The Last of Us
Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
With a game this respected theres added pressure not to screw it up.
Anyone who doesnt know better might struggle to figure out which came first: the show or the game.
(Sounds familiar.)
But a sense of peril thickens as the day progresses.
And, after night falls, that ominousness takes an apocalyptic turn.
The day begins well enough for Sarah, an Austin, Texas, teen.
(Well, nice enough.
Theres an issue with some shell bits in the egg.)
Its clearly not the first time Sarah has fended for herself or played parent to her single dad.
Sarahs a good kid.
True, she uses his money, but thats not that big of a deal.
(Could the sirens shes been hearing all day have something to do with it?)
Tommys been locked up before, but this is different.
He was just reacting to some out-of-control guy acting crazy.
When Youre Lost in the Darkness has to this point been slowly raising the temperature.
Its here that it begins to boil over.
What follows is a mad rush to escape to, well, anywhere.
Making their way downtown, they find a different sort of chaos.
A plane crashes into streets already filled with those fleeing an unseen threat.
(See, that 1968 scientist knew what he was talking about.)
But its not the creatures that prove to be the greatest threat.
Its a moment that doubles as a warning: This show will break your heart.
but its a lie.
When we next see the kid, shes another body to be tossed on the fire.
Its Joel who does the tossing.
Theres a purposefulness to what he does, however.
There are worse things than Infected out there, he tells him.
(This, too, sounds like foreshadowing.)
Pragmatism drives them both.
FEDRA may rule Boston, but an insurgent group called the Fireflies keeps challenging their authority.
The Fireflies, however, might have the answer, not to the problem of FEDRA oppression but totheproblem.
They have a 14-year-old girl who calls herself Veronica locked in a room.
And Veronica has survived an Infected bite for three weeks and shows no sign of turning.
Shes not, well later learn, named Veronica, but rather Ellie (Bella Ramsey).
Ellies also unclear about where she comes from or why shes been able to survive.
But that doesnt get in the way of her expressing her resentment with defiant sarcasm.
This includes, she quickly discerns, a code tied to a book of lists of No.
A 70s song means theyve got new stuff, a 60s song means nothing new.
And an 80s song?
Thats a big red X.
They dont have long to think about it, however.
Tess shows up and tells them its time to go.
Bostons notthatbig a town.
But the Boston of this 2023 has several obstacles that ours does not.
But by this point, they dont need to be told theyre in trouble.
Infectious Bites
R.I.P., Sarah.
Wasnt she our protagonist?
Torv is convincingly tough (and almost unrecognizable).
Similarly, Pascals weariness conveys the price hes paid to survive.
(She also recently starred in Lena DunhamsCatherine Called Birdy.)
Shes instantly winning without taking any shortcuts.
Ellie doesnt behave like a cute teen.
She is insolent and annoying, but in a way that Ramsey makes charismatic and vulnerable.
Joel turns 36 as the episode opens, making him 56 in 2023.
Pedro Pascal is 47, so he more or less splits the difference age-wise.
Most disturbing image: the Infected Tess and Joel describe as done.
In the final phase, the human body just becomes a kind of wall hanging.
(Its out of print, but you canfind iton the Internet Archive.)
The shows cheating a bit.
(It reached No.
22 in the U.K. and fared better on the U.S. dance charts.
1 hit in Denmark.)
That doesnt mean its not the perfect song with which to end the episode, however.
Sign up here for email alertsfor every newThe Last of Usrecap.
Update: the original version of this recap misidentified the character of Nana.
It has been corrected.
