Plot Summary
I May Destroy You, written by and starring Michaela Coel, follows the story of Arabella, a young writer in London who, struggling to meet a deadline for her new book, decides to take a break and go out drinking with friends. The next morning, she wakes up with no memory of the night before. As subtle physical and psychological symptoms begin to emerge, she starts to suspect that she has been drugged and sexually assaulted. The series traces her gradual journey to piece together the truth of that night while navigating personal doubts, public scrutiny, media exposure, and online commentary. In doing so, it explores how trauma might be understood, lived with, and possibly transformed. Alongside Arabella’s story, the show also portrays the experience of her gay Black friend, Kwame, who is sexually assaulted after a date. His attempt to seek justice is further complicated by societal prejudices tied to gender and sexuality, making his path to recognition and support even more difficult.
Wave Makers, on the other hand, is a political drama centered on a team of campaign staffers working to help their candidate win the presidency. The main character, Wen-Fang, is a deputy director for the Justice Party. A controversy related to her queer identity had previously contributed to an electoral defeat in an earlier legislative race, and the series follows her return to the campaign scene. One of the show’s key subplots involves her subordinate, Ya-Jing, who becomes entangled in the fallout of a workplace sexual harassment case. As the case unfolds, it brings to light a deeper trauma Ya-Jing has long kept hidden—an experience of sexual coercion that continues to haunt her. Through ongoing conversations and growing trust, Wen-Fang eventually becomes a source of support for Ya-Jing. In a pivotal moment, Ya-Jing publicly shares her story, with Wen-Fang by her side. The two women form a bond rooted in solidarity and mutual care.
Why these two series?
As a woman born and raised in Taiwan during the late 1990s, I have witnessed firsthand the gradual emergence of gender consciousness in Taiwanese society. From the enactment of various gender equality legislations in the early 2000s, the White Rose student movement in 2010, the election of the nation’s first female president in 2016, to the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2019, each of these historical milestones has contributed to the broader social imagination of equality and reform.
However, it was the release of Wave Makers on Netflix in May 2023 that ignited an unprecedented wave of public reckoning with sexual violence in Taiwan. In one pivotal scene, a female character discloses her experience of sexual harassment—an act of narrative bravery that resonated beyond fiction. Soon after the series aired, real-life survivors across Taiwan began to share their own stories, marking what many considered the formal entry of the #MeToo movement into mainstream Taiwanese discourse. In a densely populated island of just 36,000 square kilometers where geographic proximity often intensifies emotional and social interconnectedness—these disclosures reverberated with particular urgency. The fictional stories echoed those of friends, classmates, colleagues, and family.
The media has reported on the # MeToo movement triggered by wave makers.
In contrast, the United Kingdom had already experienced earlier waves of #MeToo-related discourse, shaped by different cultural, racial, and industrial dynamics. Among the works emerging from that context, I May Destroy You stands as one of the most critically significant. Created by Michaela Coel and grounded in her own personal experience, the series challenges conventional narrative structures through its non-linear narrative, emotional dissonance, and dark humor. As critic Kate Stables observes, “Her bravery puts a much-needed Black experience into a genre dominated by white-women-centred #MeToo dramas like Bombshell, The Assistant, and Netflix’s true-crime-based series Unbelievable” (2020). The series not only foregrounds the perspective of a Black British woman but also questions how race, gender, and narrative form intersect in complex and often uncomfortable ways. In doing so, it resists both narrative closure and simplified moral binaries, offering a more expansive view of trauma and agency.
These two series thus emerge from radically different socio-political and cultural contexts, but both foreground the embodied experiences of women navigating systems of power. While the former ignited a still-developing public discourse on sexual violence in Taiwan, the latter demonstrates how personal trauma can be narrativized with formal innovation and political acuity, particularly when race, gender, and authorship intersect. Their juxtaposition provides a rare opportunity for cross-cultural dialogue on how trauma is represented, how it circulates through media, and how viewers are implicated in processes of witnessing, interpretation, and response.
In comparing these two works, I aim to highlight how formal strategies and socio-historical contexts co-produce affective meaning. Most importantly, both series reflect a deep sense of authorship and ethical urgency. By foregrounding subjective experience while refusing simplification, they model ways of telling stories that not only challenge dominant narratives but also inspire reflection on how we might continue to tell our own—with clarity, courage, and care.
