HOT TAKE: Yasper Deserved Better! How the Ending of 'The Afterparty' Spits in the Face of Friendship (Great Show Though!)
[SPOILER WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE FINALE OF THE SHOW 'THE AFTERPARTY'! IF YOU HAVE NOT WATCHED IT YET AND DO NOT WANT IT SPOILED, DO NOT READ AHEAD! I HAVE MADE THIS SPOILER WARNING EXTRA LONG SO THAT YOU CAN GET OUT SAFELY IF YOU SO CHOOSE!]
Yasper deserved better from Aniq.
A SPICY hot take, but please bear with me.
Also, before I continue, I must say that The Afterparty is still my favorite show to come out in 2022.
Did Yasper FULLY murder someone in a very intentional, not-an-accident kind of way? Yes. Did he refuse to come forward and instead tried to pin it on someone else? Absolutely. Did he lie to Aniq about having done it? Indeed he did.
HOWEVER!
I still believe that when push came to shove (pun intended), Aniq did not have to help convict Yasper the way that he did.
There is a question that comes up during sleepovers, late night conversations, and any time you are watching a dramatic oops-I-just-murdered-someone kind of television show. One friend will turn to another and ask the fateful question:
"If I killed someone, would you help me bury the body?"
While obviously the hypothetical confines of the question make it far easier to quickly say, "Omg! Yes, absolutely, I'll grab my shovel," the loyalty that lies at the heart of the question is real.
The friend you would help bury the body is your forever friend. No matter what they did or you did, you would stand with them, always. It is this central conceit that has given us shows like Pretty Little Liars, where you see friends stay together through the thinnest and thickest times of all.
In recent years, this trope has fallen by the wayside. The second their friends discover who the murderer is, they turn on them, selling them out.
Now, I completely understand this within the confines of storylines where it turns out the murderer has been only pretending to be a friend the entire time. In those cases, the betrayal lies, non-negotiable, on the side of the villain.
When, however, the murderer has displayed true friendship to their friend, there should be some element of loyalty. The ending of The Afterparty points to the self-centered view of life that has become predominant in the modern day: No one would bury the body with their friend, because their friendship is not worth getting their hands dirty.
Let me make something clear before I continue: Yasper murdered someone. He should go to jail. I am not in any way, shape, or form making a commentary on legal justice in the real world. I am commenting SPECIFICALLY on this trope in the media, specifically in the show The Afterparty, and correlating it to die-hard friendships in the modern day. I will proceed to disclaimer this one thousand times.
Why do I feel so strongly about Yasper? He worked so hard to make sure that Aniq was not wrongly accused. No, Aniq would not have been in that situation had it not been for Yasper, but, as far as Yasper goes, convicting Aniq would have made things incredibly easy for him.
Instead, however, he remained a loyal friend, fighting to make sure that (while he would not come forward himself) that anyone but Aniq took the fall. Regardless of what he did to Xavier, he remained true to Aniq.
Conversely, based on suspicion alone (I mean, suspicions that turned out to be correct), Aniq started joining in to blame Yasper, throwing him right under the bus. Was it the correct bus? Absolutely. But still. Yasper took a lot of steps to make sure that Aniq did not get accused, but Aniq ensured that Yasper did.
As soon as Yasper was found guilty by all, Aniq said to him, "A friend would never do this." That's it. Friendship over.
Yasper definitely needs to go to jail. You can't just murder people and get away with it. However, caring about a person, being there for them, and being a friend to them is not something that just turns off if a friend does something wrong. (Yes, this was REALLY wrong, but it's also television).
Furthermore, you're telling me that had Aniq come to Yasper, guilty, and confessed everything to him, that Yasper would not have helped hide the body? He would have calmed an anxious Aniq through every part of the process!
Granted, Yasper never came clean to Aniq. Maybe had he told him the truth right off the bat Aniq would have reacted differently.
HOWEVER,
By not telling Aniq anything, Yasper actually kept Aniq safer. Had he shared his plan and deed with his friend, Aniq would have been implicated in the crime as well, and would have been heading to jail alongside Yasper.
By keeping Aniq in the dark, Yasper actually saved Aniq. When everything came to a head, Aniq wasted no time in corroborating the evidence that Yasper was the murderer.
FURTHERMORE, I don't think Yasper would have done that. Even if he was making real-time connections that attached Aniq specifically to the crime, I think Yasper would have kept his mouth shut out of allegiance to his friend.
It is the same way in which a husband and wife cannot be forced to testify against each other in court. While there are no documents or laws protecting friendship in the same way, any early 2000s murder series would have you know that friends do not rat out friends. That's, like, the WHOLE thing.
Now, I'm not saying Aniq should have let someone else go to jail for Yasper's crime. He was completely right to clear Brett's name. He was also correct in working to clear his own name. He would be crazy not to.
However, when he pieced together that the murderer must be Yasper, he started throwing out every possible, inescapable detail. That is where, cinematically, I feel the friendship line is drawn. Those are the moments in which the bonds forged in their youth should serve to offer some element of allegiance.
Yasper was OBVIOUSLY going to get caught. Detective Danner caught him. Aniq was really just pouring salt in the wound. As a friend, Aniq should have cleared Brett, said nothing, and then visited Yasper in jail.
Once again: Yasper killed Xavier. That is bad. He deserved to be caught and sent to jail. Yet, aside from the initial shock that Yasper is a FULL murderer, he was always there for Aniq.
In those last moments of the show, I was shocked to see Aniq decide Yasper was no longer his friend so quickly. The murderer was revealed, but I was more shocked by Aniq's lack of loyalty. That's saying something.
Again, I would like to make clear that I'm talking about loyalty between friends, and not ACTUAL murder. If your friend has committed an ACTUAL crime and is ACTUALLY a danger to yourself and others, oh my goodness what are you still doing here please alert the authorities! However, cinematically, the idea that friends will help each other hide murder has been one of the most consistently relied upon methods of proving strength, loyalty, and caring between friends.
Seeing this show end with Aniq cutting Yasper loose shows, ultimately, that Aniq never really considered Yasper a deep and lasting friend to begin with. Yasper deserved better.
Those are my well-thought-through reasons for why I think this. Or...maybe it's just because I'm in love with Ben Schwartz. Who is to say?
You can stream The Afterparty on Apple TV+ now.
