One of HBO’s best recent works is “The Last of Us” starring Pedro Pascal as Joel Miller and Bella Ramsey as his adoptive, post-apocalyptic daughter Ellie. The show’s first season was praised by fans who loved the original game by Naughty Dog and new viewers who hadn’t played the game.
“The Last of Us” is one of the best modern video game adaptations due to Pascal and Ramsey’s great performances. Their relationship is what made Season One special, but their bond is strained by the time Season 2 rolls around for reasons only viewers will wait to discover.
Episode One: “Future Days”
“The Last of Us” starts off its second season with a group of the few remaining Fireflies near the freshly dug graves of people Joel killed at the hospital. The group’s leader, Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), vows to track down and kill Joel for what he has done.
Five years later, the audience is reintroduced to the Jackson, Wyoming, sanctuary. Joel’s brother, Tommy (Gabriel Luna), was in the sanctuary when Joel and Ellie found him in Season 1.
Joel sees his therapist, Gail (Catherine O’Hara), to talk about his issues and his distance from Ellie. Gail expresses her hatred toward Joel, who killed her husband Eugene (Joe Pantoliano), and Joel feels shame for it. He also reveals to Gail he saved Ellie, but he omits his involvement in the Fireflies’ murders.
On a patrol run, Ellie and her close friend Dina (Isabela Merced) come across a grocery store filled with infected people. They both go in to kill the infected, but Ellie also kills a new type of infected that stalks her and is more intelligent than the other infected. The two bring this to the attention of the sanctuary’s council.
The community then throws a party that evening. Ellie and Dina decide to go, dance and share a kiss. A man named Seth, played by Robert John Burke, says a homophobic slur, causing Joel to push him to the floor. It angers Ellie, who tells Joel she does not need his help anymore.
Later, Abby and her group observe Jackson from afar as infected tendrils begin to move and enter the town through a broken pipe.
“Future Days” immediately sets the tone for what is yet to come in Season Two. Although it takes place five years after the events of Season One, it does feel like a direct continuation of the story.
All good post-apocalypse films and shows are effective in how the world is presented. “The Last of Us” is remarkable for how much it can show in its set design and story building. It never feels or looks like the showrunners are undermining the scope of what they can do with this show.
The world in “The Last of Us” is a desolate wasteland where survivors have to take more precautions about who exactly they can trust. The heart of Season One was Joel and Ellie’s back-and-forth banter and father-daughter tendencies; however, even that is gone now.
Ellie is older now, and Joel still lives every day knowing he lied directly through his teeth to her face years before. Maybe one of the reasons why their relationship is strained is because Ellie may be aware of Joel keeping something from her.
As Gail suggests in her meeting with Joel, it could just be that Ellie is now 19 and feels like she does not need Joel to be so protective of her anymore. Either way is a living nightmare for Joel.
Season Two of “The Last of Us” doesn’t go super crazy with anything in particular. It takes its time establishing where characters are at currently and likely where they’ll end up as more episodes are released.
