We are back for the third and final part of HBO’s adaptation of The Last of Us! Don’t think I’m done thinking and writing about The Last of Us, we’ve only talked about the coverage of the first game and DLC… There’s another game y’all! I will be back for more in the (far) future. But for now, the final episodes of season one: episode eight titled “When We Are in Need” and the season finale, titled “Look for the Light.”
Trigger warning for the following: mention of attempted sexual assault (on a minor), predatory behavior, suicide attempt, and PTSD.
Episode Eight, “When We Are in Need”
Picking up where we left off, Ellie is fighting to keep Joel alive and things are starting to look grim. She’s stitched up his wound and is doing everything she can to keep him comfortable, but he isn’t waking up. They’re down to their last bits of food and Joel hasn’t eaten or drank anything in at least a few days. At this point Ellie has assumed the responsibility of the both of them and she starts to think about what Joel would do if he were in her position. These are a couple examples in this episode that really emphasize how little, how young, and how vulnerable Ellie is compared to everyone else in the episode. One early example is when she goes out hunting with a rifle too big for her to hold. She’s tripping over her own feet and she face plants into the snow.
I think an interesting detail they added is after Ellie shoots the dee and she gets up to start tracking it, we hear a clicker nearby. It’s meant to be a misdirection. The audience comes to expect that the scariest thing out there is infected but later we find out that it’s the humans that are the scariest thing that she comes into pass with. She’s had no problem taking out infected, going all the way back to the beginning of the season, we know that’s an issue for her. She would have been fine without Joel against infected. But what she isn’t good at protecting herself against is the other humans of this world. She couldn’t fight against Marlene, against Joel when they first meet, and Henry is able to sneak up on her. When she finally catches up with the deer she shoots, she meets David and James for the first time, David the human monster that she will have to fight alone.
Show runners Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin attempt to flesh out the world and other characters you interact with in the Last of Us world. Something very different from the game is we meet David before Ellie does and they work to make the audience understand him, if not trust him. We see how he interacts with his people, and we see that these people are completely dependent on him.
My opinion of David, though skewed by playing the game, was pure hatred and discomfort from the start. They tried to portray him as a good man, fatherly and paternal, but there is an underlining feeling that something is off about him. The additions they add to his character make it all so much worse. He mistreats the role of preacher in his community to play God and the relationships he’s built within his community are all based on fear. The man that Joel killed back in episode six was the father to a little girl in David’s community and he decides to take over as her father figure. The way he speaks to not only the girl but also her mother is horrible and there isn’t anything they can do to stop it from happening because they need his protection. Then David’s interaction with Troy Baker’s (the motion capture and voice actor for Joel in the first and second games) James, is super tense. David puts himself above James just like he puts himself above everyone else. He is incredibly narcissistic and there isn’t a lot to bring the audience to trust him.
In the game, Ellie, if not the audience, comes to trust David enough. They fight infected together and save each other’s lives a few times. But this battle with infected doesn’t happen in the show because of the medium of storytelling, and that trust doesn’t get built. So throughout the whole episode there is this distrust that we feel for him and that Ellie seems to have for him. Then his true character begins to reveal itself. But the time he comes back to the community with Ellie’s deer, he hits that little girl, they all sit together in fear and eat human for dinner rather than the deer meat, plus he gets a larger portion size compared to everyone else. And who can stop him? No one can, that’s the way he’s built the community, to fear him and to comply. When they go to kidnap Ellie and kill Joel, David is the only one who wants Ellie alive. Everyone else, especially James, would rather kill her and leave her rather than take her back alive.
James is David’s closest “friend,” more so a partner. James knows about the cannibalism that the community unknowingly partakes in and likely knows about David’s desires for Ellie. James starts to question David’s leadership, especially when it comes to Ellie. This might explain why James would rather kill Ellie than take her back. Maybe it was out of pity. Maybe he thought it would be better than what could happen to Ellie if they were to take her back, because he knows what David is capable of. Ellie ultimately does get taken back to camp and she wakes up in a cage.
A major part of this chapter of the story is how physically weak Ellie is compared to everyone else. She can’t fight David’s men or David the way Joel would be able to. She has to find a different way out. She has to outsmart David who has been manipulating her the whole time, making her think she has the upper hand. Ellie fights, argues, and yells at David and all it seems like it’ll come to nothing. For a while she lets him talk as she tries to figure a way out. As he talks about how he looks up to the virus, how he used to be a teacher, how much of himself he sees in Ellie, their shared “violent heart,” and then the confession of his true feelings for her, his desire for an “equal” and a bride, she sees her opportunity to escape. She lets him hold her hands, to make him think she trusts him, to make him trust her. All to try and grab the keys from him. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work and only angers David.
