The Last Man On Earth -
Why does this trope endure? Why, when we doomscroll through news of pandemics and politics, does our brain sometimes whisper, “Wouldn't it be quiet if everyone just... left?”
Shelley wasn't writing a joke. She was writing a eulogy for Romanticism. She had lost her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and her close friend Lord Byron. The novel is a raw, bleeding wound pressed against the page. She uses the "Last Man" to ask a brutal question: What is the purpose of art, memory, or morality if there is no one left to see it?
The 19th century loved this trope. It was a secret obsession of the Victorian era, surfacing in poems by Thomas Campbell and novels like The Purple Cloud . In these stories, the lone survivor wasn't a hero. He was a ghost. He walks through the British Museum and doesn't read the books; he touches the marble statues and feels nothing. Without the "Other," the Self ceases to exist. The Last Man on Earth
In 2015, Fox aired The Last Man on Earth , starring Will Forte. It was a radical departure. The premise: A virus kills everyone in 2020 (eerily prescient). Phil Miller (Forte) drives across a silent America, carving his face into Mount Rushmore next to Washington, drinking pool water from mansions, and playing chess against himself.
But here is the twist Matheson gave us that changed the genre forever: Why does this trope endure
But then the knock comes. He finds another survivor: Carol (Kristen Wiig). And suddenly, the fantasy collapses.
Long before the knock on the door, there was the novel. In 1826, Frankenstein author Mary Shelley published The Last Man . It was a massive, melancholic epic set in the 21st century (then the distant future). The plot follows a plague that sweeps across the globe, leaving one man, Lionel Verney, to wander the ruins of Rome and the shattered coasts of Europe. She was writing a eulogy for Romanticism
It sounds like you're referring to — a title used for several notable works. Here’s a breakdown of the most prominent feature (film or TV) versions: