The latest episode of HBO’s The Last of Us featured a heartbreaking love story between Nick Offerman’s Bill and Murray Bartlett’s Frank, a couple living alone in a small town outside of Boston. While these characters did exist in the original game, their television counterparts differed significantly from what fans might have been expecting. Where players were able to interact and fight alongside Bill on the PlayStation, the series has the noted survivalist dying peacefully beside his love before the show’s protagonists are ever able to reach him. Despite this variation, however, the episode does end with a nod to a classic element from the first game.
As Pedro Pascal’s Joel and Bella Ramsey’s Ellie drive away from Bill and Frank’s residence, the camera pans to a familiar shot of the home’s open bedroom window. In the video game, players are treated to a similar image of an open window each time they put in their disc, with the shot acting as the backdrop to the game’s menu screen. In this week’s installment of the official The Last of Us Podcast, showrunner Craig Mazin revealed this was entirely intentional and was originally part of a bigger idea to incorporate the famed window shot as part of the show’s opening sequence:
We had this idea that we were gonna open every episode with a window. So you know, like, when you’re watching on streaming and the intro comes along, the little button says ‘skip intro’? We were gonna change the words of ‘skip intro’ to ‘press play’.
Craig Mazin
He continued his explanation, noting that each episode would present its own unique version of the window concept for viewers to associate with the story:
So you could sit there and look at this window as long as you wanted. Each episode would have a different window reflecting a different circumstance in that episode, then you’d press play, and the episode would begin.
Craig Mazin
Obviously, this didn’t end up making the final cut, but Mazin claims the idea made it as far as filming, and that the team was even able to use the third episode’s window for the end of Long Long Time:
Well, as many windows as we filmed, it just never really made sense… It just never came together, but the plus side of the misfire there was that we did have this ending, which we loved. And it is a chance to give fans, who have experienced what I’ve experienced as a player, that feeling of the open window and the sense of both promise and loss that it implies.
Craig Mazin
The Last of Us is currently airing Sunday nights on HBO.
The Last of Us is, first and foremost, a love story. HBO’s adaptation of Naughty Dog’s video game classic is ultimately a tale of finding purpose through devotion, and eventually, dealing with the grief that comes with it. In Long Long Time, the series’ latest episode, this concept is bottled into a mostly self-contained narrative about Nick Offerman‘s gruff doomsday prepper Bill and his music-loving romantic partner Frank, played by The White Lotus‘ Murray Bartlett. It’s an incredibly beautiful, sentimental hour of television, perhaps one of the best in recent memory, that leaves a truly indelible mark on the franchise and everything it stands for.
For those that are not familiar with The Last of Us outside of the show, let it be known that Long Long Time is the first episode of the series to deviate immensely from the original source material. In the game, Joel and Ellie come upon “Bill’s Town” to find its titular resident living alone in a bitter state of self-preservation. Frank is mentioned, but never seen, as Bill’s former survival partner who moved elsewhere after a major falling out, and the game’s protagonists are forced to work with Bill alone to infiltrate a Clicker-infested high school on the other side of town for important truck parts. It’s only after this that the player discovers Frank’s decaying corpse, a note left behind revealing he was infected and consequently committed suicide, taking a lasting hatred for Bill with him to the very end.
This works well in the game as a means of communicating to the player what danger lies in refusing to make a human connection. Through interacting with a broken Bill, and seeing what has become of his life and the town he lives in, both the player and the game’s characters begin to value companionship just a little bit more. In the way a video game functions, there is no chance for the story to flesh out Bill and Frank’s relationship further. It has to be something the player, as well as Joel and Ellie, stumble upon in the midst of gameplay. With a series, however, the creatives are not confined by the restrictions of player-controlled storytelling. They have a unique opportunity to explore the full history between lovers Bill and Frank, and in taking it, they subvert every expectation the viewer has going into the episode.
