What happened in the final episode of Looking For Alaska and is there any chance the show will return for a second season? Hulu’s adaptation of John Green’s debut young adult novel Looking For Alaska was a long time in the making. Paramount Pictures nabbed the rights to adapt the book for the big screen shortly before its 2005 publication and the project passed through various hands including 500 Days Of Summer screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber, actress-turned-filmmaker Sarah Polley and When The Streetlights Go On director Rebecca Thomas.
It wasn’t until 2018 when Hulu struck a deal with Josh Schwartz, Stephanie Savage and their production company Fake Empire to adapt Looking For Alaska into an eight-episode series that the project finally came into fruition. Being such a much-loved novel, the Looking For Alaska series had a lot to live up to but luckily it was a (largely) faithful book-to-TV adaptation that was praised by critics and John Green readers alike when it premiered on Hulu in October 2019.
Like the book, the Looking For Alaska series follows four teenage friends studying at a boarding school in Alabama – recently arrived Florida transplant Miles “Pudge” Halter (Charlie Plummer), the rebellious and troubled Alaska Young (Kristine Froseth), smart-talking scholarship student Chip “The Colonel” Martin (Denny Love) and gifted MC Takumi Hikohito (Jay Lee). As the foursome stumbles through their junior year they indulge in contraband wine and cigarettes while attempting to out prank their rivals, a group of wealthy students known as the Weekday Warriors. Miles soon falls for Alaska but their budding romance is cut short when she drives off campus after a drunken get together and dies in a car accident.
The last episode of Looking For Alaska focuses on Miles, The Colonel and Takumi as they try to make sense of Alaska’s death and figure out whether it was indeed an accident or an act of suicide. The three friends realize that Alaska was on her way to visit her late mother’s grave the night she died but are ultimately unable to determine whether the crash that killed her was an accident or if she took her own life. Nevertheless, the trio gains some closure and pays a riotous tribute to Alaska by pulling off a prank she had planned that sees them hiring a male stripper to perform at their school’s annual Speaker Day.
Fans of the series hoping that Looking For Alaska season 2 might happen will probably be disappointed. The Hulu-produced show covered the entirety of John Green’s book and was only imagined as a limited series. Green doesn’t seem too keen on the idea of a second season either; in a Reddit AMA in 2018, the writer stated he “would not be super-interested” in future seasons but acknowledged that season 2 was a possibility, however improbable. So, while a second season of Looking For Alaska is unlikely, it seems it’s a case of never say never.