Five years after Joel Miller saved virus-immune Ellie from certain death (but in doing so killed the people who might have saved humanity) they are living in Jackson, a fortified township that offers the closest thing to a sanctuary.
But the lies Joel has told Ellie and those around him will not stay buried and even as Jackson faces unbelievable infestations and forces emerging from the ice at its gates, someone else is coming for Joel and, once again, the cycle of revenge, retribution, necessity and sheer survival will come at an unbelievable cost…
*massive spoilers for Season Two’s first two episodes…*
When you have a major success in one medium it can be a perilous road to adapt it for another. The first The Last of Us game was a phenomenon for Sony and games company Naughty Dog, so much it spawned a sequel that was every bit as good and at least twice as controversial on where it took the characters and story thereafter. The first season of the HBO version of the story was also a huge success, tacking very close to the original game in its episodic beats. But where some of the game’s sequel had potential shock value and most certainly a deep and disturbing take on the devastation a cycle of revenge can bring, the series has had the problem of deciding just how closely to follow the game’s narrative. Stray too far and some of the deep love and affection achieved so far could be squandered… stick too closely and you’re likely to have a section of the show’s fanbase just as dissatisfied.
If you’re a tv watcher who has managed to avoid spoilers from the game’s mythology, congratulations – I’m not about to spoil what those are in this review. But in the (unfortunately) likely event you are spoiled before any parallels appear on screen, you’ll immediately understand the massive problem and dilemma that the series has in honouring the source material and yet finding its own way. Some of that will be in the series’ pacing. In the game you follow Ellie for much the first half of the game and then you see events from Abby’s perspective and then put them on a collision course. It’s unlikely we’re going to see the same structure here, partly because some of the game’s surprises are already out there in the ether and therefore won’t have the same power for many and also because games and shows are slightly different beasts. The current plan is to have three-to-four seasons of the show, taking us through to the conclusion of the second game’s story. How we get there is likely to be the most interesting part…
This second season opener, ‘Future Days‘, gives some clues to the method if not the details: shrink and expand the story as opportunities arise with possible detours en route to the final destination. Game-players will adore the way the show recreates certain early scenes and environments. Honestly, it’s astonishing just how the show manages to bring to life imagery that is so reminiscent of the game. The streets of the Jackson enclave, long-distance sniping at the Infected, the hunting party investigating a ‘deserted’ shopping center complete with dead bear and less dead menaces… are lovingly lifted from the game-play in the first episode alone and even the use of beer bottles to distract enemies is literally thrown in for good measure. A key town party scene, complete with strings of lights feels like an almost frame-for-frame recreation – along with important dialogue – and if some of the events happen just a little out of order (or, at least, the order in which they were experienced by a PS5 game-player) then the more straight through-line process likely works in its favour.
If perhaps not the most obvious choices for the roles of Joel and Ellie (online pundits continue to recast the roles to their own satisfaction as is their wont) Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey have long since proven their acting chops to the extent it’s now hard to imagine anyone else playing them. But the chemistry they established during the first run is deliberately stretched here, with very few scenes together… and the ones that are, are full of tension. In the show and the game the estrangement is because of the lie that Joel tells her at the end of the first run (claiming that he rescued her after an incoming attack on the Fireflies base) where we know – and she suspects – the truth is darker: that Joel saved her from the Fireflies because their search for a cure would have meant killing her. Pile on that the normal teenage rebellion and Joel is going through a hard time… keeping secrets that he can’t even share within the privacy of his sessions with Gail, Jackson’s resident psychotherapist (Catherine O’Hara). Her character has been created for the series, but it’s a savvy move, allowing elements of both insight and exposition to be added to the mix.
Isabela Merced makes a significant debut as Dina. An important part of the game narrative, the character still remained something of a supportive role, often driving Ellie forward, providing motivation and sometimes giving her a morality check. Here, Merced makes the character feel that they have more singular agency. She’s smart, spiky, popular in the community… but she’s no pushover, giving as much as she takes takes and quite obviously a great counterbalance for Ellie in both the comrade-in-arms and potential soul-mate sense. The series lets her bounce off other characters and specifically gives her her own dynamic with Joel which is welcome. There will be people who moan about having gay and bisexual characters at the fore, but if that’s the yardstick for not enjoying the series then that’s their loss.
