Happy End of the World

“Station Eleven” is the pandemic show for people like me who swore they’d never watch a pandemic show. Beautiful, thoughtful, hopeful. Living amid our current crisis has made me loathe some of the global disaster movies I once loved. “Contagion?” No, I’m good. “Outbreak?” Are you kidding me? “World War Z?” If this ever really happened we now know some people would actually run toward the zombies.

What sets the HBO Max limited series (based on the bestselling novel of the same name) apart is what it focuses on while the world ends. It’s not the gore or the destruction it cares about, though the story’s flu annihilates indiscriminately. Nor is it about the mechanics of survival or our apocalyptic innovations, though we see plenty of clever adaptations in action.

No, what “Station Eleven” instead asks is what keeps us human. How, in the face of the loss of essentially everything, do we still find joy? Its answer, told along parallel times lines at the start of the pandemic and 20 years after the pandemic, is simple. We need community. And we need art.

What if, at the end of everything, art is all that is left? Art reminds us who we are and were. Art reveals what we love and cherish. Art inspires and transports.

There’s a reason so many of us have spent the pandemic binging entertainment, from movies to TV and more. Stories sustain us. It’s as much an escape as it is an education, at times helping us understand ourselves in ways we never expected.

The characters in “Station Eleven” are sustained by their communities and the art they share together. I think one of the reasons we all feel so depleted and depressed by the current state of the world is that our sense of community, of shared purpose, has been shattered. What kind of community won’t even put a piece of cloth to protect each other? What kind of community thinks science is the enemy? What kind of community profits off of stirring hate and division? A broken one, obviously.

In telling its quiet, unhurried story about survivorship, it shows us a way to heal a broken world. “Station Eleven” reminds us of the best of humanity instead of our all-too-apparent shortcomings. In doing so, it helps the world make sense again – at least for a little while.