Y: The Last Man - Plot Summary

Plot Summary

Further information: List of Y: The Last Man story arcs

On July 17, 2002, something (referred to as a plague) simultaneously kills every living mammal possessing a Y chromosome — including embryos, fertilized eggs, and even sperm. The only exceptions appear to be New York residents Yorick Brown, a young amateur escape artist, and his male Capuchin monkey, Ampersand. Many women are killed from disasters caused by the men's deaths.

Society is plunged into chaos as infrastructures collapse, and the surviving women everywhere try to cope with the loss of the men, and the belief that - barring a rapid, major scientific breakthrough or other extraordinary happening - humanity is doomed to extinction.

Yorick leaves New York City for DC to reunite with his mother, a member of Congress. In the process, he meets the new president of the United States, the former Secretary of Agriculture (since everyone above in the line of succession had died). The mysterious Agent 355 is commissioned by the president to help and protect Yorick and get him to Boston to meet with brilliant geneticist and cloning expert Dr. Allison Mann, despite Yorick's determination to find his girlfriend Beth, who was in Australia when the plague struck. However, Congresswoman Brown's distrust for 355 and 355's agency leads her to reveal Yorick's existence to an Israeli commando nicknamed Alter. Alter, however, has different plans for Yorick, hoping to use his existence as leverage against any and all of Israel's enemies, which in the new state of the world seems to be every other country.

Cross-country travel is incredibly hard going, fuel and food are becoming rarer by the day, railways and roads are often blocked and broken and patrolled by armed gangs. Air travel is all but impossible. Yorick spends much of his time disguised as a woman, wearing a gas mask to avoid detection.

In Boston, Yorick and Agent 355 meet up with Dr. Mann, but in the process her lab is burnt down by Alter and her team. Dr. Mann has a backup laboratory in California which Agent 355 and Yorick agree to journey to, with the aim of using Yorick to find answers to the plague (including the mystery of his and Ampersand's sole survival) as well as possibly produce more male humans.

The group spends approximately two years traveling across America to reach Dr. Mann's second lab. During their journey they experience several adventures which are revealed as short stories or incomplete vignettes. The dialogue alludes to many encounters which happen off-page, explaining that the reader is only being shown the most important incidents of a much longer story.

While traveling through the Midwest, Yorick's group encounters Natalya, a Russian soldier who accompanies them to a "hot suite" where biologists maintain a sterile environment. It is revealed that three astronauts are alive aboard the International Space Station, two of whom are male. These astronauts attempt to land near the sterile room so that they can be quarantined from the plague. However, the Soyuz capsule they use to land has degraded from lack of maintenance. In the end, the vessel explodes and the two male astronauts are killed. The surviving astronaut, Ciba, explains that she is carrying the child of one of the astronauts, and she is quarantined until the child, who is male, is born. At the same time, the site is attacked by Israeli commandos led by Alter, who briefly capture Yorick before being driven off.

Yorick continues to travel with his comrades, and has a brief affair with another girl named Beth, who shares many traits in common with his fiancée. They make love in a church graveyard before Yorick proceeds. Much later, it is revealed that Yorick impregnated the second "Beth". "Beth Number Two" and her child, who is female, later join Yorick's sister in searching for him.

Yorick's group eventually arrive at Dr. Mann's second laboratory. Dr. Mann studies Yorick and Ampersand, and finds that Ampersand has an unspecified immunity to the "plague" which he passed on to Yorick by throwing feces at him. However, before her work can proceed Dr. Mann's laboratory is destroyed and Ampersand captured by Toyota, a female ninja whose purposes are not revealed for some time.

Toyota takes Ampersand to Japan, and Yorick, 355, and Dr. Mann follow by sea. Their journey is interrupted by a battle between opium smugglers and the Australian navy, during which their group is infiltrated by an Australian spy named Rose. Rose enters a romantic relationship with Dr. Mann, and follows Yorick's group on the remainder of their journey to Japan. In Japan, Dr. Mann is reunited with her mother, a brilliant biologist. After some minor misadventures, Yorick is reunited with Ampersand. Rose gives up serving the Australian military, so that she can have an honest relationship with Allison Mann. Later, Yorick and 355 are captured by Toyota, but 355 kills Toyota in a rooftop duel.

Allison Mann's father, Dr. Matsumori is found to have survived the plague, and provides a number of explanations.

First, Allison Mann competed with her father to create the world's first human clone. Dr. Matsumori hired Toyota to poison Allison so that her cloned fetus would die. Allison nearly dies of uterine tumors and is saved by her mother's surgical skill, but it is not clear whether this was a side effect of Allison's clone research or Toyota's poison. Regardless, Dr. Matsumori reveals that he has created multiple clones of Allison.

Dr. Matsumori's second revelation is that he believes he was responsible for Ampersand's immunity to the "plague". He had tried to turn Ampersand into a biological weapon that would kill the clone his daughter was gestating, but the monkey was mis-delivered to Yorick by happenstance. Dr. Matsumori believes that when he perfected the human cloning process he rendered males obsolete, after which the Earth killed all males (a theory discussed in greater detail below). Dr. Matsumori intends to kill Yorick and himself, thereby removing the last two males from the planet (or at least, the last two he knows of). Allison Mann interrupts her father and they have an altercation, resulting in her killing him.

Yorick and 355 end up journeying to Paris to meet Yorick's fiancée, Beth. Yorick's sister, Hero, "Beth Number Two," Ciba, and Natalya all meet them in Paris. After being reunited with Beth, Yorick comes to realize he does not want to marry her. It is alluded to that 355 is the only person Yorick loves and respects. However, the Israeli soldier Alter kills 355 with a sniper rifle. The Israeli commando attempts to capture Yorick once again, but 355 has taught Yorick to fight and given him the courage to oppose her. Yorick defeats Alter but, realizing that she wants him to kill her, knocks her out, letting her live and the Israelis surrender and depart.

The story then provides an epilogue with several vignettes that take place over the next sixty years. Yorick marries "Beth Number Two" and they raise their daughter, who eventually becomes President of France. Beth and Hero enter a lesbian relationship. Ampersand grows old, and Yorick eventually euthanizes him. Allison Mann dies of illness, but her clones carry on her work. Society eventually stabilizes and human cloning becomes commonplace. At least seventeen Yorick clones are produced, although geneticists are eventually able to produce clones of other males. Yorick, now 85 years old, has been institutionalized in a building in France. Yorick is introduced to a younger clone of himself (Yorick Brown, the Seventeenth), and he imparts some advice regarding the breadth of life's experiences to his clone before escaping when the clone turns away.