Leap Day 1×12 Review: Final Episode

The dreaded day has arrived. It’s finally Leap Day 2024, and the closer it gets, the more Day and Night are having doubts that their plan will work.

We open this week’s episode where last week’s episode left off. Still in Ozone’s dream, we shift from the desert to the university. But the world is hazy and unfocused. Ozone can sort of see what’s around him, but nothing is really defined. And as someone on a bike approaches him, he has to look away, because the light behind the figure is too bright. It’s the episode’s first bit of foreshadowing. Even if you ignore the fact that he looks like Day, the bright light behind him should be the clue.

When all of Ozone’s test results come back normal, everyone starts to get worried. As Wiwat points out, if they don’t know what’s wrong, they don’t know what to look out for on Leap Day. Meanwhile, Day is still trying to puzzle out what kid!Day told Ozone in the dream, or at least what it meant. It seems that his subconscious knows what to do, and isn’t yet sharing with his conscious self.

Even with all the concerns, the group decides to proceed as planned. After all, there isn’t really anything else they can do at this point.

On the night of February 28, Dream and Ozone are resolved to enjoy what may potentially be their last night alive. They convince Night and Day to order a ton of food, and they have a party. Everyone is smiling and happy, enjoying themselves, telling each other how much they care about each other. This scene echoes a lot of the scenes from the previous episode and emphasizes the found family that these four have formed.

However, it’s clear both Ozone and Dream know the risks, and they take the opportunity to say goodbye. Though Day and Night both separately promise their loved ones that the plan will work, later we see that they are growing increasingly skeptical. Ozone and Day’s scene made me cry, especially considering how their relationship started. Ozone reassures Day that he knows he did everything he could, and that whatever is going to happen isn’t his fault. That’s a far cry from what we saw in the flashback of when Day became Ozone’s guardian. (The callback to Ozone messing with the lights while Day is in the shower was a nice touch.)

Day promises he won’t let anything happen to Ozone, that he will die for him if he has to, but Ozone thoroughly rejects this idea. He insists that they have to stay together. Their relationship has been one of the best things about this show, and this scene just reaffirms that. 

Night and Dream have a similar conversation. Dream tries to gift Night the journal she’s been keeping about the two of them since high school, but Night refuses to look at it unless they’re looking at it together. She stays positive when talking to him, but the next morning she calls her parents and cannot keep her composure. I think that may be the first time I saw Dream break down. She’s normally so sunny and upbeat, raising the group’s spirits. The reality of the situation is too close to ignore at this point.

The four head to their potential doom. At first, it looks like things are going well. Dream and Ozone end up in the endless desert, but they aren’t together. I have no idea how I didn’t notice this before, when Night and Day were in their deserts, but Night’s is at nighttime, and Day’s is at daytime. It seems obvious now, but that detail escaped me until we had two people there at the same time. But this means that Dream and Ozone are alone in a place they’re not meant to be.

Things start going wrong when, inexplicably, their vitals return. If they don’t die, the plan won’t work. But as Wiwat says, they cannot inject them again, or it will lead to paralysis and maybe other problems. As Wiwat and Kit try to figure out what is going on, Day swipes some of the vials and leads Night away. They need to go back to the desert and save their loved ones.

Once they’re reunited in the desert, Day and Night try to get them all out, and therefore back to life. This is when Ozone reveals the garbled information that kid!Day gave him in his dream: “If Ozone is here, either Day or Night will fade.” (That would have been great information to have had before, but I don’t know if Ozone understood it himself until he came back.) That’s when Day realizes what I think everyone had realized at this point – there is no way for them all to make it out alive.

I knew it. I knew that was the ending, but I still wasn’t prepared. Of course, one of them had to die; the two of them are tied together by the curse. It’s why two babies are necessary for the transfer method, and why one has to be born at noon and one at midnight. Together they make Leap Day complete. If you take one of them away, you don’t have a full day, therefore, you don’t have a curse.

