Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Season 4 of Never Have I Ever
Created byLang FisherandMindy Kaling, Netflix’sNever Have I Everhad one very important job to do in its fourth and final season: to show us the last stage of the evolution of its main character, Devi Vishwakumar (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan). After all, this has been the point ever since the show started its first run in 2020. Through Devi’s many mistakes and her chats with Dr. Ryan (Niecy Nash), we were supposed to witness her change from a confused, grief stricken teenager into a mature young woman. However, though theNever Have I Everfinalecovered a lot of the groundthat it was expected to cover, it didn’t exactly give us a better or more grown-up Devi. Despite having indeed shown us a version of its protagonist that has learned to deal better with the memory of her father — so much so, in fact, that Mohan (Sendhil Ramamurthy) hardly even appears inSeason 4—, there was no considerable growth when it comes to her mistakes and her outlook on the world as a whole. It’s time we face the facts: from Season 1 to Season 4, Devi Vishwakumar hasn’t really changed.
As fun and creative as the show is,Never Have I Everepisodes have a basic formula. It goes something like this: Devi either is mean to a friend or engages in some sort of behavior that should have a permanent and usually negative impact on her life. You know, things like telling the meanest girls in school that Aneesa (Megan Suri) has an eating disorder or failing to apply to any safety colleges because she’s just that confident in what an awesome student she is. A while after, everything comes crashing down around her. Devi is then called out by her friends, her mother, or even her therapist. Feeling guilty, she cries her heart out or apologizes to the people that she has hurt. Devi is forgiven, the show calls it growth, and we move on to another episode in which she does precisely the same thing — over and over again. And when we say she does precisely the same thing, this is not an exaggeration. Devi has repeated the same mistake twice more times than we can count. But perhaps the best way to illustrate how this is a problem on the show is by singling out two sets of events that take place both in earlier seasons of the series and in Season 4.
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Devi Just Keeps Making the Same Mistakes Over and Over Again
InNever Have I EverSeason 2, shortly after the character of Aneesa is introduced, Devi spirals into jealousy because she believesher newfound friend is flirting with one of her crushes, Ben (Jaren Lewison). At a school 24-hour relay event, Devi tries to keep Ben and Devi from spending time together with one another lest they engage on a dreaded make out sesh. When she’s unable to stop the two from hanging out, she throws a rage fit and spurts out to the popular girls that Aneesa must have an eating disorder, since she’s never seen her eat anything. The rumor spreads like wildfire through Sherman Oaks High and, in the end, turns out to be true. Aneesa’s mom nearly takes her out of school to protect her daughter’s integrity. Thankfully, though, everything is solved when Devi finally apologizes to Aneesa, and Nalini (Poorna Jagannathan) has a one-on-one with Aneesa’s mom. Sure, Devi gets suspended, but it doesn’t have any lasting impact on her permanent record.
Fast-forward to Season 4. Ben is dating Margot (Victoria Moroles), and Devi is mad jealous about it. She attacks Margot verbally on the hallway, basically slut-shaming her, and later finds her car defaced, with the words “Stupid Bitch” written across it in red ink. She immediately blames Margot and does everything in her power to convince Principal Grubbs (Cocoa Brown) that Ben’s new girlfriend is indeed guilty. But just as Margot is about to get kicked out of school, Devi finds out that the act of vandalism was actually the work of one of the school’s bad boys,Ethan (Michael Cimino). Devi apologizes, Margot walks out scot-free, and things go back to normal. Sure, Margot stays mad at Devi, but who cares? They weren’t even friends to begin with.
Devi’s actions towards Margot are identical to her actions towards Aneesa. In both situations, she makes up a nasty rumor about some girl she’s jealous of. In both situations, the girl she made the rumor up about is nearly taken out of school. In both situations, Devi faces no real consequences for her actions.
Another parallel that can be drawn is between Devi’s Season 1 lie about sleeping with Paxton Hall-Yoshida (Darren Barnet) and her Season 4 lie about doing a clean sweep of the Ivy schools. The two were originally told only to people who are extremely close to Devi, either her friends or her mom. However, they soon got out of hand and spread through the school. Eventually, everyone found out that what Devi said wasn’t true. People got mad for a while, but it’s no big deal. Fabiola (Lee Rodriguez), Eleanor (Ramona Young), and Nalini quickly forgive Devi, and she evengets a new friend out of Paxton— the very boy she told lies about.
‘Never Have I Ever’ Refuses to Let Devi’s Actions Have Real Consequences
There is a pattern to these stories — one that explains pretty well why there’s no room for character growth inNever Have I Ever, at least not when it comes to Devi — and that is that the show refuses to let its main character’s mistakes have any kind of real consequence. Of course, things get a little ugly for Devi whenever she does something way too awful or poorly thought out: she’s suspended from school, or she isn’t accepted to any colleges. However, this turn of events is quickly course-corrected with Devi returning to school to find everything exactly as it was before or with her receiving an acceptance email from her original dream college.
Let’s be real, at least some of Devi’s actions should have had much more drastic consequences. Paxton and Ben should’ve cut her off entirely after she two-timed them, and she certainlyshouldn’t have been accepted into Princeton, especially not after making Fabiola guilty for applying to the same university as her. There was a lesson to be learned there about how it’s not healthy for a person to be so selfish and one-track minded about their dreams, but Devi doesn’t learn it. As a matter of fact, she never learns any lesson at all. In this scenario, it is impossible for her to experience any kind of character growth.