Long Long Time is, at face value, a heartbreaking short story for The Last of Us newcomers to digest. Much will be said about its arresting nature, and rightfully so. Yet, it’s the way the episode fits into the larger narrative that’s truly striking, especially to someone who appreciates the grand scheme of character development. At first, Long Long Time seems to be a diversion from the main plotline, giving the audience a backstory for the next big name to join the show. Offerman had been advertised heavily as part of the series, and it’s intentionally made to seem like Frank will meet a tragic end to tie Bill’s arc in with the rest of the, admittedly, depressing project. However, once it becomes clear that Bill and Frank’s time together will instead end full of love and happiness before Joel or Ellie can even get to them, viewers are made to question what the idea behind the whole flashback was.
The purpose for the entirety of Long Long Time, aside from the obvious, hits home not long after, and it’s absolutely brilliant. Although not literally, the episode – like the whole series – is still about Joel and Ellie. The Last of Us uses Bill and Frank’s story as an hour-long allegory for the show’s protagonists, and it all comes together as soon as Ellie reads Bill’s suicide note to Joel. Time exists to put the show’s leading duo on track and somehow manage to develop their own unique relationship in leaps and bounds without having them on screen for most of the runtime. On top of this, Time expertly toys with longtime fans’ preconceived notion of Bill as a resentful loner to draw them into its trap, and uses the shock of its eventual subversion to hammer home it’s point tenfold.
Long Long Time does with its expansion of the Bill and Frank saga exactly what the game did with Joel and Ellie’s long trek through Bill’s Town and its high school, but it sends the message with far more grace and humanity. It reassures viewers that, even when HBO’s take on The Last of Us strays from what’s expected, it will get its characters where they need to be and maintain the spirit of the franchise while doing it. A masterful display of all the best storytelling techniques, and an exciting indicator of where the show can go next.
HBO has renewed The Last of Us for a second season. The series, which stars Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey, is an adaptation of the video game series of the same name. Since its premiere earlier this month, The Last of Us has quickly become a breakout hit for HBO, amassing an astounding 22 million viewers across all platforms.
“I’m humbled, honored, and frankly overwhelmed that so many people have tuned in and connected with our retelling of Joel and Ellie’s journey. The collaboration with Craig Mazin, our incredible cast and crew, and HBO exceeded my already high expectations. Now we have the absolute pleasure of being able to do it again with season two!”
Neil Druckmann, Executive Producer
To date, the series has only aired two episodes, with the third set to premiere this Sunday. However, the adaptation of The Last of Us looks to be connecting with viewers. Episode 2 reportedly jumped 22% in the overnight ratings compared to the first episode across HBO and HBO Max.
Mazin, who serves as the showrunner on the project, expressed his gratitude to those involved in the project as well as the fans of the show. “I’m so grateful to Neil Druckmann and HBO for our partnership, and I’m even more grateful to the millions of people who have joined us on this journey.”
The Last of Us is expected to tackle the second video game, The Last of Us: Part II, for its second season. Season 1 of The Last of Us consists of nine episodes, with a new episode dropping every Sunday.
We are back with another edition of #GameToScreen, where we review the key differences between a video game and its adaptation. We continue with Episode 2 of The Last Of Us, Infected. You can read our veteran’s review here and our newbie’s review here, and you can yell at Charles if need be. Let’s dive right in!
The Connection Between The Infected
We alluded to this in Episode 1’s Game to Screen, but Episode 2 confirms the impact that the subtle change in how people are infected can have on this world. Since people are infected via the vines of other infected, then this means they are all theoretically connected. Now, this is obviously a drastic change from the games in that there is almost a symbiotic relationship between each of the infected. It, also, really gives us more questions than answers. Are they learning from each other? Is there an Infected Prime somewhere who is essentially Patient Zero?
Tess’s Death
We, also, alluded to this in last week’s Game to Screen, but changing Tess from Joel’s business partner to his business partner slash lover meant that things that were headed our way would have much different meaning. Tess dies off-camera in the games, choosing to sacrifice herself to ensure that Joel and Ellie live, though she makes sure to take everyone and everything she can with her in a flurry of gunfire. The show keeps the sacrifice, decides to remove the humans she encounters before dying, and instead sends in a mass wave of Clickers. Tess chooses to go down in a literal blaze of glory as she sets fire to herself and all the Clickers that surround her. We are, also, treated to what can only be described as a French kiss between a Clicker and Tess, which makes things very awkward. All jokes aside, having Tess die differently, albeit slightly earlier, really brings up so many questions about the fate of a lot of the characters we are going to meet. What changes to our characters await us down the road?
Ellie’s Infection
In the game, Ellie’s valuable in that she is immune from this airborne and by-the-bite virus. That’s right: she cannot become infected no matter how many times she’s bitten or, you know, breathes. In the show, they have already established that the way you are infected is different in the show. However, it is in Tess’s conversation with Ellie where something comes into focus: Ellie is actually infected. Tess tells Ellie, in fact, that even stepping on a vine draws the attention of multiple infected, which is fascinating considering that Ellie is very much infected in the show given that she has been struck with the vines before. Is Ellie not just the key to a cure, but also the key to finding the presumptive leader of the Infected?
The First Clicker Encounter
Ellie, Joel, and Tess first encounter the Clicker in the museum in Boston, during a dark night in Beantown. The show sets this encounter a little bit earlier, removes FEDRA’s presence from the encounter, and lets it play out in broad daylight. Considering this is one of the most tense situations in the game, setting it in the daytime would remove all tension, you would think, but not even a little bit: it is still very much unnerving to see Clickers for the first time, and to see them in the location you did not expect. One of the really great things about the Resident Evil remakes being released now is that they circumvent our expectations, and The Last of Us has found a way to do that in nice ways through two episodes. What other subtle changes are in store for us that change our expectations?
Tess’s Dying Wish
Tess, gearing up to sacrifice herself, tells Joel to take Ellie to Bill and Frank, and urges him to have them take her to the Fireflies: in the game, this just does not play out like that at all, and Frank is actually dead. Joel finds a corpse in the train station after Tess sacrifices herself, and you later discover that that was Frank who was dead. In the show, Frank is very much alive, and that introduces a new dynamic for the next episode. Tess’s instructions are for them to take Ellie to the Fireflies, while Joel can continue looking for the Ghost Rider Gabriel Luna. We will not get into Bill’s future given how spoilery it would be, but Frank’s future being re-written really has us excited.
Fans of the award-winning video game franchise, The Last of Us, have been anticipating the arrival of the HBO Max streaming series since word of the project first circulated in late 2020. Led by Pedro Pascal, Anna Torv (oops), and Bella Ramsey, the adaptation kicked off with an 80-minute first episode that covered a lot of ground (55 years to be exact), most of which was incredibly familiar to fans of the game and has fans of the game pretty fired up for more. But what about your average outsider? As a certified outsider, I have a lot of questions about just what the hell is happening at the end of the world in The Last of Us.
More Damn Science
The Last of Us is two-for-two on cold opening full of science stuff and both have done a fantastic job of foreshadowing the horrors faced by the characters that inhabit the world. The terror on the mycology professor’s face when she learned the impossible had happened and cordyceps fungi had learned to live in humans was nothing compared to the emotions of her realization that the world as she knew it was over. Amazing cold open!
Boston
Ellie, the Mycelium Messiah,is a mycological miracle! Once bitten, twice shy I suppose. The distrust on Joel’s part, the unwillingness to let himself believe in hope, is pretty fantastic! And I don’t know that I blame him because until we understand why Cordyceps Christ doesn’t turn into a monster, it’s easy to keep imagining she will! How does this work? The science lady said no medicine and no vaccine!
Two things stood out to me during the time in Boston and both were very cool. First of all, even as someone who has never played the games nor seen them played, I could feel the video gaminess of the hotel and museum scenes but they were also very well done. Moving through the gross water, the dead body jump scare and crossing the wooden plank to find a new path all seemed like things ripped right from gameplay. Also, I have no idea, but I’m guessing the museum is a pretty major stop in the early part of the game. And I had no idea they were going to kill Andrea like that! Wow! This is starting to feel very, very Game of Thrones-y in that I don’t know if I want to get attached to anyone other than Joel and Ellie.
In addition to the great job the creatives did in bringing video game stuff to the screen, the description of the fungus as one large organism followed by the demonstration of the way it works was incredible! Is that from the game? Or is that something they made up or expanded on for the series? What an element of danger it brings to everything you do. If they’re all crispy, no big deal…but if you touch even the smallest bit of one that’s still kicking, those crazy Croakers and the fungal fiends come for you. Absolutely terrifying!
Two episodes in and I’m loving it. This feels like a story worth watching despite knowing everyone is going to die…and they probably should if they leave the safe places! Morons.
The Last of Us is a storytelling machine fueled by nuances. So much of its plot, and consequently, its character development, plays out in the form of sudden movements and stilted glances. In its original video game format, the traumatic tale of Joel and Ellie was allowed to be immersive, executed as something experienced by both the protagonists and the player controlling them. On television, this can’t be the case, so formerly passive moments of world-building become incredibly deliberate choices, and once-lively sequences of gameplay transform into subtly intense scenes on camera. It’s not an easy transition to pull off creatively, but this tight-rope act is the name of the game in Infected, the second episode of HBO’s newly acclaimed adaptation.
Picking up where the premiere left off, Infected sees Joel, his smuggling partner Tess, and their new cargo Ellie fleeing from the Quarantine Zone and traversing a post-apocalyptic Boston. Their goal is to drop Ellie off with the Fireflies and go their separate ways, but the path to the designated meeting point is blocked by a horrifying horde of the fungally infected, and not everybody is going to survive the alternate routes. This episode is, perhaps, a slower burn than the last, but works insanely well as a masterclass in creating tension. From beginning to end, the stakes feel high, and the expert pacing leads to truly awe-inducing payoffs that firmly cement The Last of Us as a terrifying, heartbreaking new world of monsters.
Much like the first episode, Infected begins with a cold open set before the events of Outbreak Day. A scientist in Jakarta is tasked with inspecting the body of a freshly infected person, quickly coming to the realization that society, as humanity knows it, is about to end. While striking, the scene at first feels repetitive of what was already presented in the pilot, an almost unnecessary addition to the story when Joel and Ellie’s journey is begging to continue rolling. There’s an extreme sense of foreboding, a deeper look into how the fungus began spreading, and a reminder that people won’t be able to win this battle before cutting to the opening credits. However, as the rest of the episode unfolds, it starts to become clear just how brilliant the cold open actually was.
As its title implies, Infected does a lot of leg work when it comes to explaining how The Last of Us’ zombie-like plant baddies function. The information given to viewers in the episode’s first few minutes is expanded upon as the remaining hour ticks away, with each new detail creating a higher sense of danger than the last. As the stand-in for the audience, Ellie gives all the correct reactions, ranging from disgust to strange admiration. Like anything humans may fear in nature, there’s an innate level of respect for the fungus and its unstoppably connective nature, but it doesn’t make the simultaneous pain and destruction its growth results in hurt any less. Tendrils, for example, finally have a purpose, and the show’s manner of presenting them as both deliciously creepy and oddly beautiful makes for a wonderful mixed bag of emotions for those watching at home.
Like the cold open itself, most of the horror in Infected comes from what the audience doesn’t see. Viewers are told what could kill them, and they’re told how dire the situation has become, and then they’re left to imagine what that might look like for the large majority of the episode. Characters peer through collapsed buildings, walk past craters in the street, hear screeches come from the distance, and see far-off, ant-sized bodies roll in a giant mass along the ground. It feels like anything could come crashing through the wall at any moment, and it causes every action the protagonists take to feel like a life-or-death decision. All this, so when the Clickers finally make their live-action debut, it’s worth every second of agonizing anticipation that came before it.
Avid fans of The Last of Us have heard the sound of Clickers a million times in the past, yet somehow, HBO’s latest series manages to bring a fresh kind of fright to the first time that guttural noise comes around the corner. It’s not the action-packed museum fight sequence from the game, but it doesn’t have to be. The point is to experience the terror of the infected, and director Neil Druckmann only needs two of them to get the job done. Every motion of the camera while Joel and Ellie hide (in a surprisingly game-accurate way) is genius. A continued play on the phobia of the unknown. They, and the viewers, only get glimpses of a living nightmare that forces them to play by its rules. If Clickers weren’t already part of the classic horror villain lexicon, they will be now.
This unique sense of dread extends to the episode’s closing moments, which find Anna Torv‘s Tess sacrificing herself in a bittersweet effort to save the planet. This, too, is made better by the beginning of the episode, acting as a hopeful bookend to an hour of empty loss. In Jakarta, it’s made perfectly clear that there is nothing people can do to stop the fungus. The only option, according to a tearful scientist, is to take lives away. Here, after discovering Ellie as a potential solution, Tess realizes the answer may actually be keeping a life intact. Again, after a long subtle build, the payoff comes due in a gorgeous, intimate moment of humanity, surrounded by the bizarre parallel of the fungus – now spreading into Tess – also doing what it can to stay alive.
Of course, none of these nuances could possibly work as well as they do without the pure talent of the cast. Bella Ramsey comes to life as Ellie in this episode, and it becomes apparent by the end exactly why they were chosen for the role. A perfect blend of vulnerable and tempestuous. Specifically, a moment between Ellie and Joel in the lobby of a flooded hotel feels ripped straight from the game, with Pedro Pascal also embodying the latter character with immaculate accuracy. Somehow, The Last of Us has been reborn on HBO, and with time, it may even prove to be a better version of the story than the original model. At the very least, these first two episodes have been nothing short of amazing, and hopefully, are enough to bring viewers back for more.
Based on the viewership of its premiere, HBO has its next major hit series on its hands with The Last of Us. The video game adaptation garnered 4.7 million viewers during its Sunday night premiere between the linear cable channel and the HBO Max streaming service. This officially became the second-largest debut for an HBO original series since 2010, with the Steve Buscemi-led Boardwalk Empire drawing in 4.81 million viewers in its debut.
Of course, the one series that drew in higher debut viewerships was House of the Dragon from this past summer. The Game of Thrones prequel debuted to a remarkable 9.986 million viewers between the HBO network and HBO Max. The monstrous debut drew in the largest audience in pay cable history.
Based on the Playstation video game series of the same name, The Last of Us follows Joel, a survivor of a mass societal apocalypse, being hired to smuggle 14-year-old Ellie away from a dangerous situation. From there, the series will follow a cross-country odyssey with the two characters in their struggle to survive the widespread infection.
The series stars Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey as the two leads with the ensemble cast including Gabriel Luna, Anna Torv, Nico Parker, Murray Bartlett, and Nick Offerman. Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann serve as writers and executive producers for the series.
New episodes for The Last of Us premiere every Sunday at 9:00 pm EST. The first season will consist of nine episodes. You can read Murphy’s Multiverse review of the premiere here.
Fans of the award-winning video game franchise, The Last of Us, have been anticipating the arrival of the HBO Max streaming series since word of the project first circulated in late 2020. Led by Pedro Pascal, Anna Torv, and Bella Ramsey, the adaptation kicked off with an 80-minute first episode that covered a lot of ground (55 years to be exact), most of which was incredibly familiar to fans of the game and has fans of the game pretty fired up for more. But what about your average outsider? As a certified outsider, I have a lot of questions about just what the hell is happening at the end of the world in The Last of Us.
Science!
Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann came out swinging with some heavy science in the show’s opening scene. The science showdown between Quintus and The Swede was legit but it also really felt like HBO did a test screening of some portion of the series with a group of average IQ types and realized that without an explanation of what was going to happen 15 minutes later, they would have way too many questions. Then they went ahead and loaded it up with so much science that they may just have further confused the average IQ types. Fans of The Walking Dead spent several seasons trying to figure out how the end of the world began before getting over it, so at least there was some effort here.