When David comes back with James at his side, she is even more powerless because her head has just been slammed into the metal bars. They are able to grab her and throw her onto the table to start cutting her up. She quickly pulls out the one thing she has left: her immunity.
She bites David and gets him to believe that he is infected long enough for her to grab the cleaver from the table, kill James, and escape the room. But continuing the theme of her not being able to get out when others might easily be able to, the restaurant doors are locked. She will again have to find another way out. Thus, commencing the most stressful and horrifying sequence in the entire story.
Apart from the Left Behind DLC, this was the worst and most stressful part of the game. It was difficult to get through one, because David is much stronger compared to Ellie. She has no additional weapons and nothing to heal herself with. You can only sneak around, pick up bricks and bottles to lure David in, and try and stab him with her switchblade. Then there is the addition of the building being on fire and the switching back and forth between Ellie and Joel. It gives you hope that Joel will save Ellie at just the right time, but he doesn’t. Then the content and context of this fight is by far the scariest. David is in a new state of mind. He tried to be what he considered as “kind” to Ellie, and he is done trying to reason with her. He resorts to violence and force to get to what he wants, and what he wants is Ellie.
There has been lots of discourse surrounding this sequence in the game and in the series. The common consensus is that this sequence is really hard to watch. In the series more so than the game. The game allows for people to look past the sexual assault David attempts, but the show forces audiences to see and feel it as Ellie does. Bella Ramsey’s performance in this scene is absolutely soul crushing, it’s something I’ll never forget. The sounds and screams that they make in terror, anger, and fear are quite literally seared into my brain forever. Bella’s performance makes the emotion so intense and real; you feel the fear and desperation that Ellie is fighting her all with.
When she starts hacking away at David’s face there’s one part of you cheering for her, and then the grief and shock of all she’s just been through settles as she continues to strike David’s face with a cleaver. In the game Joel finds Ellie inside as she is in the middle of striking David’s face, and he is quick to grab her and remove her from the situation. In the series, Ellie continues to slash David’s face until she decides to walk away. Joel finds her outside after all is said and done. The consistent thing in both the game and series is what Joel calls Ellie as he is trying to comfort her. He calls her “baby girl” which was what Joel called Sarah when she was still alive. It’s very organic, really proving how much he cares for Ellie at this point. And he just hugs her because she is so incredibly shaken. Joel can’t save Ellie from David in either medium, she saves herself. But whatever innocence and positive outlook she had left is gone. This event completely changes Ellie. The only thing Joel can do is try to save her emotionally. Which is where we leave them as we jump to episode nine, the season finale.
Episode Nine, “Look for the Light”
We open the season finale with Ellie’s mom, Anna, running through the forest away from infected. Anna is played by Ashley Johnson, who portrayed Ellie in the first and second game via face modeling, voice acting, and though motion capture. Giving Ashley this role is so genius and so meaningful because she is passing the torch to series Ellie. Just like Ashley gave life to game Ellie, she gives life to series Ellie. It’s such a good homage to the game and all the work Ashley and the team at Naughty Dog did to create Ellie. There are so many traits that Ashley brought to the character and getting to see that pass off and that payoff is so cool.
This opening scene was actually pulled from a comic that Neil worked on with Dark Horse Comics and Faith Erin Hicks after the first game was released. Anna is mentioned by Marlene, the leader of the Fireflies and it is revealed to Ellie that Marlene and her mother were close. Here in the series that is further explored. Anna and Marlene were friends, close enough that Marlene was going to walk away when Anna requested that Marlene shoot her because she couldn’t do it. Close enough that Marlene (reluctantly) agrees to take Ellie and put her somewhere she will be safe, as it is Anna’s final request. And close enough that Marlene pretends to believe Anna when she tells her that she cut the umbilical cord before she got infected and not after. Anna leaves Ellie with a letter that you can read in the game, her switchblade, her jacket, and some wise words: “You tell them Ellie, you f***ing tell them.”
Then we cut to Ellie and Joel in the aftermath of David in Salt Lake City a few months later. Ellie is feeling the trauma and PTSD of what happened in Colorado, and Joel is trying so hard to make her feel better. He’s picked up the role of dad and is trying to lighten her moon in any way he can manage. He’s bringing out boardgames, calling back to Chef Bullion from episode three, and promises to teacher her to play guitar. But she is so checked out that all this flies right past her. What really gets me is how much their roles have shifted. In the first half of the episodes, it’s Ellie that never stops talking and Joel who is shut down, but now it’s Ellie who is shut down and Joel who won’t stop talking.
