TL;DR – It shows the strength of the production team that even when you know how the narrative will go, yet you are still sitting on the edge of your chair.    

Disclosure – I paid for the Max service that viewed this show.

End Credit Scene – There is a trailer and behind-the-scenes making off.

The Last of Us Review –

Look, I have to speak very vaguely here because we are on the wrong side of the spoiler zone, but when I said during our review of Future Days that I came into this season with a bit of apprehension, today’s episode was at the forefront of my mind. Could this adaptation pull off multiple story points that will echo not just throughout the show but out into general pop culture? Well, let’s have a look.  

So, to set the scene, while the New Year Party was meant to be a fount of joy for the community of Jackson, Wyoming, it ended in a confrontation that confirmed the fault lines that have grown between Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) in the five years since Season One. Ellie might not know what Joel lied about, but that lie has slowly soured their relationship. But things are difficult for Jackson at the moment. It is the deep of winter, but the Infected have also been acting in different ways, and now you don’t know if you should be more concerned with things walking above or crawling below the snowline. Now, from here, we will be looking at the episode as a whole, so there will be [SPOILERS] ahead. 

Now, we always have an obvious delineation as to where spoilers start, but with this episode alone, I need to make it very clear that we will be discussing full spoilers from here and if you have not watched the show yet, now if your time to dip out until you do. Okay, so we knew it was going to happen, but today is the day that they killed off Joel, a moment that shattered the zeitgeist of video games back in 2020. You kind of knew that it had to happen either here or maybe next week, but still, it is hard to watch knowing that someone is walking into a trap, partly of their own making. One of the main themes of The Last of Us is the cyclical nature of revenge. It is deeply personal, never rational, and only ever leads to unintended consequences and more violence. Here, we see that cycle both ending and starting anew.

In Look for the Light, Joel committed a massacre, protecting one innocent but also possibly dooming humanity in the process. But those people he killed had families, people who loved them. One of the significant flaws in humanity is our ability to forget that other people also possess it, and here we see that play out. There are some changes to the video game, most notable in the fact that it is Dina (Isabela Merced) and not Tommy (Gabriel Luna) who is a witness. However, that was understandable, given what we will talk about later in the review. However, they have also shifted things with regard to the mechanics of how Joel dies. It is still a brutal and unsettling death. There is a reason Joel tries to force Abby’s (Kaitlyn Dever) hand to try and make his death quick because he knows what is about to happen. But it holds back from going to the same extent of brutality as the game in the final moment. I think this was a good idea. Much like the changes made to Bill’s story last year in Long Long Time, they could see how things landed with people from the game and recalibrate slightly.

Holding back, though only slightly, makes Abby’s arc flow a touch better as we advance. But also, more than that, I think it let the performance between Pedro Pascal & Bella Ramsey have a more significant impact. Both actors knocked it out of the park here, and you feel that pain between them as if they are profoundly moving. They spent so much time together filming that first season, and you can feel that loss on both a character and actor level. Because you think the softening of Ellie towards Joel at the start of the episode came from a real place, and she never got to tell him that. The show also adds some of the best prosthetics work on a show I have seen in an age that you might overlook, given how seamlessly it is applied. While they may have pulled back on the brutality in Joel’s final moments, I don’t think it diluted the impact, and even if it did, the closing shot of his body being dragged back in the snow while Ashley Johnson sings a ballad over the top still hits just as hard. Oh, and shout out to the set dressers and cinematography team for perfectly framing those golf clubs at the start of the episode so that they looked perfectly innocent for those who didn’t know and profoundly menacing for those who did.  

This brings us to the second half of the episode, with the siege of Jackson that starts when Abby inadvertently sets off the horde hidden under the snow. Part of this feels like a response to criticisms of the First Season that the Infected got sidelined outside of the opening two-parter [When You’re Lost in the Darkness/ Infected] and in the Kansas City sections [Endure and Survive]. I think this might be a fair query to make. I liked that they spent a little time in the first episode, Future Days, recalibrating the Infected and letting us know just what a new danger they could be. It also made that opening warning to the town reminding them what to do in an attack feel a touch more okay in the context of the show rather than just for the audience’s benefit.

What this episode did exceptionally well was up the Zombieness of it all. Not only do we get those big horde moments that appeared in the First Season, but we also get smaller and probably more intense scenes of survival that you see in other media. That sequence when Abby is running and must climb through a broken fence while the Infected paws at her through the metal weave was significantly more confronting than I expected it to be. It’s likely playing into my claustrophobia, but it worked. It helped for the shoot that they did go and film this in the snow of Alberta because that gives you an impact you don’t have to fake. Also, my sympathies to the one or two of the stunt team or extras who clearly took a stack during that running scene.    

On that front, I think the entire stunt team, of which there are many, should be congratulated for the work they put into that final battle. I know HBO/Max has a history of significant battle action set pieces like in Game of Thrones, but here, I think they outdid themselves. Firstly, you felt the tactics of the townspeople were generally sensible, which is not something you could say for Season 8 Game of Thrones. Indeed, the only issue I had was that one Ancient History Warfare Expert, Roel Konijnendijk, was sitting in the back of my head yelling: ‘Why aren’t you building ditches?’. But they put together a sensible plan, and people followed it well. They will probably look at adding barricades to the roof doors, but there are always lessons you can take to improve with next time. It also fits in with what we know of the town and the battles it faced to get set up.    

I think there will be some people who will [a little understandably] be upset with the plot armour that seemed like it was enveloping some of the major characters. But I have to say that they did a good job of making me concerned that the show was going to make a big difference to the game and kill off someone who does not die at this point. That is because they managed the tension so well. Part of this comes from being able to cut between the destruction on a grand level at Jackson and the destruction on a personal level at the cabin. But it also comes from knowing what the choreography is that you want to do in this dance and the big moments that you want to highlight. The showdown with the bloater, the stamped of the dogs, the crash through the wall, and the implosion of flames all hit their mark. Also, I liked that they peppered that fight with real human moments, like the flamethrowers seeing the hordes and booking it out of there, the nod between partners who know they may not see each other again, or the pressure valve on the tanks slowing going down.    

In the end, do we recommend The Last of Us: Future Days? Absolutely. For an episode like this to work, you need every person on the team working in unison, and I think they achieved that here. More than anything, it leaves you wondering where they can go from here, and that is what you need in a show like this. Have you seen The Last of Us yet? Let us know what you thought in the comments below.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

Feel free to share this review on any of the social medias and you can follow us Here. Check out all our past reviews and articles Here, and have a happy day.    

Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of The Last of Us
Directed by – Mark Mylod
Written by – Craig Mazin
Created by – Craig Mazin & Neil Druckmann
Based On – The Last of Us Part II by Neil Druckmann, Halley Gross and Naughty Dog
Production/Distribution Companies – Naughty Dog, PlayStation Productions, Sony Pictures Television, The Mighty Mint, Word Games, HBO & Max
Starring – Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey, Gabriel Luna, Isabela Merced & Yong Mazino with Kaitlyn Dever, Rutina Wesley, Robert John Burke, Spencer Lord, Tati Gabrielle, Ariela Barer, Danny Ramirez & Ezra Agbonkhese and Reedan Elizabeth, Meagan Buggey, Everly Buggey, June Laporte, Glenn Ennis & Andrew Prest