D-Day
Pretty standard stuff for the day the music died, really. Pedro Pascal‘s Joel seems like a real dawg and the stuff with his daughter, Sarah, clearly exists to make you sad soon and open a spot in Joel’s heart later. Outside of that, Joel’s brother (that’s Gabriel Luna?!) is a rowdy Army dude–seems important. The Mycelium Mouths are just simply terrifying. Thankfully, Quintus’ pre-present-day exposition allowed for some understanding of how an otherwise decrepit old lady could become a WMD…oh my God he smashed her skull with a pipe wrench! Thankfully the failed escape attempt didn’t go on too long (I want to see what was going on in that plane; I feel like it was World War Z-level action with the Mycelium Mouths).
As the D-Day stuff comes to a close, it seems pretty clear that the only necessary piece was the death of Sarah. As the audience makes the jump 20 years into the future, there’s no understanding of how or why the Mycelium Mouths came to be, only that they did, leaving us to imagine that Sarah’s death will mark the beginning of Joel’s origin story as “The Governor” of some post-apocalyptic civilization.
What Are Fireflies? What a Mouthy Brat!
Joel is just…a grunt? He should be running this DMZ but instead, he’s willing to burn bodies and work in the sewers? All these FEDRA people are faceless goons and someone kicked the shit out of I-didn’t-recognize-her-but-that’s Anna Torv. Obviously, these Fireflys are a big deal; that brat they have chained up is mouthy as hell. If you’re already chaining her up, add a modified Hannibal Lecter mask to keep her from talking unless you need her to. Where’s a wight giant when you need one? I adored the abstract art on the wall in the subway tunnel; I could have stared at the blown-up Mycelium Mouth all day trying to figure out exactly what I was looking at.
Joel and Agent Dunham are sneaky! Joel’s brother is now estranged…hopefully Joel reminds him that he’d likely be dead if he hadn’t bailed him out of jail…and that Sarah would probably not have been shot and killed if Joel hadn’t spent the time bailing him out. At this point in the series, it’s tough to accept swapping out sweet Sarah, who fixed her Dad’s watch for his birthday, with the abrasive, vulgar Ellie but she’s apparently the Mycelium Messiah, so I guess she’s going to fill that hole in Joel’s heart with all sorts of cuss words.
The biggest outstanding question at the moment is why Joel is so terrifying. I assumed his 20 years of experience would have included murdering his way to the top of some group of survivors so he could lead a revolution against the government that took his daughter away from him. Murders, maybe some light torture, and developing some mild psychoses; instead, he’s just a dude who while resourceful, would seem to be no more or less threatening than any other dude. Surely his war vet brother would be scarier.
Next!
It seems like most of the people in this episode were faceless because we’ll never see them again now that Joel, Tess, and Ellie left the zone. Though it was nothing extraordinary, the closing shot of the episode worked as a really great tease for me. The thought of them heading into a completely ruined city full of loud, screechy noises might not be Rick riding into Atlanta on his high horse, but it definitely portends bad things man, I mean bad things…
Experiencing The Last of Us never gets any easier. It’s a painful, heartbreaking story that might feel gratuitous if it wasn’t so devastatingly good. Of course, the difficulty involved with balancing so much grief with a storytelling necessity for actual payoff is a huge reason why the game was so beloved, but it’s not a task so easily accomplished. That’s why, as with any adaptation of an iconic video game, fans were likely terrified of a live-action series that would fumble the chance to convey this unicorn act to a wider audience. Luckily for them, HBO’s revamped take on Naughty Dog’s 2013 classic hits all the same marks as its predecessor in a shockingly faithful premiere episode that even manages to improve on a few key moments in the franchise’s lore.
