Warning: The following article contains spoilers for Season 3 of Netflix’s Sweet Tooth.
Fans of Netflix’s Sweet Tooth praise the show’s emotional writing, characters, and surprisingly optimistic post-apocalyptic story. Everyone also loves Sweet Tooth’s Narrator, whose identity is finally revealed in Season 3.
Since the first episode of Sweet Tooth, James Brolin has kept the series grounded by acting as its narrator. Instead of describing the events that unfold on the screen, the Narrator talks about the emotional universe of the series’ main characters, distributing valuable lessons about how life has a funny way of teaching us all. So, while narrators can be bothersome in movies and TV shows, Sweet Tooth’s omnipotent voice is a welcome addition.
The structure of Sweet Tooth has always teased the series’ events via the Narrator, who retells them to someone. Because of that, the Narrator has to be someone who survives the three seasons of the show, witnessing all the twists and turns that take Gus (Christian Convery) and his friends all around America after the Great Crumble. Not many characters would fit this description, which has led fans to speculate about the Narrator’s identity since Season 1. As the final episode of Sweet Tooth reveals, most people guessed right.
You probably already guessed the identity of Sweet Tooth’s narrator
The final episode of Sweet Tooth features Brolin as an aged version of Gus. After everything that goes down in Alaska, Gus and Wendy return to Yellowstone, where they meet the other Hybrids. In the months that follow, everyone works together to turn Yellowstone into a new bastion for Hybrids. Decades after his adventures, Gus is a leader of the Hybrids, tasked with retelling how Earth has been inherited by their species after humans slowly faded away.
While the identity of Sweet Tooth’s Narrator might be obvious, Season 3 also explains why Gus is retelling his story. The series’ third and final season forces Gus to confront the fact that every human is bound to die, including Big Man (Nonso Anozie). However, the young Deer Boy realizes that death is not the end of the journey, at least as long as the living remember those who died.
When we meet the aged version of Gus, he mourns the people he lost, but he also understands that humankind will live on in the Hybrids. That’s why he takes for himself the duty of educating younger generations about how greed and dissent led to the extinction of their ancestors. In addition, the story Gus tells the Hybrid children is actually Big Man’s.
As someone who did unspeakable things but was granted a chance at redemption, Big Man personifies the worst and the best of humanity. So, by telling Big Man’s story, Gus ensures his children and grandchildren learn about how Hybrids inherited the Earth. At the same time, Gus keeps Big Man alive through his words, which will be part of Hybrids’ culture forever.
Rewatching Sweet Tooth is going to be even more emotional from now on.