Kaitlyn Dever takes on the role of key Abby, the daughter of the man that Joel killed before he could perform the surgery on Ellie at the end of the first chapter. From the outset it’s easy to see that, from her perspective, Abby’s mission to find Joel and make him pay for what he did is a righteous one – for her Joel is nothing more than a murderer and villain, the man who killed her father and maybe even took away humanity’s last hope. Much of The Last of Us: Part Two game was about that collision of survival stories and fluid morality. But in the season’s opener, she is more of a foreshadowing presence, both for the newbie fan and those who know what’s to come from the game. However, the first two episodes show Dever skillfully navigating the tough, divisive performance she must give and it’s made even more remarkable and impressive in not only the nuances she brings but by the knowledge that the actor lost her mother only days before the scenes were to be shot.
Future Days is a scene-setter, laying out new supporting characters and dynamics and hinting at both unseen past events and the implications on the coming, icy horizon, but it’s the second episode, Through the Valley, that will set the internet alight. Most episodes would be content with an icy apocalyptic battle set to rival the epic storming of ‘the Wall’ in Game of Thrones or the mass-enemies of that other classic PlayStation outing, Days Gone. Here, the Jackson township faces a thousand-strong force of the infected who barrel down the mountain like an avalanche of toxic fury. There’s gnashing of teething, thrashing of limbs, fire, death and seemingly impossible odds as the horde slam into Jackson’s impressive, but woefully insufficient defenses. It’s a confrontation merely hinted at in the game and it’s clear that the show-makers pulled out all the stops to bring it to life – and death. It’s heart-stopping stuff, both in the sheer scale on show and the more personal confrontations in the Jackson streets as Tommy Miller (Gabriel Luna doing some heavy lifting) does his best to rally the townsfolk and protect his wife Maria (Rutina Wesley). But this second episode is also devastating in events away from the enclave and those who do know the game will have a feeling of existential dread as events begin to happen that closely echo one of the most controversial parts of the game. Abby, separated from her team-mates finds herself under siege from another part of the horde but is rescued at the last second by …. Dina and Joel. He has no idea who Abby is, but despite being grateful for the rescue, she quickly understands that fate has led her to the man she wants to kill. Once back at the lodge, with her colleagues looking on, that’s exactly what she does… she pummels to death the show’s male lead, almost blow for blow in the way that Joel meets a grisly end in the game – arguably more so because this time the golf-club of choice is sharpened. It will have come as a massive shock to those with no idea what was happening and still leave a lump in the throat for those knowing Joel’s likely fate in advance.
Truthfully, it’s a shock, if only on a timing level. I certainly believed that though Joel’s parallel fate was likely sealed, that the sheer star-power of Pedro Pascal and the chemistry on show during the first season, would mean that HBO would more than likely delay the inevitable demise as long as possible (almost certainly to the end of this season at the earliest). Instead, with only a few narrative tweaks to the tragedy (it’s Dina – rather than Tommy who is with Joel – and she’s spared the WTF wrath because of their ‘code’ of not killing people who don’t deserve it), it’s almost exactly what the game originally gave us – at least in spirit and literal execution… and just as shockingly early in proceedings (though we’ll see Pascal continue to appear in flashbacks). Add to this that this season runs to a mere seven episodes – and where we’ll actually get to in this run is still somewhat up in the air – and there’s certainly some heavy-situations to come.
Will the loss of mainstay Pascal/Joel mean that the show will lose some viewers (certainly The Walking Dead suffered when it wrote-out several fan favourites) or will it fuel the double-sided passion that the game also wrought? Time will tell whether Abby will gain back some of the sympathy she got in the game and just how dark the mood will be as the barometer swings back and forth like a ‘Sword of Damocles’… but as Ashley Johnson (the game’s Ellie) sings us out with the song that trailered the game (and, of course, the title of this second S2 episode), there’s still a huge amount of potential in retelling the events of the game, originally detailing the stories of Ellie and Abby and their subsequent righteous or morally-questionable actions in the wake of tragedy. ‘In the Name of the Father’, indeed…
Also, with around eighteen months or more between seasons, it’ll be tricky to keep a more obvious momentum, but so far The Last of Us retains all the controversial, heart-string pulling, action-baiting qualities that made it click with its audience…
- Story9
- Acting10
- Direction10
- Production Design / VFX10