The series’ first 80-minutes are essentially broken up into two segments – a 20-minute prologue detailing Outbreak Day and the origins of the Cordyceps takeover, followed by a proper hour that introduces viewers to the show’s post-apocalyptic world and its grungy cast of characters. Truthfully, it’s hard to remember the last time a major adaptation converted its source material from format-to-format with such pinpoint precision. The story beats are all almost exactly the same, with the episode only straying from what previously existed in brief efforts to expand upon what fans were already expecting. Normally, a word-for-word translation could prove costly for a series of this caliber, but The Last of Us is, quite frankly, not normal.
Perhaps it’s because the video game previously existed as a somewhat cinematic experience, but the show’s surprising method of sticking to what works is admirable for multiple reasons. The obvious positive is that The Last of Us is still The Last of Us, and not an entirely new tale riding the original’s credibility. Those who played the games and loved them will be thrilled to see certain scenes play out exactly as they did on their PlayStations nearly a decade ago; those who are witnessing this story for the first time can take comfort in the fact they’re not “missing” anything the former group has raved about for years. As mentioned before, The Last of Us is special in large part because of its emotional tight-rope act, and series creators Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin clearly don’t want to mess with that wildly effective formula.
Both Mazin and Druckmann stated before the series premiered that there would be new elements and expanded segments throughout the story’s retelling, and the colossal first episode wastes no time in proving this to be true. Viewers are quickly treated to a 1960s cold open explaining the science behind Cordyceps, and a much longer tenure with Nico Parker’s Sarah and the pre-apocalypse Miller family. Thankfully, neither of these bits wear out their welcome and actually end up serving the overall plot rather well. Parker is so likable in her elongated stint on the show that Sarah’s ultimate demise becomes all-the-more tear-jerking, while the eventual collapse of society is made far more upsetting after an incredibly stressful sequence involving the Miller’s neighbors that will likely qualify as one of the most tensity-filled television scenes of the year.
Among the show’s greatest achievements, thus far, is how successful it is at conveying the brutality of The Last of Us without most of the gut-wrenching action. This is accredited mostly to the brilliance of the cast. Pedro Pascal‘s Joel and Anna Torv‘s Tess are more delicate than ever before, stripped of their near-superhuman survival abilities in a slightly more realistic version of the apocalypse than the game was allowed to portray. As such, the series is forced to show their capabilities through smaller moments, leaning heavily on the dramatic aspects of the story, and both performers are adept at meeting the challenge. Bella Ramsey, the biggest question mark leading into the series’ premiere, is outstanding. The most important part of bringing existing characters to life is capturing their essence, which they have in spades. The same goes for Gabriel Luna as Tommy, and, obviously, Merle Dandridge‘s Marlene.
All-in-all, it would appear that HBO has a bona fide hit on their hands.The Last of Us recaptures magic in a bottle, mixing sorrowful, awe-inducing set pieces with the damaging beauty of the human condition, and finally revealing to the greater world why they should be so invested in the journey of Joel and Ellie. The premiere does an excellent job of pacing itself through its own expository chapter and leaves off on an intriguing-enough note that promises a thrill ride when viewers return next week. If the first episode is any indication, newcomers to the franchise are in for a treat, and longtime fans should be excited about what they already know comes next.
I don’t know what day it is. I spent 20 years of the apocalypse keeping track. Funny I would die not knowing.
Let’s just get it out of the way – this is probably my final journal entry. I thought I could talk to people, help them understand what the world needed to heal. Make them see the light.
I was wrong.
We raided a Hunter settlement. Tried to bring them into our fold. We severely underestimated how many of them there were. They killed everyone in my mission, and now I’m in a cage on the way to sacrifice. Well, execution really. Being “thrown to the beasts“, an example for anyone else who might dare oppose them. Sacrifice just sounds better in my head. Doing it for the cause, and all.
I haven’t slept in… a while? So, I apologize if any of this sounds delusional. It’s hard to sleep when you know you only have a little time left. They took all of my things, but one of the guards left me my journal. Maybe he’s just curious what I’ll write. Like an insane social experiment. Obviously, he doesn’t know what I’ve got in here. The second half of my life. A series of events you clearly shouldn’t replicate.
