Picture Credit: Netflix
If you’ve been holding out hope for a second season of Netflix’s Italian coming-of-age series RIV4LI (known internationally as Riv4lries), we’ve got some bittersweet news for you today. Netflix has officially ruled out Season 2—but they aren’t leaving fans empty-handed.
Instead of a traditional sophomore season, Netflix has opted to close out the series with a surprise, standalone finale. Titled One Last Adventure, the bonus episode dropped today, Thursday, July 9th, and is streaming entirely for free over on the Netflix Italy “DOPOSCUOLA” YouTube channel.
How do we know this is definitively the end? The streaming service explicitly bills this as a “special final episode” that “takes fans back one last time into the world of the beloved coming-of-age series.” Furthermore, the special is set during “the last summer before high school,” which effectively closes the book on the Montalcini Middle School chapter that the show is built around.
While it’s always a bummer when a show doesn’t get a full renewal, the story of how this finale came to be is pretty cool and something we’ve not really seen Netflix do in a while. One Last Adventure was entirely inspired by a letter sent to Netflix by a 13-year-old French fan named Hailé from Toulouse. She wrote to the streamer expressing her deep connection with the series, its characters, and her own struggles and dreams of finding friends. Touched by her letter, Netflix and the Italian production company Stand By Me decided to dedicate the show’s final outing to her.
What happens in One Last Adventure?
Blending traditional filming with a “vlog” style shot on Terry’s (Kartika Malavasi) phone, the episode follows Terry, Claudio (Samuele Carrino), Paolo (Duccio Orlando) and Alessio (Joseph Figueroa) as they travel to Toulouse.
Alessio is there to submit his very first comic book to a prestigious festival. In a fun, meta twist, his comic is literally the story of RIV4LI. Overcome with self-doubt and feeling like an outsider, Alessio throws his artwork away, causing a rift in the group and a romantic spat between Terry and Claudio.
However, everything changes when Alessio discovers Hailé’s letter. Realizing she feels just as lonely as he does, the group reunites to track her down. This kicks off a city-wide treasure hunt around Toulouse as the teens decode clues from her letter—searching skateparks, plazas, and eventually figuring out that a clue about “dancing at the lake” was actually a mistranslation referring to a local ballet school’s production of Swan Lake (Le Lac des Cygnes).
Not only do the characters find Hailé in the episode (she makes a special cameo!), but the real-life cast actually flew to her home in France to surprise her.
The episode ends with a animated sequence of Alessio’s redrawn comic, showing the show’s iconic “wall” crumbling down, followed by a final, on-screen dedication: “To Hailé and to all the fans of RIV4LI.”
A Quick Refresher on RIV4LI
For those unfamiliar, RIV4LI is an Italian teen series created by Simona Ercolani and set in the exact same story universe as DI4RI (another massive YA hit for Netflix Italy).
The show centered on Class 3D at Montalcini Middle School in Pisa, dividing the students into two rival factions: the “Insiders,” led by popular kid Claudio, and the “Outsiders,” led by newcomer Terry. After a physical wall was built dividing their school, the series followed the kids as they learned to tear down both the literal and social barriers keeping them apart.
One Last Adventure is available to watch right now on YouTube, and a behind-the-scenes vlog of the cast surprising Hailé will drop this Sunday, July 12th.
Are you sad to see RIV4LI end without a proper Season 2? Let us know in the comments down below!