It is absolutely in Day’s nature to be a sacrificial idiot, and I should have known, when he told Ozone that he would die for him if he could, that this is where it was headed. But I still held out hope that there would be a last-minute miracle and they would all be OK. When Night tries to argue with him, insisting that they can still figure something out, Day announces that he purposely injected himself with too much – so even if he does go back, he won’t be capable of caring for Ozone anymore.

And yes, I cried at that last fist bump, when Night called Day friend. I’m crying right now, just thinking about it.

Day and Ozone’s final goodbye broke something in me. Luckily, I worked from home today, because I was sobbing at my computer. Like, the kind of ugly crying that’s just embarrassing. It was so hard to watch, and I really felt for Ozone. I think he probably thought that if he had done something differently, it wouldn’t be necessary for Day to sacrifice himself. And he does have a point when he says that Day is all he has left. Gun and Pond were both incredible in this scene; I always knew Gun was talented, but I’ve been really impressed by Pond in this series.

Ozone crying over Day’s body was just too much. 

Honestly, even as it faded to black, I was still expecting something to happen. For Day to wake up, for his heart rhythm to come back. But then the next scene was Ozone packing up his room to move in with Night and Dream. This is just another shot in the heart, because that’s his family home; it’s where he lived with his parents, before Day moved in. And as he walks through the house, he just keeps seeing Day everywhere. As important as it is for Ozone to have stability after losing Day, I think it’s also necessary that he leaves. I think it would be difficult for him otherwise.

In the final scenes, we see Ozone slowly adjusting to living with Night and Dream, who take care of Ozone, as they promised Day. (I can also appreciate that Wiwat and Kit are part of their newfound family group – especially Kit, who has been alone for so long.) But Day is never far from Ozone’s thoughts, and as we see, Day is living in limbo, able to exist in the same world as Ozone even though they can’t see each other. (Also, I didn’t notice this until someone pointed it out, but Day’s shirt in the second half of the episode says “Purgatory”.)

At the very end of the episode, we see that Day didn’t technically die. He’s in a coma. Wiwat says that the machines are the only thing keeping him alive, but the final shot of the series is a close-up on Day’s hand… just as his finger moves. (Second season, anyone?)

I’ve had most of the day to process this episode, and I’m still not sure I’m entirely over it. As I said, I started crying just writing this review. This is definitely one of the better shows produced by GMMTV in the past couple of years, both in terms of script and production quality, so I have high hopes for other series in the future.

Allegedly they filmed more than one ending, which makes a lot of sense. I’m not sure why Ozone kept dreaming about Night dying if it was ultimately going to be Day who sacrificed himself, so I’m sure the other ending involved Night staying behind. I feel like they could have peppered in more “Day might die” foreshadowing throughout the series if they intended for that to be a possibility. (You know what? They may have, but the “Night might die” foreshadowing was just so in-your-face that I missed it.)

Besides, there was a shot in the trailer of Ozone in a fire and behind-the-scenes photos of Gun with burn scarring, and nothing like that happened. I would really love to see the other ending(s).

Overall, this show was a great watch. I wonder how much of that was watching week by week. I’m not sure if the show would hit quite the same if you binged it. This is definitely the kind of show that benefits from having time in between episodes to speculate and try to piece together clues. Although, admittedly, there was less clue-piecing-together than I expected. And there are a lot of unanswered questions, but I guess for this show you just have to assume you’re never going to know everything.

No, seriously, I’m still stuck on them all surviving Leap Day 2020 only for it to turn out either Day or Night had to die. What the hell were the stars telling Ozone, then?

Author: Jamie Sugah

Jamie has a BA in English with a focus in creative writing from The Ohio State University. She self-published her first novel, The Perils of Long Hair on a Windy Day, which is available through Amazon. She is currently an archivist and lives in New York City with her demon ninja vampire cat. She covers television, books, movies, anime, and conventions in the NYC area.

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