TL;DR – This week is a step back from the relentless pace of the opening episodes to refocus us on the rest of the season.     

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 –

Last week’s Through the Valley was … well … look … even for those of us who knew what was coming, it hurt a lot, even more so with the way that they updated the framing for the television adaptation. But it is also one of the lynchpin moments in the series. From here, everything changes, and that can be very hard to handle at the best of times. But when you are shifting the narrative structure from the game, things can become precarious.  

So, to set the scene, the city of Jackson has probably gone through the most significant test that has been thrown at it in the post-apocalyptic world of the series. The Infected sent feelers down their old sewer pipes and forwarded a large hoard right to their doorsteps. Many lives were lost, and much that had been built was destroyed and needed to be rebuilt. For some, that pain was even more acute as Ellie (Bella Ramsey) had to watch Joel (Pedro Pascal) be brutally murdered in front of her without closure from their confrontation during Future Days. Three months later, the city finally started to heal, but some wounds were deep and couldn’t be fixed with a hammer. Now, from here, we will be looking at the episode as a whole, so there will be [SPOILERS] ahead. 

Much of this episode explores the profound impact that grief has on a person and a people. Its rawness, the way it cuts to the bone like no other thing. I did like that they started the episode off with the complex juxtaposition of how people process their pain. For Tommy (Gabriel Luna), it was the quiet last moments with his brother. For Ellie, it is a real pain that locks her into a place and time, one in which she might be trapped forever. Both are perfectly legitimate explorations of grief, and I was glad that we actually took some time this week to sit in it and have it mean something. It also gave our cast moments to truly break my heart with their performances.

While a lot of this episode is about exploring grief, how those last moments we have with loved ones don’t mean much, but they are also everything. It is also an episode that is all about logistics, from the literal sense of Ellie and Dina (Isabela Merced) planning the mission to the minutia of how the Council vote happened. But more than that, it is an episode that is all about how logistically we get from our core Joel/Ellie narrative in Jackson to Dina/Ellie in Seattle. So, by the end credits, we have entered Seattle, we have been introduced to both sides of the civil war, we know that the forces they are facing are a lot larger than they bargained for, and our ‘villains’ are relatively high up in their organising structure. That is a lot of setups to get through without it feeling like it is just all setup.  

In the end, do we recommend The Last of Us: The Path? While this week is all about reorienting us to the next phase of the story, I did still like it. The character moments were still strong, the world design was as good as ever, and they made me want to see what would happen next week. 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.

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Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of The Last of Us
Directed by – Peter Hoar
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 – Bella Ramsey, Gabriel Luna, Isabela Merced & Yong Mazino with Rutina Wesley, Robert John Burke, Danny Ramirez, Michael Abbott Jr. & Catherine O’Hara and Makena Whitlock, Erica Pappas, Hiro Kanagawa & Sarah Gore