'Big Mouth' Season 4: Maria Bamford's Anxiety Mosquito has the potential to be series' best monster yet
The monsters on 'Big Mouth' have, over the past three seasons, moved on from physical manifestations like the hormone monsters or a personification of the vagina, and onto more universal, psychological ones like depression, and shame. With Season 4, we're about to be introduced to the most relatable - and terrifying - monster of them all: the seemingly innocuous Anxiety Mosquito.
When you think about it, there's no better manifestation for anxiety than a mosquito. There are always more of them then you can account for, one little buzzing thought can keep you awake at night, and they make it impossible to enjoy an evening out. From the few shots of it we see in the trailer, not even the Anxiety Mosquito is happy about being the Anxiety Mosquito - though that doesn't stop them from doing their job and filling the kids of 'Big Mouth' with bite-sized but plentiful worries.
The Mosquito is played by comedian Maria Bamford, and casting could not have been better. Maria Bamford has done a number of her own takes on anxiety, explored through a YouTube series and her own Netflix show, 'Lady Dynamite'. She's been quite outspoken about the mental issues she's faced in the hopes of getting people to be able to open up about theirs, and her anxieties are a regular part of her comedy routine. As a voice actor, she's got quite a range of voices - and it looks like the Anxiety Mosquito is going to present quite a range of threats.
While the trailer features a mostly sad, anxious, regretful monster, a glimpse into the later part of the trailer shows a gigantic version of the same creature, grown humongous after gorging on an entire camp's worth of anxious teenagers. Anxiety's a beast that puts even the Shame Wizard to...well, shame, and given how widely prevalent anxiety is becoming in today's society, there's no monster that's more current, or more relatable, than this one.
You can watch the trailer for the new season below, which Netflix released with the simple tagline, "There's a new monster in town."
All episodes of 'Big Mouth' Season 4 air on Friday, December 4, on Netflix.