*This post contains spoilers for the first season of Netflix’s Boots.*
At ease, solider! If you spent your weekend catching up with Netflix’s Boots, you’re not the only one: The gay Marine drama only premiered this past Thursday, and it’s already climbed the ranks of the streamer’s Top 10 TV Shows list.
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Loosely based on Greg Cope White’s memoir The Pink Marine, the series follows closeted recruit Cameron Cope (13 Reasons Why‘s Miles Heizer) as he pushes his way through the grueling 13-week boot camp on Parris Island, finding himself along the way.
But even if you had read the source novel, you were likely surprised how it all played out.
Despite following a similar structure and featuring a number of characters based on real people from White’s life, Boots deviates in a number of ways from the author’s personal account, from its early 1990s setting to its cliffhanger, which would take a yet-to-be announced second season into uncharted territory.
Let’s get into it, shall we?
How Boots wraps up its first season
In the eighth and final episode of the season, the platoon must face “The Crucible,” one final challenge to see if they’re truly Marine Corps ready, the culmination of all their training.
While on trash duty, Cope and fellow closeted recruit Jones (Jack Kay) overhear Sgt. Sullivan (Max Parker) being reprimanded, realizing he’s been keeping a secret, too. But the next morning, Jones (Jack Kay)—who’s prone to sleepwalking—goes missing, prompting Cope to follow Sgt. Sullivan (Max Parker) out into the swamps to look for him, disobeying orders.
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On their rescue mission, Cope and Sullivan come to a mutual understanding, with the sergeant even admitting he pushed the recruit extra hard to prepare him for the hard road ahead. Having found a wounded Jones, Sullivan encourages Cope to carry him to the finish line, while he disappears into the brush.
The next day, after the graduation ceremony, Cope’s mother Barbara (Vera Farmiga) reveals she previously lied about his birthday meaning, at 17, he’d technically need her to sign off on him joining the Marines. While she thought she was giving him a way out, Cope stood his ground; having found brotherhood and a sense of purpose with the platoon, this was where he wanted to be.
Celebrating at a bar later, a bewigged Hicks (Angus O’Brien) karaokes to David Bowie’s “Changes,” which gets interrupted by a special new bulletin on the TVs: George H.W. Bush has announced the deployment of U.S. troops to Saudi Arabia, heralding what we now know as the beginning of the Gulf War, and dating the season one finale to early August, 1990
What could be in store for Boots Season 2?
That’s a big change from Cope’s memoir The Pink Marine, which detailed his own experience in boot camp in 1979, over a full decade prior.
At the end of the novel, he writes that he’d go on to finish his “six-year commitment as an enlisted man”—eventually being promoted to sergeant—before deciding “not to go to law school and serve in the Marine’s Judge Advocate General Corps as a military attorney, but instead move to New York to act and write.”
So, in case it wasn’t clear: Yes, Boots is a highly fictionalized interpretation of Cope’s story. And, as that finale seems to imply, if it were to get picked up for a second season, it could see Cope and company getting deployed overseas, telling an entirely different kind of military story.
As Miles Heizer sees it, there are still “a lot of stories to tell.” Speaking with Variety, the star shares his hopes for more episodes, mentioning he’d gladly “do it for 10 seasons if they let us” and could draw from “more of Greg’s different experiences in the Marines to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell to when it was repealed.”
Which brings us back to where Boots left things off with Sgt. Sullivan. Prior to parting ways with Cope in the swamp, Sullivan is getting reprimanded by Captain Fajardo (Ana Ayora) who warns he will be dishonorably discharged after its discovered he had beat up a man at a bar the night prior.
But as we know, in an era before Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, there’s even more on the line for Sullivan if his past romance with Major Wilkinson (Sachin Bhatt) in Guam gets found out. So, where could he possibly be running off to?
“I think he went to West Hollywood,” Heizer jokes in a conversation with his co-stars for Decider. “[Maybe] he’s at the Pink Pony Club?,” Liam Oh adds.
“I don’t know where it’s going to go, but I mean, there’s so many places,” says Max Parker, taking the question about his character a little more seriously. “That symbolic moment where he passes the radio to Cameron, it’s I think the first time you see Sullivan give in to what’s about to happen. He’s put someone in a coma, he’s literally struggling with alcoholism, and he’s being chased down by the law for other things and for being gay.”
He continues: “There’s so many great characters in the show that it really is an ensemble show and you don’t necessarily get to see all of the characters [in Season 1.] I think we’ve just scratched the surface of so many of them. So I think it it needs a Season 2.”
It’s clear everyone involved with the show agrees, as do all the fans who watched the full first season over the weekend. So, what are you waiting for, Netflix? Let’s give Boots the second season it deserves!
Boots is now streaming exclusively on Netflix.
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