One way the game showcased how Ellie is feeling in this episode was through game play and it is really impactful. They altered one of the game mechanics that you use throughout the entire game, where Joel gives Ellie a boost over something, and she pulls a ladder for Joel to follow. In this sequence, Joel is ready to give Ellie a boost and we wait for her to show up at his side, and when she doesn’t Joel looks over and finds her sitting on a bench in deep thought. In the show they do something similar. Joel tells Ellie the plan, but she doesn’t respond. He goes over and asks her if she’s okay and she apologizes for being so quiet. He gently tells her that it’s okay and they move together to the ledge to give her the boost.
My favorite part of this chapter, the giraffes is just as good in the series. And thank god they got Gustavo Santaolalla back on music for the series because when I heard Vanishing Grace I lost any kind of composure that I had left. This scene is so good, it’s Ellie “coming back to life” in a sense and Joel can see that she’s going to be alright. The music is the same, the shots and the editing are the same and I just loved it. Joel asks Ellie as she looks out at the tower of giraffes (fancy term for group of giraffes), if it’s everything she hoped for, another call back to episode two. And she responds in the same way, “jury’s still out, can’t deny that view though.” And seeing Ellie happy for the first time in a while prompts Joel to suggest that they can just drop the whole thing and go back to Tommy’s.
But here is what Joel doesn’t quite understand: Ellie has so much survivors’ guilt because of all the people she’s had to watch die as she got to live. She can’t fathom turning back now because then all those people, all those deaths, and all that suffering that she blames herself for, would be for nothing. Finishing this and being the cure is her purpose, it’s what keeps her going. And what I love about this scene and this dialogue is after Ellie explains this to him, she basically says “I love you and trust you enough to follow you after we’re done. I don’t want to go separate ways. I don’t care what we do or where we go, as long as we’re together I will be happy. But we have to finish this first.” And he agrees.
We get an “I love you too” from Joel as he explains that the mystery guy who shot and missed from episode three was himself. In the game we get to learn more about Joel and his experience with Sarah, but this is something new. In the game Joel mentions he was in a medical camp like the one they are walking through, and he talks about having Sarah young and then losing her. Ellie says she’s sorry that he had to lose her in that way and the conversation ends with Ellie giving Joel a picture of him and Sarah that he didn’t take when they still with Tommy.
There is an acceptance of Sarah’s death between the two of them and an acknowledgement that Ellie is now Joel’s daughter. Then in the series the same thing is achieved in quite a different way. Joel tells Ellie that he was going to take his life after Sarah died but he filched when he went to pull the trigger. Ellie knows that Joel is telling her this because he wants her to know that things get better, that “time heals all wounds.” But he adds more, “It wasn’t time that did it,” because it was Ellie that healed his wound. And there is an acceptance of Sarah’s death and an acknowledgement that Ellie is his daughter.
They move on and Joel asks Ellie to pull out the good ole joke book. And here we see them happy for a fleeting moment before it all goes to sh*t once again.
Joel wakes up in the Firefly hospital. In the game they were kidnapped a different way, one where Ellie drowns as Joel tries to save her. Then in the series they are attacked from behind and taken in. But in both, Joel wakes not knowing if Ellie is alive or not and Ellie is taken almost immediately into surgery.
The rest of the episode gets really morally grey and is really up for individual interpretation. In my humble opinion, Marlene and the Fireflies are the ones in the wrong here. If they would have number one, talked to Ellie about what she wanted to do after discussing the risks, and number two let Joel talk to Ellie instead of trying to kick him out of the hospital, a lot of things could have been avoided. Fact of the matter is, things were not avoided.
Marlene takes away Ellie’s choice, but Joel takes away her purpose. The two are fighting over what they think is best. The way I’ve heard it phrased is, Marlene is trying to save the world and Joel is trying to save his world. And neither of them are considering Ellie’s feelings. So yes, Marlene takes away Ellie’s ability to choose whether she really wants the surgery. Even if we are 99.9% sure Ellie would have wanted to do the surgery, we just don’t know. There is the question as to how qualified these doctors are to try to reverse engineer a cure. Because the doctor Joel kills is really a veterinarian. But this opens up a whole other conversation that has to do with the plausibility of a cure at all. Then Joel takes away her purpose. She wanted to be the cure so that her immunity finally meant something and there would have been a payoff to all the guilt she feels.
I want to take a moment to bring back the themes of episodes four and five with Sam and Henry. The question Kathleen has for Henry: why does your brother’s life mean more than my brother’s life? And that theme is reapplied here: why does your child’s life mean more than the lives of humanity? And it comes back to those ideas of tribalism and what love will drive a person to do. Now we finally see what Joel’s love for Ellie will push him to do. He murders every single Firefly that comes in pass with a giant machine gun (which you get in the game.) Even the people that surrender to him, he kills without second thought. Something the series emphasizes is how disassociated Joel is as he is walking through those hospital halls to get to Ellie. In the game it’s not something that they can really explore.
