To date, “The Last of Us” episode representing the apex of what the show is and can be is “Long, Long Time,” which came early in the series’ first season. Enough has been written to defend that opinion, along with the awards and nominations backing it up. But its successful execution and reception are worth recalling as the second season starts.
Had Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann not deviated from the video game, Joel Miller (Pedro Pascal) and his ward Ellie Williams (Bella Ramsey) would have treated the compound where Nick Offerman’s Bill dwelled like a pit stop. Bill is a minor character in the game, while his partner, Frank (Murray Bartlett), is only mentioned.
Instead, the series co-creators build an entire life around Bill and Frank to show Joel and Ellie that they shouldn’t limit their goal to simply surviving.
Humans need a purpose. That’s why those who remain fight for their lives despite nature itself aligning against them. There are trillions of ways to die in “The Last of Us,” one for each Cordyceps spore that turned most of humankind into raging, mindless cannibals. Living must be a practice and choice, or else why bother?
The writers channel the soulful guidance of its best hour to infuse all seven episodes of Season 2, shifting the nature of the story’s existential questions and reasons along the way. Where loyalty and familiar affection fueled Joel and Ellie’s journey West in the first season, the second season twists those catalysts into something grimmer and less predictable.
Some of this is preordained. The second season follows the general plot of the 2020 sequel to the original video game. (Druckmann co-created both.) That requires the writers to sort a massive storyscape, including parallel narratives splitting off from the spine.
There’s simply no way to capably recreate what that game achieves in seven hours of television, so HBO wisely picked up a third season before the second debuted. Someone must have had a hunch that the audience will have very strong feelings about the way this arc lands.
This season is full of implied questions about heroism and duty.
The road there is rocky, struggling at times to match the first run’s narrative flow. A late-season confrontation between a major character and a new mysterious threat is especially clumsy and ultimately unnecessary. But these minor deficiencies are washed away by the gigantic wave of emotion propelling the plot.
“The Last of Us” leaps Joel and Ellie five years, finding that time has been gentle to them in some ways and cruel in others. Ellie is a headstrong 19-year-old chafing against Joel’s awkward efforts to parent. Joel has committed egregious errors in judgment with the best intentions. The father-daughter bond slowly constructed over their journey from Boston to a medical outpost in Salt Lake City, Utah, barely holds together.
Pedro Pascal in “The Last of Us” (Liane Hentscher/HBO)Having settled into the thriving Jackson, Wyoming, community led by Joel’s brother Tommy (Gabriel Luna) and sister-in-law Maria (Rutina Wesley), their lives are stable. Ellie has a best friend, Dina (Isabela Merced), who joins her in troublemaking while keeping her grounded and is steadily earning the respect of the security team she wants to join, including Jesse (Young Mazino), who’s only a few years older than she is.
Jackson has resources, high walls and a defense apparatus keeping the Cordyceps-infected hordes at bay. It’s also close-knit and small, a fertile environment for slights to fester.
It’s the poignant devastation of knowing one false step or bad decision could reshape your life that knocks us over.
Between this show and “The Mandalorian,” Pascal weathered a season of queasy daddy fantasizing in the pop culture discourse, and it would be foolish to bet against that nonsense’s resurgence. But this Joel isn’t the striding figure we met in 2023.
Now, Pascal conveys the weight that half a decade of parenting, with all its fears and expectations, presses down on someone. From his first moments onscreen, Pascal makes that ache palpable, setting the tone for everything that follows. He’s a 50-year-old playing a man 10 years older, but describing Joel as grizzled shows less in production’s cosmetic aging tricks than the actor’s full-body responses to confusion and hurt.
This season is full of implied questions about heroism and duty, all of which begin with Joel. He urgently wants to do right by the people around him only to be resented for those efforts; his most brutal, violent act on the show was committed out of love but may part him from Ellie forever. Actions, however nasty and noble, yield reactions you rarely see coming.
However, it’s Ellie’s journey that centers this second act. Ellie is impatient, angry and reckless. Combining that with her singular immunity to the Cordyceps infection lends a dangerous dimension to her youthful delusions of invincibility.
Saying that we never know what’s waiting around the corner applies to more than the expected jump scares, although this season amplifies their impact when they occur. Rather, it’s the poignant devastation of knowing one false step or bad decision could reshape your life that knocks us over.
Trust that this show’s devotion to its characters’ humanity makes the horrors hit harder.
Contemplative moments in “The Last of Us” ease our connection with these characters and many of the season’s new additions. Some appear in the game, including Jeffrey Wright’s reprising of his character Isaac for the show. Another character, Eugene, is more fleshed out for TV than his console version and played by Joe Pantoliano.
But a few of the new season’s best characters are wholly original, including Catherine O’Hara’s Gail, Eugene’s gloriously sardonic wife who takes on the mixed bag of being the only therapist in Jackson.
Alanna Ubach’s Hanrahan was also created for the show and isn’t given much to do, but presumably is set to play a larger part down the line.
“The Last of Us” (Liane Hentscher/HBO)The season’s most significant casting is Kaitlyn Dever as Abby. Although a few zealots took issue with Dever’s selection, she lends the right proportion of jaggedness and focus to a complicated figure that needs to sustain our interest for the long term.
Since the video game’s narrative is amply chronicled on your pick of Wikis, you can use any search engine to find out why that is, along with other plot developments. This may also ruin a few definitive surprises for you. The writers aren’t shy in deviating from the original tale, but those who know this mythology recognize that some anguish can’t be bypassed.
Accepting this may help us appreciate how economically yet substantively the season premiere sets the table for what’s coming, including a sucker punch of a set piece to rival any massive battle set in Middle-earth or Westeros.
If you’re expecting those adrenaline-spiking action sequences to erupt immediately, you may be left wanting by the premiere’s weighted blanket of drama. Trust that this show’s devotion to its characters’ humanity makes the horrors hit harder. You may eventually appreciate that episode’s contemplative atmosphere and relative calm. When the world has ended, peace is fleeting.
Moving the action to Seattle brings a lot less of it – it’s a wild, dangerous place strangled in conflict, governed by a military sect that makes Jackson’s militia look like a hippie horse club.
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“The Last of Us” recreated its terror funhouse version of Seattle in British Columbia. Fair enough; you can’t argue with tax breaks. Still, it is endlessly fascinating to see how Hollywood producers visualize a place that scrubbed the grunge movement out of its cultural ecosystem decades ago. I was especially curious to take in Mazin and Druckmann’s speculative interpretation of what the city I call home would look like once things fall apart.
Their best guess seems about right. Besides being overtaken by moss, ivy and ferns, Seattle’s surviving denizens have evolved from passive-aggressive to plain old aggressive. The present-day Pacific Northwest has a prominent survivalist streak along with a healthy number of, shall we say, weird faith clubs. “The Last of Us” bumps all that wackiness up to 11.
Given where this journey leads, it’s comforting to know there will be a future for “The Last of Us.” It has earned another season and builds toward a climax that cannot go unanswered. Reaching that destination raises new questions that you may be content to sit with at least until the third season arrives.
“The Last of Us” premieres at 9 p.m. Sunday, April 13 on HBO and streams on Max.
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