The Finale
The Season 1 finale of Daybreak sees us jump back 36 minutes to find Principal Burr taking the students out on a field trip where they begin playing golf. Commenting that a Golf Team would be really handy right now, Principal Burr watches as the kids eventually detonate a missile after several minutes of trying. With Angelica knocked out, Principal Burr gathers her up as we cut back to Sam and Josh who stare one another down and embrace in the midst of the carnage outside. Neither of them can hear though, thanks to the blast outside but as they mime to one another, we cut back to Angelica who’s forced to detonate another nuke as Ms. Crumble is held up and tortured. Back at the mall, Sam and Josh write on the wall and decide on different tactics to take against Principal Burr. However, Sam quickly takes offence when she realizes that Josh and KJ have hooked up together in her absence. While Josh pleads with Sam to forgive him given his alleged hypocrisy on the matter, Wes and Turbo prepare for their epic dual. As the countdown timer ends, Turbo tells him he loves him before they both fire. However, it turns out they were confetti guns all along and these explosions bring back everyone’s hearing as we return to the final fight at hand. Angelica continues to be forced to work on the nuke while the rest of the kids at the mall turn to Just Josh for what to do next. As KJ arrives and joins them, they all turn to Josh as the leader of their group. After some deliberation, he decides to use music to his advantage and calls on the band to work together and compose a symphony. It’s a cacophonous mess but enough to get Burr’s attention as they arrive and confront him and his group. Although they manage to distract the jocks, Angelica tells them the bad news – the nuke is armed. It turns out the original nuke that decimated America was launched by a combined force of Russia and China but while Angelica and the others scramble to disarm it, the rest of the group fight various skirmishes around the grounds. Sam and Burr go toe to toe while the jocks continue to fight outside. Just as Sam looks set to meet her demise, Josh stabs Principal Burr in the chest. Of course, he doesn’t die but it turns out he’s the one who actually had a nut-allergy all along. The sword Josh stabbed him with was covered in peanut butter, causing Principal Burr to fall down and a hand to burst from his stomach. However, Josh swipes it off and stops the threat once and for all, as they head outside and tell the kids they need to work together to disarm the nuke. Ms Crumble is the only one who can do this it seems and as it turns out, she needs to stay behind to do that manually. Unfortunately she appears to die in the ensuing blast as the rocket shoots into the air and explodes in a flurry of dust and fire. However, it turns out she’s still alive, making Angelica very happy. Riding on a wave of good faith, Josh heads off to speak to Sam but it turns out she’s not interested in getting together and she takes the throne for herself. Everyone bows to her rule as she tells them the apocalypse is the best thing to happen to her, not Josh. As our main characters watch on, the series bows out with the door open for a second season but enough wrapped up to make for a satisfying, yet uninspiring, ending. For the most part, Daybreak bows out on a high with a climactic fight to round things out. While the ending feels a little contrived and couple of the plot beats fail to really break free of the illogical constraints holding the show back from reaching its potential, there’s enough here to make for a satisfying conclusion nonetheless. Whether Daybreak is renewed for a second season or not remains to be seen but Netflix’s latest zombie romp ultimately fails to break free from mediocrity.
