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Tag: last of us

  • ‘The Last of Us’ Emmy Victories Change the Game for Prestige TV

    ‘The Last of Us’ Emmy Victories Change the Game for Prestige TV

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    The Last of Us has already shattered the prestige ceiling for TV shows based on video games. After the early “creative arts” ceremony, the HBO series was already a multiple Emmy winner going into Monday night’s prime time telecast, having claimed eight trophies out of its total 24 nominations. Five more top categories are still to be presented live: best drama series, best drama directing, outstanding writing for a drama, and lead-actor and actress nods for stars Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey.

    Even if it wins nothing from the remaining categories, the vast slate of nominations and advance trophies for The Last of Us raises the bar for gaming adaptations, which have struggled to mine critically acclaimed drama and characters from even the most popular interactive titles. The apocalyptic series, about survivors in an American wasteland after a fungi-based parasite turns the majority of humans into voracious, brain-dead zombies, is based on a game first created by Naughty Dog in 2013 for PlayStation 3.

    It could be argued that the game itself introduced a new level of dramatic narrative, adapting a cinematic style and distinctive characters who fit naturally into the structure of a TV series. Many of the characters and situations featured in the show were taken directly from the game, including the lonely-hearted, gun-toting prepper Bill, played by Nick Offerman, who won best guest actor in a drama this year. (His costar in the episode, Murray Bartlett—who played Frank, a stranger who the gruff survivor comes to love—was also nominated in the category.)

    Their rivals in the category included fellow Last of Us guests Lamar Johnson and Keivonn Montreal Woodard, who played Henry and Sam, two desperate brothers whose tragic arc was also adapted directly from the game.  

    The Last of Us also won for best guest actress in a drama, with Storm Reid claiming the trophy for playing Riley Abel, a friend and crush of Ramsey’s character. Also nominated were Anna Torv, who played Pascal’s self-sacrificing companion, Tess, and Melanie Lynskey as cold-blooded cabal leader Kathleen. Reid’s and Torv’s characters were both introduced from the gaming storylines, while Lynskey’s was a new addition. 

    The show’s other early Emmy wins include drama series editing, sound editing, sound mixing, title design, visual effects, and prosthetic makeup.

    The Last of Us was created by Chernobyl producer and showrunner Craig Mazin and the game writer and creative director Neil Druckmann. “When we were making The Last of Us, we had already started working on games in a way that was pretty different for big-budget games in that we put story first,” Druckmann told Vanity Fair’s Natalie Jarvey last year when the show debuted.

    “Back then, you’d have designers creating really fun encounters or fun setups, and then story would come in, like, ‘here are all these levels, write something to tie them all together,’” Druckmann continued. “I think that’s why we got pretty poor stories. Instead, we said with The Last of Us, which was the evolution of a lot of the work we did on Uncharted, what if the whole thing was constructed around a relationship?”

    That relationship—between the young girl Ellie (played by Ramsey) and the hard-bitten fighter and survivor Joel (played by Pascal)—not only made the players more invested in the survival horror game, but it made a strong translation to the screen. Ellie is a child without a family, and Joel is a grieving father who has never gotten over his own daughter’s death when the parasite took over humanity. 

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    Anthony Breznican

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  • Naughty Dog cancels its The Last of Us multiplayer game

    Naughty Dog cancels its The Last of Us multiplayer game

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    Naughty Dog’s planned multiplayer game set in the world of The Last of Us is no more. The studio announced Thursday that it has “made the incredibly difficult decision to stop development on” what it’s been calling The Last of Us Online.

    “We know this news will be tough for many, especially our dedicated The Last of Us Factions community, who have been following our multiplayer ambitions ardently,” the studio said in a post on its website. “We’re equally crushed at the studio as we were looking forward to putting it in your hands.”

    The Last of Us Online was, at one point, supposed to be revealed to the public this year. The studio had released a handful of pieces of concept art for the game, but never showed gameplay.

    Naughty Dog said developers at the studio had been in pre-production on The Last of Us Online since the development of The Last of Us Part 2, which it shipped in 2020. The online game was “unique and had tremendous potential,” the studio said, but it was also a daunting task that it did not have the resources to dedicate to.

    “In ramping up to full production, the massive scope of our ambition became clear,” the developer explained. “To release and support The Last of Us Online we’d have to put all our studio resources behind supporting post launch content for years to come, severely impacting development on future single-player games. So, we had two paths in front of us: become a solely live service games studio or continue to focus on single-player narrative games that have defined Naughty Dog’s heritage.”

    Naughty Dog does have a separate and brand-new single-player game in the works; the studio teased this project back in May when it told fans The Last of Us Online needed more time to develop. The studio also plans to release The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered for PlayStation 5 in January.

