Maisie Williams and Asa Butterfield Charm Up the Screen in ‘Then Came You’

If you’re still raging over the way the Arya was treated in that Game of Thrones finale (Bran has the best story? Really? Bran?), I have the perfect balm for you: Then Came You on Netflix, a sweet  teen romantic comedy starring Maisie Williams as a young girl with cancer and Asa Butterfield as her hypochondriac friend.

Then Came You (originally titled Departures) is a small 2018 indie film directed Peter Hutchings and written by Fergal Rock, now finding a wider audience after it was added to Netflix in June 2019. It is, on the one hand, the latest in a long line of sappy terminally-ill teen movies—A Walk to Remember, The Fault in Our Stars, Everything Everything, Five Feet Apart, just to name a few—and in that regard, it doesn’t particularly stand out. But like many of the above-listed films, a talented young cast breathes life into a clichéd story. In particular, Then Came You gives Williams a chance to have fun after nine long somber years in Winterfell and gives Butterfield chance to brood, which he’s admittedly done before, but he does it very well.

William’s character, Skye Aitken, is a fearless teen with a brightly-colored wig and sarcastic quip for every situation, including being told she has only a few months live due to a cancerous tumor. She meets Calvin Lewis (Butterfield), a nervous college-dropout, at a cancer support group meeting. Calvin does not have cancer but was sent to the meeting by his doctor, who thinks seeing actually terminally-ill people will help Calvin’s hypochondria. The two become close friends—mostly thanks to Skye’s bullying—and together, she and Calvin begin to work through Skye’s bucket list.

“Don’t write Disneyland,” Skye advises Calvin when the support group is tasked with writing down the things they want to do before they die. “I’ve been to Disneyland, and it’s shit. There’s like a 1,000 dying kids there, so no one treats you special or anything.”

Does Skye embody every single characteristic of the tired Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope, aka the aggressively quirky girl who helps a male character come out of his shell and have fun? Yes. Do I recognize the faults of Manic Pixie Dream Girls trope? Yes. Would I be annoyed by said Manic Pixie Dream Girl if it were played by anyone other than Maisie Williams? Absolutely yes. But you can tell Williams has been waiting for this kind of role for a long time, and it’s just so fun to watch her finally do it. (Her accent, which closer to her actual accent than her Arya voice, is jarring at first—but you will get used it.) And Butterfield, who proved how funny he could be in Netflix’s Sex Education, is the perfect deadpan straight-man to William’s wildness.

It helps the that the rest of the Then Came You cast is littered with “Oh, it’s that person!” surprises: The Vampire Diaries star Nina Dobrev plays Izzy, the flight attendant Calvin is crushing on; Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt star Titus Burgess plays Izzy’s coworker; Teen Wolf‘s Tyler Hoechlin plays Asa Butterfield’s brother; David Koechner, aka Todd Packer from The Office, plays their father; and Ken Jeong plays a friendly police officer.

And, listen, teen cancer movies are popular for a reason. Then Came You hits on all the right beats of the genre: fun, tragedy, and emotional catharsis. If you’re two glasses of wine deep, as I was last night, you will cry. It’s not going to win an Oscar, but if you’re in the mood to watch Arya have fun for once and Asa Butterfield brood, give Then Came You a stream.

Stream Then Came You on Netflix