Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Insecure through Season 5.More than five years ago, in September of 2016,HBOfirst released the comedy-drama seriesInsecure. Created, written, and starringIssa Rae, the perpetually engaging show followed the character of Issa Dee as she navigated love, work, and life with a consistently charming if awkward disposition. The series recently concluded, having become one of the most anticipated shows to watch every Sunday night that wasn’tSuccession. Over five seasons, audiences were swept up into the life of Issa with the many ups and downs she faced personally as well as professionally. It was a series that, even with all its praise, deserves more credit for the journey it took us on.
Predictably, since it was under a lot of pressure on it to deliver, the finale of the show has been met with some mixed responses due to how it fast-forwarded through life to wrap everything up in a bow. However, even with this in mind, the ending is a fitting one that serves as a poetic end destination when viewed in conversation with the path it took up until that point. It was a show that never lost sight of its characters, exploring their growth in a deeper way that sets it apart from most stories that only scratch the surface of their potential.
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Far too often, television shows can fall into familiar patterns where characters don’t change all that much. These stories often rely on plot to move the story forward and keep you interested despite yourself, continually throwing new developments at the characters without seeing them ever grow in response. It is an experience that leaves you feeling like a lot happened, only to catch yourself wondering what actually matters of what you just watched. That was not the case withInsecure: Everything mattered.
What the show managed to achieve was something quietly brilliant. It took the character of Issa and across every season saw her grow into different places. Looking back on the opening scene in the first episode of the series, it is remarkable to see how far she has come. What worked as a hilarious hook where she was roasted by a group of students also worked as an excellent entry point to her character and where she was at in life. When seen alongside the finale, the beauty with which the pieces all fit together is inescapable.
This beauty was not an easy feat. The show took some big, audacious swings over the course of its run. When we first meet Issa in Season 1, she is feeling increasingly disillusioned from her job and her relationship with her boyfriend, Lawrence (Jay Ellis). She soon cheats on him and subsequently tries to suppress her guilt by reinvesting in the relationship. However, Lawrence finds out and subsequently leaves her at the end of the season.
In its debut season,Insecurealready had proven itself as being willing to more comprehensively explore its characters than many shows ever do across multiple seasons. Issa is far from perfect and is struggling to figure out what she wants to do with her life. She makes many mistakes, tries to fix them, occasionally making them worse, before coming to tentative stability before her life gets upended again. It is both a credit to Rae’s performance and the show’s writing that is able to authentically capture the messiness of life.
In subsequent seasons, Issa will come to realize that she doesn’t feel valued at her current job in helping young people and determine that she can better give back to the community by striking out on her own. But her journey to get to this place is by no means a straight line. She takes a circuitous route that feels more honest and true to what it takes to reinvent your life. She has many false starts and struggles. Yet, that makes it feel all the more vibrant and earned when Issa builds her way to the life she truly wants to live.
This is true not just of her professional life but her personal one, which is filled with equally flushed-out characters. In the show’s middle seasons, there is a rising conflict that Issa has with her best friend, Molly (Yvonne Orji). This leads to a prolonged falling out, the show’s most painful time for the characters as they had been a rock for each other in tough times. The prospect of the loss of a longtime friend makes their eventual reuniting all the more impactful. It was as if we had been collectively holding our breath and could finally exhale.
Then there is Lawrence. Even with their struggles, Issa still imagines building a life with him in one of the show’s best sequences where she visualizes what that would look like. When they too eventually rekindle their love for each other, it is undercut by a surprise revelation that shatters this vision. Lawrence learns he is going to be a father as his past partner, Condola (Christina Elmore), is pregnant. That information drives Issa and Lawrence apart where they remain for much of the last season while still perpetually yearning for a life with each other.
It is that perpetual push and pull in Issa’s life, where happiness always feels just out of reach, that demands our attention. It is hard to think of a character in recent television that has gone through as many transformations as she has. The show and its writing were efficient in their explorations of her character, doing a lot over a surprisingly short time. It was a truly special show that one would be remiss to not consider as being one of the most dynamic of recent memory.Insecureand Issa were both truly one of a kind.
In a television landscape that contains far too many forgettably one-dimensional characters that never come to life, Issa stands out as a uniquely multifaceted person in every aspect. The recurrent elements where she speaks to herself in the mirror are not just humorous, they show her progress and evolution in how she carries herself. As she gains more confidence and discovers a new side of herself, she seems less beholden to these mirror talks. She even will humorously challenge herself, revealing how she has grown amidst the laughs.
In the show’s final frames, Issa goes to the mirror one last time. However, she doesn’t need to give herself a pep talk anymore. We have been primed to anticipate one coming, yet it never does. It is a bittersweet scene as these moments were endlessly relatable and fun, though it was inevitable that Issa would not always need them. The trajectory of the show and her growth meant that she was always going to move into the next chapter of her life. So when Issa walks away from the mirror into her new future, the scene serves as a moving curtain call that works because of how well-crafted her character arc was over her entire story. It all comes together flawlessly, a testament to the care given to the character and her journey that will be remembered forever as a standout in television history.