Joel kills that doctor just about as fast as I did when I first played through this chapter. I didn’t let that man speak more than a couple words and neither does HBO Joel. I should let you know that this action will have consequences in the seasons to follow. He does spare the nurses and they unhook Ellie from the machines. (One of the nurses is the voice actor of Abby, who is in the second game).
In the game you are getting chased by more Firefly soldiers all the way up to the elevator door. Joel doesn’t get chased to the elevator in the series, and I wonder if that is to showcase that he really did kill everyone in the hospital. Then we reunite with our buddy and best pal, Marlene in the parking garage.
The way this encounter, starting with the death of the doctor all the way to the death of Marlene, is filmed is exactly like the game: editing, dialogue, and camera angles are all the same. It goes to show that this is the way the story was meant to be told. The first episode was filmed exactly like the game and now the end is exactly like the game. It’s also worth pointing out that the first episode is titled “When You’re Lost in the Darkness” and the last episode finishes that quote, “Look for the Light,” which is a Firefly quote. But apart from the Fireflies, Ellie is Joel’s light. In the first episode he was completely lost in the darkness, so to speak, in grief and in pain. And because of Ellie, whose name literally means “light,” he is able to come out of that grief and pain. But at what cost?
The epilogue is also filmed very true to the game. Ellie wakes up in the truck and here Joel decides to lie to her about what happened to protect her. Maybe you’re a Joel hater, but me personally I could never. He did what he felt he had to do. As a parent of course he’s going to lie to her. He knows what she would think and how she would feel. So he leads her to believe that she isn’t the only person immune and that the cure wouldn’t have worked anyways. But Ellie is smart, she knows that something is wrong, and that idea sits in the back of her head until they get back to Jackson.
On the hike to Jackson, Joel is still the one doing the talking. He’s going on about the way he thinks Ellie and Sarah would have been friends (because Ellie is funny) and the way he tries to say that Ellie isn’t a replacement for Sarah (“Not that you’re not girly,” and “not saying that you don’t [have a killer smile]”). It’s really the first time that he talks about Sarah and isn’t super sad. I also love Ellie’s reply to the girly comment because they both know that she isn’t girly at all. Her little comment about the super purple jacket that Maria gave her is proof of that. I love Ellie: the super-not-girly-masc-lesbian that is extremely sarcastic and curses every other word? Yeah, she is my favorite.
But back to Joel lying. Ellie knows that Joel is lying about what really happened in that hospital. Without being the cure to humanity, she doesn’t know what to live for. She couldn’t save Riley, and in fact had to be the one to kill Riley, couldn’t save Tess, couldn’t save Sam, and feels responsible for Henry. Killed David (brutally) and carries the weight the pain of humanity feels. She wanted to be the one to save everyone, but that was taken from her. And Joel knows that and he is lying to her despite that.
What he tells her is that she has to find something new to fight for, to keep going no matter what. But she doesn’t want the bs. She stops him again and makes him swear to her that everything he said was true. He decides to continue to lie and she says, “Okay.” I don’t think she chooses to believe him; I think she accepts that he is going to keep lying to her. She accepts that he is breaking her trust and their relationship. She carries the question as to what really happened in that hospital with her for the next few years as she looks for the truth and as she pulls further away from Joel.
Conclusion
That concludes most of my thoughts and opinions on HBO’s The Last of Us!
I think they did an outstanding job with this adaptation and did an amazing job accommodating the two audiences that we talked about in part 1 of this Last of Us trilogy.
As someone who played the games, they exceeded my expectations. They were super respectful to the source material AND were able to expand in new ways that made the story and world richer. I’ve grown to love the cast and creators very deeply because you can really feel all the love and attention that went into this project. I can only hope that season two will deliver the same things!
That’s right! Season two is confirmed and is expected by late 2025. Bella Ramsey will be returning as Ellie. Craig and Neil have said they wouldn’t have it any other way.
It is also confirmed that the story of the second game will have to be split into multiple seasons, but they haven’t revealed how many. My guess is at least two seasons to cover the second game, making three in total. We are still waiting to hear who will be cast to play Abby, Jessie, and Dina but we have a couple strong contenders already. Dina, who was confirmed to have an appearance in episode six, might be played by Paolina Van Kleef and everyone wants The Wild’s Shannon Berry as Abby Anderson.
Other confirmed details for season two include more infected, time jumps, and more side character storylines like we got with Bill, Frank, and Kathleen. I personally hope we get more about Dina!
And so, I leave you with this good news! I guess until next time, (at the risk of being really cheesy) remember, when you’re lost in the darkness look for the light!
This story has content that can get pretty heavy, if you find it weighing on you don’t hesitate to reach out. Help is always available. <3