    In its announcement, Naughty Dog provided a silver lining for The Last of Us Online’s formal cancellation: “The learnings and investments in technology from this game will carry into how we develop our projects and will be invaluable in the direction we are headed as a studio. We have more than one ambitious, brand new single player game that we’re working on here at Naughty Dog, and we cannot wait to share more about what comes next when we’re ready.”

    Naughty Dog said as far back as 2018 that it planned to deliver a multiplayer component for The Last of Us Part 2, a game that was first announced way back in 2016.

    The original The Last of Us launched with multiplayer component of its own back in 2013, which was also available in the PlayStation 4 version, The Last of Us Remastered. TLOU’s Factions mode used deathmatch and team deathmatch game types found in many multiplayer games, and layered a metagame and story on top.

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    Michael McWhertor

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  • 8 Perfect TV Episodes: Death on ‘Succession,’ Romance in the Ruins on ‘The Last of Us,’ and More

    8 Perfect TV Episodes: Death on ‘Succession,’ Romance in the Ruins on ‘The Last of Us,’ and More

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    THE BEAR

    Episode 7, “Review” FX

    There’s ample salt, acid, and heat—but little fat—to be found in The Bear’s frenetic seventh episode, directed by creator Christopher Storer. Executive producer Joanna Calo describes it as a “resting place” for the season’s character arcs, including Sydney and Richie’s fractious dynamic and Carmy’s increasingly “rageful, deep, dark feelings hidden inside,” all exacerbated by a rave review that brings a flood of customers their kitchen can’t handle. But in writing the script, Calo says, it became “this place where everyone exploded.” The propulsive, almost 20-minute one-take result created “this massive feeling of anxiety, which sort of encapsulates the energy that all people working in restaurants feel.”

    The Bear: Courtesy of FX.

    SUCCESSION

    Episode 3, “Connor’s Wedding” HBO

    Best not to get married on HBO. In “Connor’s Wedding,” the third episode of Succession’s final season, the eldest Roy’s nuptials on a boat quickly get overshadowed by an event of truly epic proportion: Logan Roy’s unexpected, ultimately unceremonious death. Rather than capture the fall of the king, director Mark Mylod focuses what he called his “sadistically voyeuristic” camera on the Roy siblings as they find themselves literally and emotionally at sea in a world without their father. “It had to stay really close without taking its eye off of them,” he said. “Because every time we cut away from the siblings, it seemed to let them off the hook.” With “Connor’s Wedding,” Succession simultaneously upended every expectation for the series while fulfilling its titular premise. What a way for L to the OG to go.

    RESERVATION DOGS

    Episode 8, “This Is Where the Plot Thickens” FX

    Director Blackhorse Lowe took inspiration from 1970s cinema for this surprisingly poignant episode, which swerves away from its central characters to follow tribal cop Big (Zahn McClarnon) after he mistakenly chugs a bottle of soda laced with psychedelic drugs. Walking through the pulsating, spinning forest, Big winds up on an introspective journey to the past, confronting his feelings of guilt over the death of his friend Cookie. “In this seemingly fun, trippy episode, we actually really get deep into character,” says series cocreator Sterlin Harjo. “There’s a pain that drives Big.” There’s also a heavy dose of Native humor, like when Big stumbles upon a mysterious group of Secret Society members in the woods chanting things like “The earth is a whore, and it is our will to take her!” The punch line? The cult ends up not being a hallucination at all.

    Reservation Dogs: Courtesy of FX.

    FLEISHMAN IS IN TROUBLE

    Episode 7, “Me-Time” FX

    Jesse Eisenberg’s Toby and his woes dominate much of the first six episodes, but by the penultimate “Me-Time,” it becomes clear he is not the Fleishman in real trouble. His missing ex-wife, Rachel (Claire Danes), reappears in this episode, which serves as both an explanation of where she’s been and a showcase of what Danes does best—raw, messy emotion. “Before the pandemic, I’d written my book out of a sort of primal scream,” says Taffy Brodesser-Akner, who adapted her book for the series, and a primal scream defines this episode too. Growing apart from her married boyfriend, Rachel lets loose in a therapy session so loud it shakes the trees outside. It’s a taut, cathartic reflection on what happens when your heart feels overstuffed and empty all at once.