If this is the last hurrah, though, I guess I’d better make it count.
I started this survival guide when I was only 22 years old. So much hadn’t happened yet. I didn’t know how humanity would change, or what might happen on a planet filled with monsters. I was just scared, and alone. I told myself I didn’t care if I died, that I wasn’t afraid of death. But that was bullshit. A lie to make myself feel better, while I listened to gunshots every night. Never sure if they were aimed at people or the infected. Never sure when they’d be aimed at me.
Now, they are. Metaphorically, of course. Literally, I’m being fed to a herd of Clickers. I’ll try to fight back – of course I will – but like I’ve said before, that fungus ain’t just for looks. It’ll hurt, I’m not looking forward to that, but maybe I’ll manage to get one last laugh in before I go. Of all the ways I thought this world might take me, gladiatorial combat against the undead was NOT on the list. It’s sorta hilarious if you’ve got a morbid sense of humor like mine. If you don’t, I suppose it may come across as tragic.
Either way, I’m trying to keep my spirits up. I think I had a pretty good run, all things considered. And, if you’ve somehow found even just a handful of my rules, I’d like to think I saved a life or two during the ride. Based on what I’ve heard, I should have just enough time to get one more lesson down on paper, and I’m not really doing anything else at the moment, so why not?
It’s an obvious one, keeping the circumstances in mind. However, now that I’m old (in apocalypse years), I’m gonna try to throw a little wisdom in there as well. Really flesh out the topic. It’s the antithesis of my current situation, the solution to the mistake that finally did me in. I believed in something, and for the first time, I wasn’t afraid of dying for it. I knew it could get me, but somehow I never really thought it would. So, please, if you’d like to avoid becoming plant bait, do the following –
Rule #88, Don’t Be A Martyr
What I’ve come to learn is that people aren’t designed to be satisfied. Survival is not based around ideals. Its foundation is simply the next thought, the next need that must be met. That’s where this country has landed, and that’s where it will likely stay. Honestly, there’s a good chance it was always headed towards this – whether a fungus took us there or not.
Humanity will always run towards perfection, just to throw it away. We get bored. Salvation is too easy. We make our own problems because deep down, we love the chaos. We love the sensation of hating something from the bottom of our stomachs. It makes us feel better to think everything else is terrible because then we don’t feel as bad about ourselves. It’s sickening, but it’s just how things are. I thought I could fight against that, change it even, and instead I learned the world has become exactly what it was meant to be.
Society was too complicated for us to handle. It was overstimulating. We were always supposed to live in tribes, hunting for basic needs. That’s what we have now. No borders, no government, no money. Just animals, roaming the land. Anyone who allows themselves to think higher thoughts, or commit to something bigger, has already written their future on the wall. People, as we know them, will never change.
I remember when we were still concerned about “Global Warming.” Someone told me it was narcissistic to think we would kill the Earth. That it was more likely the Earth would kill us, like the parasites we are. And, they said, that it was most likely a meteor would take us all out before any of that happened. The universe would hit the reset button, the only true method of bringing about peace.
Maybe a meteor is what we need. We’re too full of hate and greed to let anything else in the door. So many stories end with people being too stubborn to let their feelings go. To do what’s right in the name of the bigger picture. But you have to let go if you ever hope to move forward. Move forward, or you’ll die with the past. Don’t be a martyr. Just hold your loved ones close and keep yourselves alive.
I wasn’t able to do any of that. I let my emotions get in the way. I thought too much. Now the universe has cut my rope short. Thankfully, I have my writings. A legacy. Something for you to remember me by. In a weird way, my life has become devoted to you. The ones who can still make it. If I have to be a martyr, I’m hoping it’s worth something. That I can make you among the last of a drowning breed – those who decipher between good and evil, and know when to use both.
So, if you’ve found this journal, use it well. Enter this world knowing how it works, and learn to survive. I’ll see you sooner or later. Let me know how it goes.
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