The Imperfects dropped its 10 episodes on Netflix on September 8, 2022, and brought along a new class of ‘supes’ who don’t fit in. Starring Rhianna Jagpal, Iñaki Godoy, Morgan Taylor, Campbell, Italia Ricci, Rhys Nicholson, and more, the show was created by Shelley Eriksen and Dennis Heaton.
All through the first season of the show, we see Abbi, Juan, and Tilda in pursuit of Dr. Alex Sarkov, now labeled a “rogue scientist”, who experiments on the three as a means to save the human species from accelerating climate changes. He believes it to be the prime cause of devolving evolution. The trio wants to do away with the side effects or the so-called powers they develop as a result of the same and just want to go back to their former lives after finding a fix for their “monstrous” tranformations.
Netflix’s official synopsis reads:
Abbi, Juan and Tilda didn’t ask for superpowers, but their new abilities might come in handy against scientists determined to exploit their genetic code.
The Imperfects Ending Explained
The final question that stands is whether our infamous band of the banshee, chupacabra, and succubus found its much-needed cure in the end or not. The last episode of The Imperfects does solve their problem, or so it seems. Italia Ricci’s ruthless and militant alter ego Finch is finally laid to rest once Dr. Sydney Burke finds Sarkov. He injects a dose of the cure in Juan, using him as a lab rat yet again, hoping that he would transform into his chupacabra self and stay the same.
However, his twisted idea doesn’t come to fruition even though Juan does change into his other self. He again turns back to his human self and his transformations stop thereafter. Tilda later confirms that she can’t sense the chupacabra in him anymore and that he’s actually cured.
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The on-field team from Flux, the quasi-government organization that puts down all scientific hazards that seek to mess up with the natural order of things and birth chaos, had already formed an alliance with Abbi and Tilda in the previous episode. And so, Dominic Crain, the former “big gun” is detained for questioning for all the times she let scientists like Dr. Alex Sarkov slip away from under their radar, just to stay in business.
Sarkov is taken in by Flux and his friendship with Burke is compromised, to say the least. Dr. Burke, Juan, and Abbi all take the cure, except for Tilda who has now honed her powers to even become a live “lie detector”. Dr. Burke projects a happy outlook on the situation but she still calls out to Finch – her alter ego, to check in if there are still any traces of her left behind, but she doesn’t respond.
Tilda embraces her banshee powers and assumes the role of ‘Banshee Girl’, a vigilante who looks out for victims like her old self who had to endure the life-changing impact of Sarkov’s deed. Juan goes back to starting a new comic series about Banshee girl and continues to be Paloma’s favorite ‘tio’ (uncle in Spanish) in hiding. Hannah and Abbi’s friendship seems to have taken a new turn and they’re closer than ever while Abbi searches for the remains of Sarkov’s nanobot experiment.
In a shocking turn, Dr. Burke has now been appointed as one of the senior professionals at Flux. As the agents therein bring in Sarkov, she tells him that Flux offered her a job, and though it seems that it has been done as a means to compensate her since Crain tried to kill her, the final cliffhanger leaves us with something else on our plates.
More importantly, Dr. Burke’s personality and body language seem a bit different, yet familiar. She channels her passive-aggressive side to level with Sarkov, and it’s almost a reminder of Finch’s hatred for him. Proving us right, her laptop shows Finch’s reflection, so we now know Finch isn’t really gone. Maybe Burke doesn’t need to shapeshift to become her anymore, yet she’s already championed her style.
Shifting back to Juan’s predicament, his chupacabra self that seemed to have subsided earlier comes back to haunt his thoughts once his hands start changing while he’s sitting beside Paloma in Portland. Cut to Abbi’s location, she has developed some ‘gooey’ situation and it only gets worse as the goo escalates into a wall that ultimately entraps her inside it.
Looks like Tilda was the only one who actually got her happy ending after embracing the very same “monster” inside her that she’s been pushing away all along. Whereas the other two, who gave it their all to stifle their powers, are now back to the first page, with possibly things getting out of control and getting worse than they were before.
Will there be a Season 2?
The Imperfects coming back for a season 2 is actually a viable outlook at the moment. In the end, the reins of the show are in the hands of the showrunners as well as Netflix. A similar show that came out in 2019, Deadly Class, with a close-enough comic-styled vision, was ultimately canceled after the first season despite reeling in mostly positive reviews from the critics. The ratings for the same were also higher than that of The Imperfects, yet it stood no chance against the cancellation deity of Netflix.
There’s no standing guarantee as of now that the series will be renewed for another run, but the plot so deliberately twisted at the end reveals a well-concealed secret. Dr. Hallenbeck is introduced to us as the older and possibly a suffering victim of his own design. As he shares a video call with Dr. Burke, the veil is finally lifted and Dr. Alex Sarkov is outed as the “product of an experiment” himself. So, it turns out there’s in fact another big bad and Sarkov was rather a “genetically engineered super-intellect”, fashioned in Hallenbeck’s identity.
It looks like there’s much to unpack as to the true nature of the relationship shared between Hallenbeck and Burke and how Sarkov eventually came into being. The onus of it all falls back on Sydney, who had been originally perceived as the do-gooder over the first season. The cast and crew should ideally come back to desmystify these cliffhangers and the sudden plot twists that have completely overturned the way we look at some of the formerly known good characters in the show.
All ten episodes of The Imperfects are now streaming on Netflix.
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