Well, now, that was quite the mindfuck. "Safeword" may be my favorite Y: The Last Man story arc in quite a while, as Vaughan surprises not with plot developments but with character developments, surprising insights into Yorick that are obvious in hindsight but which come as revelations because they've all been laid down so carefully and subtly in the background. The truth behind Yorick's encounter with 711 is quite the shocker, but the really interesting aspects of this story are seeing a little bit more of what Yorick went through before issue two, a bit more of the transition between the plague and the journey that has defined the book since the beginning.
Agent 355 has always been capable and tough, but it's Agent 711 who has really indicated just how nasty and smart the Culper Ring really is. Her manipulation of Yorick's emotions and seemingly constant shift of goals makes for a bizarre game of interrogation, and it's not too hard to feel for Yorick, trapped in the hands of a well-trained, dangerous madwoman who you can't quite placate no matter what you try. The revelation of why she's doing all this is the big surprise, though, and the change in Yorick that results should make for a subtle but important shift in the character for all the arcs going forward.
What's most impressive about the revelations in this issue, though, is how much sense they make when they're revealed. Like the best surprises, they're not really surprises when you think them through. Vaughan has laid the groundwork with Yorick's actions throughout previous story arcs, but it's easy to write them off as something else, as the behavior required of the protagonist, rather than looking at them within the story structure and realizing that the writer is trying to tip you off to something. I'm dying to know what it is Yorick saw that changed that element of his character (I have a suspicion, but I'd still like to know), but Vaughan provided enough shocks in this issue that he can safely hold that one back for later.
Because Pia Guerra falls into a realistic style that isn't too flashy, like that of Preacher's Steve Dillon or Lucifer's Peter Gross, she doesn't always get credit for her role on this book. However, it seems worth noting that keeping things interesting, not to mention suitably tense, when the story amounts largely to a conversation between two characters, is a pretty significant skill. Guerra really shows off the anguish that Yorick is going through, as well as the cold hard facade of 711, and she does a great job of making the emptiness of the post-plague world almost as horrible as the visions that we've seen of death and chaos in the wake of the plague.
Y: The Last Man is a book that has always been full of surprises, and this issue (and this arc) is no exception. Most of the surprises this issue come in the form of revelations about Yorick, but Vaughan and Guerra leave off with the introduction of a new antagonist, one that seems to have ties to the mysterious Culper Ring and one which is more directed at the artifact that might have started this whole thing. The result is a great closure for the arc but another open-ended mystery for the series, which doesn't seem to be running out of plots and plot twists anytime soon.
