coming-of-age sentiment, you know they’d call it “cumming-of-age” instead.
For us, this insistence on foul-mouthed takes on fornication gets pretty tiresome, pretty quick. While the voice cast of Big Mouth is long and distinguished, and the delivery of is usually aces – John Mulaney as Andrew is a standout, as is Thandiwe Newton as Mona, Missy’s monstress – the material ultimately feels one-dimensional. After yet another flurry of “fucks” and “shits” – and joking about fucking and shitting – we feel exhausted, not entertained. But hey! That’s us. As the vocal subreddits about Big Mouth indicate, we could be in the minority. In that sense, Season 8 of the show is a big deal, since it will conclude these characters’ journeys. And for that matter, the hormonal monsters who tend to dominate the Big Mouth kids’ conversations would probably dismiss our complaints, too. “This is what we wanted,” Mona tells Missy when they crash the Homecoming dance at Bridgeton. “To do debauchery with hot local teens.” Have at it, cartoon young people and your hormonal manifestations. But at least for us, Big Mouth is not our fucking scene.
Sex and Skin: Constant – bordering on incessant – sex talk. What to expect, how it works, where things go, what things do. Also in Big Mouth Season 8, there may or may not be a sentient vagina.
Parting Shot: After an encounter with a talking cat named “Mr. Pink” – voiced by Mr. Pink himself, Steve Buscemi – Andrew G and Maury the Monster wonder whether the feline’s advice was sound.
Sleeper Star: Nick Kroll’s voice work as Maurice has been strong throughout this series – in a show called Big Mouth, Maury might have the biggest, foulest mouth of all.
Most Pilot-y Line: [John Mulaney Voice] “This FOMO fucking sucks! Nick and Evil Andrew are gonna be having the time of their lives, and I’m gonna be stuck going to the dance alone!”
Our Call: Season 8 of Big Mouth is its last, so fans who’ve stuck with the series since the beginning will enjoy seeing Nick, Andrew, Jessi and Missy navigate the anxieties of high school. For them, it’s a definite STREAM IT. But for the less invested, the show’s obsessions with sex and swearing might feel one-dimensional.
Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.