Parents' Guide to After Everything (2023)

This series finale takes a different direction to present a more mature and significantly more interesting closing entry. The After series grows up in After Everything, which focuses on Hardin's own growing up. Of course, this had to be so, as the entire series is built around his personal problems and general lack of self-awareness. Though the franchise has sold itself as a tortured love story, in some ways it can be read as a journey toward sobriety. And if Hardin's problems stemmed originally from complicated relationships with his parents, this closing chapter shows them contributing -- through unconditional love and sound advice -- to his recovery.

After Everything has less sex, more dialogue, prettier scenery, and the addition of an extremely appealing new character. It also features costar Langford minimally. Instead, the main female character is Nathalie, a girl Hardin wronged five years earlier (seen in clumsy flashbacks, matched later with an equally clumsy flash-forward coda). Nathalie is played by Mimi Keene (of Sex Education fame), who steals the limelight every time she's on camera. Her soothing presence and friendship are key to Hardin's transformation, as is the new setting. The action here centers on the gorgeous coastal city of Lisbon, which positively glimmers in this film. One could almost wish for the formerly maddening series to carry on -- but only in the vein of its final chapter.