‘Never Have I Ever’ Season 4: Devi Shouldn’t Have Gotten Into [SPOILER]

Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Season 4 of Never Have I Ever.

Netflix’s Never Have I Ever has followed Devi Vishwakumar’s (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) four-year high school journey, documenting the relationships she’s formed and lost as well as how her goals and dreams have shifted throughout the years. From a girl who couldn’t feel her legs and ardently wished for perfect grades, the perfect boyfriend and popularity, to a woman who is grateful for what she’s achieved — her coming of age story particularly emphasizes her growth and maturity. So it’s a bit counterintuitive when the series’ Season 4 finale reveals that she had gotten everything she wanted from the start; she was fairly popular, she snagged a boyfriend and got accepted into Princeton. Being accepted into her dream college was supposed to be a life-changing moment, but instead it was quite anti-climactic, especially since it doesn’t really make sense that she was rejected from every other Ivy League college but managed to get into this one. The show also explores different career paths that aren’t college as well as delves into the negative impact of the pressure pervading the obsessive American college culture, yet completely neglects these messages the second Devi is accepted into a big-name school.

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Devi’s Acceptance Into Princeton Is Anti-Climactic

Devi had wanted to go to Princeton from a young age, particularly because of a conversation with her dad. In a heart-warming flashback scene we see a younger version of Devi expressing she wants to go to “Princess College” and her dad (Sendhil Ramamurthy) responding that the closest one to that was Princeton College, officially locking in her dream. As Devi admits in her supplemental essay to Princeton, she’s probably holding on so tight to Princeton because it was a way to hold onto her dad. But with a lot of the series highlighting how she’s healing from the trauma of his untimely death and honoring him in healthy ways like hanging his tennis racket on the wall or gaining strength from her memory of him, revolving her life around a college they picked years ago during breakfast seems a bit unhealthy. Especially since, as her therapist (Niecy Nash) pointed out, “if this Princeton dream has so much power over [her] self-worth … maybe it’s not serving [her].”

She goes down such a debilitating spiral when she finds out she’s wait listed and never even responsibly applied to any safety schools. Her Princeton dream is more like an unhealthy coping mechanism to hang onto her dad and ultimately hinders her journey towards self-love. She ends up being so obsessed with it that she jeopardizes her friendship with Fabiola (Lee Rodriguez) by resenting her when she got early admittance. In the end, the dream only seems to contribute to her poor mental health. With all the troubles and obstacles she had to tackle to get to that point, actually getting into Princeton ends up being a simplistic and anti-climactic result.

What Does Devi Want To Study Anyway?

In a series that is growth and change centric, the major hole from Devi’s growth is her college choice, something that should have reasonably shifted as she matured. A very small percentage of people actually retain the dreams they have had since they were young. Take Rory from Gilmore Girls, after learning more and more about Yale she finally said goodbye to her lifelong dream of Harvard for an opportunity that was better suited to her. We don’t even know if Princeton is well suited for Devi because we don’t actually know what she wants to study. Her participation in the Model UN and the debate team coupled with John McEnroe’s narration mentioning her becoming president or Supreme Court Justice, suggests she may be interested in law or politics. But that’s really all the indication we get.

The other students actually follow their passions and select colleges based on their programs and how much they would support their dreams. Even though she has a sentimental attachment to Princeton, and it’s a prestigious school, if there aren’t any suitable programs that align with her career goals or just general passions, what’s the point of going there? Even Paxton’s (Darren Barnet) storyline in Season 4 involved him returning abruptly from college and discovering his passion for helping people. Rather than wandering purposelessly throughout the campus and classes, it ended up being in his best interest to drop out and return with a clearer goal in mind. So even if Devi didn’t know right away, it might’ve been better to take a gap year before racking up student debt to find out what she was passionate about.

‘Never Have I Ever’ Briefly Touches the American College Obsession

Never Have I Ever’s third season’s Ben-centric episode highlights the serious issue of the immense pressure many students feel as they prepare for college in the series’ characteristic comedic tone. Undertaking an unrealistic amount of classes and extracurricular’s to pad his college application, Ben (Jaren Lewison) survives off of beef jerky and isn’t able to defecate in weeks. The idea of straight-A student burnout is revisited in Season 4 as Devi travels to New Jersey in a class trip to meet with a former honor roll student from Sherman Oaks that got into Princeton, Blair (Jade Bender). After sacrificing her social life to study relentlessly in high school, Blair quickly veers off path in college, eventually failing her classes and dropping out. When getting into the dream college is the ultimate goal, getting lost afterward is a very common issue that is reflected in real life. Yet when it comes to Devi, the show completely detracts from these issues, allowing her to succumb to her obsession and let it control nearly every aspect of her life. And then they reward her for that behavior with a college acceptance.

The series even explores non-traditional career paths in Eleanor’s (Ramona Young) and Trent’s (Banjamin Norris) storyline, and even Fabiola constantly switches her university choice to figure out where she will most likely succeed. Devi isn’t given the luxury to question her college choice. Why are these messages only relevant to the side characters and not the main one? Even though there’s a sense of she’s been fighting for this dream, so her persistence is admirable and should be rewarded. But, we know that majority of Devi’s drama is caused by her, so it may have been better and more cohesive to her growth for her to consider other colleges or no college at all for now. Although we applaud her for being accepted to the college of her dreams, it is still a bit too simplistic in her coming of age story.