Finn Wolfhard’s character in When You Finish Saving the World—a 2022 A24 drama now streaming on Netflix—is a 17-year-old social media influencer. He’s used his mediocre guitar skills, floppy hair, and baby face to accrue thousands of followers who hang on his every word. He has almost nothing of substance to say, but that hardly matters. He uses obnoxious slang like “terra,” brags about his follower count, and screams at his mother for interrupting his livestream. He is, in other words, the worst.
I have to say, casting Wolfhard as the most aggravating teen boy of all time is an inspired move. Hats off to Jesse Eisenberg, who adapted the script from an audio drama he wrote in 2020, and then directed it in his feature directorial debut. When You Finish Saving the World first premiered virtually at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, and was finally released quietly in theaters and on VOD a year later. But now that the film is streaming on Netflix, it’s sure to find a second life. The large, loyal Stranger Things fanbase are already subscribed to Netflix, and the already love to hate Wolfhard as protagonist Mike Wheeler. Now, they’ll have a new annoying little jerk to love to hate: Ziggy.
Woflhard’s character in When You Finish Saving the World, Ziggy, feels like a natural progression from his Stranger Things role. Llet’s be real: Mike’s the worst! We love him, and we forgive him, but we also acknowledge that he’s an annoying little jerk. The same is true for Ziggy, the self-absorbed teen son of an upper-middle-class liberal woman named Evelyn (played with unflinching ferocity by the great Julianne Moore). Eveyln runs a shelter for domestic abuse survivors, and she fancies herself a good person. She gives. She protests. She cares. She’s an ally. So she’s baffled by her son’s total lack of interest in anything outside of his follower count.
“You were going to be one of the good ones,” Moore laments to her on-screen son. But he’s not one of the good ones. He’s just your average, self-centered, shallow, teen boy.
As Ziggy, Wolfhard is whiny, and insincere, and downright pathetic. He’s quick to agree with the politically active girl he’s crushing on at school, Lila (played by 13 Reasons Why actor Alisha Boe), but when he’s asked to elaborate on how, exactly, he agree with her, he’s left gaping like a fish. He never misses a chance to self-promo, and he’s awkward about it. He’s disrespectful toward his parents, and they disrespect him right back. He’s not a bad person; he’s just not a very good one. He craves love and attention, but has no idea how to get it. It’s infuriating, but it’s also just plain sad. And there’s no one better to play that role than Wolfhard. He didn’t just understand the assignment, he aced it.
Of course, as the movie progress, we come to realize that Evelyn is every bit as flawed and narcissistic as her son. She is, perhaps, worse. After all, Ziggy is a teenager. We were all narcissistic teens! That’s just science. Moore’s character is a full-grown woman. Yes, we sympathize with her that her son’s the worst—but she’s kinda the worst, too.
You’ll need a high tolerance for cringe, but ultimately When You Finish Saving the World is a fascinating, empathetic study of two deeply flawed people. And if you’re a Mike Wheeler stan, you definitely don’t want to miss it. No one plays a pathetic whiny kid like Finn Wolfhard.