    ANDOR

    Episode 12, “Rix Road” Disney+

    It all builds to a brick. The first season’s extraordinary climax takes place at the funeral march for Maarva (Fiona Shaw), the adoptive mother of Diego Luna’s title rebel leader, whose remains have been forged into a hexagonal funerary stone. When Maarva delivers her own fiery eulogy by way of prerecorded hologram, a riot breaks out—and Maarva’s brick becomes a weapon used to clobber Imperial soldiers. “That is when the moviemaking takes off past the script,” says series creator Tony Gilroy. “I remember being really surprised when I saw it and going, ‘Holy…look what they did!’ ”

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    Savannah Walsh, Chris Murphy, Christian Allaire, Kase Wickman, Anthony Breznican, Rebecca Ford, David Canfield, Hillary Busis

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  • Melanie Lynskey Says the End of Friendship With Kate Winslet Was “More Heartbreaking Than Some Breakups I’ve Had”

    Melanie Lynskey Says the End of Friendship With Kate Winslet Was “More Heartbreaking Than Some Breakups I’ve Had”

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    Think back to sleepaway camp, and the pals you made there. Intense bonds are formed over relatively short periods of time. Inside jokes are born, friendship bracelets are weaved. Promises are made to write every day! Remain friends forever! As anyone who’s found an old crumpled note in the back of a desk drawer full of inscrutable references written by a person whose name you vaguely remember can attest, those bonds don’t always last. Movie sets, it turns out, can be kind of the same way. Melanie Lynskey confirmed that this can also be the case on-set, remembering the painful way she learned that lesson. 

    In a wide-ranging conversation on Josh Horowitz’s podcast, Happy Sad Confused this week, Lynskey opened up about her first big role, in Peter Jackson’s 1994 film Heavenly Creatures. She starred opposite Kate Winslet in both of their feature film debuts, playing a pair of intensely bonded girls who plan and commit a murder together. Winslet and Lynskey, too, naturally bonded on set. It didn’t last. 

    “When I lost touch with Kate it was more heartbreaking than some breakups that I’ve had,” Lynskey said. “It was so painful. It wasn’t like anything happened, she just became a gigantic international movie star, and she didn’t have a lot of time, and then suddenly she’d be in Los Angeles and not have time.” 

    Eventually, even Winslet’s jaunts through LA didn’t even have the attempt to make plans. “When I was living here, and she’d be there and I wouldn’t hear from her,” Lynskey said. “It sort of gradually happened. It happens in relationships, people kind of drift apart, but it was so painful for me.” 

    Lynskey and Winslet have both been working consistently in the nearly 30 years since breaking out in Heavenly Creatures, but, Lynskey revealed, they’ve never reconnected. The last time she says she saw Winslet, in fact, was at the 2009 premiere for Winslet’s then-husband Sam Mendes’ Away We Go, in which Lynskey had a supporting role.

    “That’s the last time I saw her,” she said, not going into further detail on whether they spoke, or if they were simply in the same theater at the same time. 

    She did call Winslet “a huge inspiration for me” in how she handled the media attention that came with her early fame, particularly cruel comments about her body. 

    “I know she’s a very, very confident person, but everyone’s sensitive, and she’s very sensitive,” Lynskey said. “ And the way she was dissected and talked about, I remember at the time being so furious on her behalf, especially because, like, Kate Winslet is now in the world. Kate Winslet is doing movies, and you’re getting to witness that talent. This is like a life-changing actor, an actor that comes along once in a generation. Just focus on that. And also—she was tiny, and still is tiny. It infuriated me so much and I just was always amazed by how gracefully she handled all of it.”

    Lynskey, too, has faced criticism about her body even recently, responding to shaming comments about her appearance on The Last of Us made by Adrianne Curry. “I am supposed to be SMART, ma’am. I don’t need to be muscly,” she said in one of a string of tweets in response. She’s also been open about the eating disorder she struggled with from the age of 12. 

    Winslet wasn’t Lynskey’s only platonic showmance that didn’t last. “It happened a couple of times,” she said, including one actor who told her “I don’t stay friends with actors” after Lynskey expressed her fondness at wrap. 

    “I was so shocked by it,” she said. “This woman had been working longer than me and was used to, ‘no, we move on. This was just a couple months of our life.’ But I was so sensitive, I was always so injured by losing these great loves I was having, and you know, it got easier.”

    Hollywood isn’t all cliquishness and fleeting connection, however. During the interview, Lynskey talked about taking on her role in The Last of Us at the bequest of her friend Craig Mazin, co-creator of the massively popular show. They first met playing the party game Mafia, she said, and then “we became very good Mafia friends.” She went on to tease her strategy (“I’m not very good at lying”), but wouldn’t reveal it, by the way. All she’ll tell you is that she is very, very good at the game. “Someone said to me, I’ll never trust you again.”

    Now, with roles on shows like Yellowjackets and The Last Of Us, Lynskey is more visible than ever, but reminds audiences that she’s not new here. “It is funny to have like a 30-year career,” she said, and have people frame her success with a wink: “But now…”

    “I’m proud of my career,” she said. “I worked really hard! I was a working actor. For me, that was all I’d ever wanted. My dreams had come true.” 

