Local Woman Moved to Tears By Letterkenny Season 8 Finale

Letterkenny’s latest season finale is powerful, moving, and proves that it has become so much more than a show about beer, farts, and small town life… If you’re not watching it yet, pitter-patter.

**Disclaimer: I don’t own Letterkenny or any of the content I write about, etc etc. I just love the show and wanted to get this out of my system.**

M83’s “Do It, Try It” washes over me while I’m sitting on the couch in my apartment, unable to formulate concrete words with my now-useless mouth. I stare up at the end credits on the projector screen and try to process what just happened. I let the credits roll all the way through and sit in my now silent living room for a moment before I finally breathe out a quiet but heartfelt, “Holy shit,” and start the episode over.

I’d just finished watching the latest season of Letterkenny, Jared Keeso and Jacob Tierney’s Canadian sitcom brought to life by its hysterical cold opens, slow motion fight scenes, and unendingly lovable cast. If you haven’t watched Letterkenny before, it’s a little difficult to describe. Some have compared it to the likes of Workaholics, Trailer Park Boys, and Napoleon Dynamite, but there’s something incredibly heartwarming and rewarding about Letterkenny that brings it to a level all its own. What Jared Keeso, Jacob Tierney, and their entire team of writers started with was a funny and endearing look at small town Canadian culture, but in the past 8 seasons it has elevated to what feels like a genuine and heartfelt look at life, relationships, and the importance of found family.

That being said, if you can’t take life a little less seriously and laugh at fart jokes, this show might not be for you. The joy Letterkenny brings its viewers is in its earnestness, in that ability to not take life too seriously except for when it’s necessary. The balance between lighthearted jokes and deeply human moments of vulnerability is so well executed that you don’t even notice at first that you’ve become attached to these characters and this world. So when the show does dig a little bit deeper, you find yourself feeling joy and pain right alongside these characters as if they were your own friends. Which brings me to the latest season and how perfectly that finale swept people off their feet.

**SPOILERS AHEAD: Don’t read this unless you’ve completed Letterkenny’s 8th season.**

We enter the last episode of season 8, Day Beers Day, with a cold open in which Hockey Players Reilly and Jonesy enter Modean’s 3 in compression shorts and little else (Ahem… YEW!), jumping right into a banter-filled conversation with Gail, Katy, Rosie, and our protagonist Wayne arguing over the pros and cons of wearing so little while going for a run. This is a necessary grounding for us, the audience, and one that we’ve all come to expect and love. Letterkenny’s cold opens are always guaranteed to get a laugh, and this one is no exception. While it isn’t apparently necessary or vital to the overarching plot, I would argue that we need those moments of lighthearted mocking to build up our morale as we go into the full episode.

Coming into this episode, we’ve seen the slow but steady relationship growth for siblings Wayne and Katy, with Rosie and Dierks respectively. With Wayne and Rosie, we’ve seen a relaxed and comfortable friendship grow in a natural direction towards a relationship as she helps him through the gut wrenching betrayal of Marie Fred in season 7. With Katy and Dierks, however, we have all felt Wayne’s older brother anxiety as we watch Katy fall head over heels for somebody who hasn’t directly given us any reason to dislike him, but still seems to be a general shitbag. These two paths come to a head in this final episode, as the full episode opens in Modeans 3 with Wayne directly confronting Dierks when Katy isn’t around, grabbing the shitbag’s face and telling him, “I am fucking dying for a piece of you.” And like, really, aren’t we all also dying for Wayne to get a piece of Dierks?

The writers have placed the audience in Wayne’s position here, which makes sense given the fact that he is our protagonist. We don’t want this dude to fuck up, we want Katy to be happy, but damn it if he isn’t a cocky shit who leaves the audience desperately waiting for him to get clocked. So that’s where we start the episode, knowing in our hearts that this won’t end well for Katy, but eagerly awaiting the payoff in the form of a righteous, juicy, slow motion fist fight set to rowdy music. But at this point, we as the audience have absolutely no idea what we’re actually in for.

We see the juxtaposition between Katy and Wayne’s respective relationships throughout this episode. Wayne and Rosie have both grown since their initial relationship way back in seasons 2-5, and we see that their initial incompatibility issues have become nonissues as they sit and read together before agreeing to go to the Day Beers Day celebration together later. The conversation is direct, sweet, and a healing balm on the wounds Marie Fred left all of us with. We also intermittently see the rest of our friends in Letterkenny celebrating Day Beers Day together. Hicks, Hockey Players, and Skids alike all discuss Katy’s new relationship, the McMurray’s sexual escapades, and their mutual dislike of Yanks. There is no separation between these groups any longer, at this point. They are friends, and the theme of found family resonates throughout the rest of the show when they later rush to Katy’s defense.

Throughout the episode, we are shown short moments of Katy’s devotion to Dierks as she prepares to go see him after a few days apart. Most notably, we see Gus, the family dog, stubbornly sitting in front of the door so Katy can’t leave. If you’ve watched Letterkenny up until this point, you have probably noticed that the dogs are mirrors for the characters, Wayne in particular. The significance of Gus trying to protect Katy by keeping her at home should not be lost on any of the audience. She leaves anyways, and we know it won’t end well. We are being set up for disappointment, and it won’t be a surprise, but still… we’re left hoping that it will be okay, that it will work out.

Finally, Marie Fred comes to visit Wayne after Katy has left, and what we’ve all been fearing about Dierks is confirmed. This is where the episode shifts from inaction to action. The writers have prepared us from the start that it would come, but it’s at this point that we as an audience join the characters in the mobilization before battle. There is a thematic element in the slow motion scenes of Letterkenny. It can be seen most often during fights, but the real heart behind the slowed camera is the idea of importance. Weighty moments in life feel slowed down and sped up all at once. The phone call you never want to receive, the person you love getting down on a knee in front of you, a fist flying through the air toward your face… Letterkenny hits these moments of change with a slowed down view that mirrors the simultaneous chaos and weight of life, and this final episode of season 8 weaponizes its greatest tool to incredible effect.

We follow as the separate strings of the episode are woven together, slow and purposeful and set to M83. Katy getting a call and being left hurt and disappointed, Wayne and Rosie going to meet the rest of Letterkenny, this misfit group of people who have become family over the past 8 seasons all rushing to Katy’s aid… There is something so righteous and powerful watching these people rally, no questions asked, to defend their own. We have one last moment of calm when we see Katy arriving to see Dierks, and we hope against hope that he isn’t with another woman…but of course, he is. We see some things in this final scene that the show has never given us before. Wayne, who we have only ever seen walking into fights, slow and confident and unbuttoning his sleeves, is the first out of the truck and sprinting to defend his little sister. Every character, no matter their gender or social standing, rushing out of their vehicles to kick the shit out of this absolute trashcan of a dude who hurt their Katy Kat.

The weight of their affection and love for this one woman who has become a pillar of the community is clear on each character’s face. Not a single person’s motive can be questioned. And we are shown all of this with purposeful, slow camera work and absolutely no dialogue. And then, we cut to credits. We’re left without a fight, without the pay off, with our hearts in our throats as we desperately hope that there is another episode after this one. But there’s not. There’s only M83’s “Do It, Try It,” and a dawning realization that you, a person who started watching a show for the Canadian slang and the fart jokes, care very deeply about these characters and their lives. As these peoples stories have been told over the past few years, you have unwittingly fallen into their found family too. And that, my friends, is good writing.