Warning: This review contains spoilers of the show’s final season.
The final season of “Wilfred” was said to contain the long awaited answer to the show’s central mystery: Why does Ryan (played by Elijah Wood) see his neighbor Jenna’s (played by Fiona Gubelmann) dog as an Australian man in a dog suit (played by Jason Gann)?
The season got off to a shaky start.
From its outset, “Wilfred” tended to overuse the “it was all a dream/hallucination” plot device, and the season four premiere is a telling example of this. When a show’s events are consistently revealed to be dream sequences, it’s difficult to become emotionally invested.
In the second episode, however, the mystery begins to unravel. Ryan and Wilfred explore the site of the illusive “Flock of the Grey Shepard,” a defunct cult somehow linked to Ryan’s late father that may hold the answers he seeks. This storyline includes some welcome developments in the show’s romantic subplot. Ryan is accompanied by Jenna’s husband Drew, a friendly yet infuriatingly naïve buffoon. In the course of his journey, Ryan inadvertently brings an end to Jenna’s and Drew’s relationship. Given Ryan’s perpetual status as the romantic underdog, always longing for a woman he cannot have, this was an altogether satisfying plot twist.
Alas, season four suffers from a terrible loss of momentum. The entirety of the third episode turns out to be yet another hallucination sequence. The episodes that follow do very little to answer any questions or advance the show’s overall plot. Crude long-running gags, particularly Wilfred’s perverse relationship with a giant stuffed bear, feel stale. Ryan, always a rather spineless character, becomes a caricature. At times the show is hard to watch, as Ryan’s sheer patheticness becomes too cringe-inducing.
The final three episodes are a mixed bag. Wilfred is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and given less than a week to live. This genuinely shocking turn of events is, mercifully, not a hallucination. Jenna rages at Ryan for initially withholding Wilfred’s prognosis, then sleeps with him. Given the show’s generally complex, compelling supporting characters — Ryan’s mother and sister, ex-girlfriend, and former roommate — it is disappointing and uncharacteristic for Jenna to end up so lacking in agency and reason.
Ryan’s and Jenna’s union is fleeting. The manner in which Ryan allows his relationship to crumble is painful. Fortunately, it also sets up an incredibly poignant climax as Wilfred rails against Ryan for jeopardizing his new happiness. As he releases years of pent-up frustration at Ryan’s passive behavior, Wilfred overexerts, has a seizure and falls dead. This sudden death is shocking and profoundly emotional, and the relationship between Ryan and Wilfred ends with no closure.
Jenna, unable to think due to emotional distress, returns to Drew. Though an obnoxiously predictable turn of events, this allows Ryan to finally take a stand and tell off the woman he has so long idolized. He takes Wilfred’s dying advice and grows a spine, and the exchange is satisfying, if not a bit too little, too late.
The final episode of “Wilfred” lives up to its promise of answering the show’s big mysteries. Some questions — why Ryan sees Wilfred as a man — are given complex, relatively believable answers. Others are left more open, but this seems appropriate for a show with so profoundly deranged a protagonist as Ryan. In the end it remains as amusing, disturbing and ambiguous as ever — an appropriate send-off for Ryan and his (imaginary) best friend in spite of a season fraught with ups and downs.
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