    A representative for Winslet declined to comment.

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    Kase Wickman

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  • ‘The Last of Us’ Unleashes Its Most Monstrous Ending Yet

    ‘The Last of Us’ Unleashes Its Most Monstrous Ending Yet

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    With its fifth episode, The Last of Us once again gifts us a pair of new, beautifully realized characters, only to remove them from the board in harrowing fashion. Mercifully, these emotional deaths come after the show’s biggest monster sequence yet, thanks to the arrival of the dreaded Bloater—among the most iconic villains from the Last of Us video game on which the Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann show is based. More on that piece of work in a bit. First, let’s rewind the clock to the top of this tragic tale.

    Written by Mazin and directed by Jeremy Webb, “Endure and Survive” begins nearly a fortnight before the events of last week’s episode. We see what, up until now, we had only heard about: Melanie Lynskey’s Kathleen  and her allies taking back their home from the cruel Kansas City chapter of FEDRA. Power abhors a cruelty vacuum, and Kathleen’s here to fill it, presiding over a new group of people more than willing to execute their enemies on the streets with public hangings and shootings aplenty.

    “Did it feel good, betraying your neighbors to FEDRA, watching us get thrown in prison, watching us hang, so you can get medicine, alcohol… fucking apples?” Kathleen asks a literally captive audience minutes before ordering their deaths. “Did it make you feel better? Did it make you feel safe? How does it make you feel now?”

    As the episode wears on, we learn more about the vengeful tune humming beneath all of Kathleen’s actions: a laser-focused quest to find and kill the aforementioned Henry, a young man who collaborated with FEDRA to get medicine for his sick brother Sam. The cost of that medicine: selling out Kathleen’s brother, Michael, leader of the Kansas City resistance. Pushed on the subject by her second-in-command Perry (played by The Last of Us video game alum Jeffrey Pierce), Kathleen relents that Michael would have advocated for mercy against Henry. But Michael’s not here anymore, is he? And Kathleen doesn’t care about what he would have wanted, only what she wants. Given that she liberated them from FEDRA, the whole of Kansas City is backing her play. That’s the kind of commanding presence even Twitter trolls can’t deny.

    In the other corner of this conflict: Henry, the most wanted man in Kansas City, and his younger brother, the eight-year-old superhero named Sam. Many years his senior, Henry wants nothing more than to get his brother safely out of the city. But after nearly two weeks in hiding and no discernible plan of action in sight, Henry and Sam’s options are starting to look rather grim — until Joel and Ellie roll into town, guns blazing. 

    Identifying the Last of Us leads as possible allies, Henry and Sam follow Joel and Ellie through the city and into the night, making their acquaintance by way of sticking unloaded guns in their faces. Perhaps one can forgive Joel for responding to this introduction with his “asshole voice” as he warily studies Henry and Sam. Ultimately, he hears them out at Ellie’s behest, and in time, they all agree on a plan: escape Kansas City by way of a tunnel system, once loaded with infected, now presumably empty.

    The trip leads the four travelers to an abandoned underground community. An hours-long break quickens the bonds within the group, particularly between the youngest members of the party. Sam, who is deaf, immediately clicks with Ellie over a shared love of corny jokes and comic books. Joel and Henry, meanwhile, tacitly connect over a shared instinct to protect their loved ones at all costs. As Henry recounts the tale of betraying the Kansas City resistance to save his brother’s life, he openly wonders whether or not he’s crossed a point of no return.

    “I’m a bad guy, because I did a bad guy thing,” says Henry. “You get it, though. You may not be her father, but you were someone’s. I can tell.”

    Joel isn’t one to look back at his past. He certainly isn’t about to discuss his dead daughter with a group of strangers, even ones as pleasant as these. On the other side of their rest stop, with Kansas City falling behind them, Ellie makes a pitch: these strangers should join them on their journey to Wyoming. There’s no time to debate it, however, as the group comes under attack — first by a lone sniper, whom Joel sneaks upon and kills, and then by Kathleen’s entire army, with Henry finally in their sights.

    The group faces overwhelming odds, even with Joel now standing in sniper position. He shoots a single truck driver, plowing the exploding vehicle into an abandoned house. But soon, everyone’s outnumbered. Left with few options, Henry surrenders, offering to trade his life for his brother’s safety. Kathleen refuses. “I know why you did what you did,” she tells her target, “but did you ever stop to think he was supposed to die?” 

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    Josh Wigler

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  • Melanie Lynskey Responds to America’s Next Top Model Winner Adrianne Curry’s Critique of Her Body in The Last of Us

    Melanie Lynskey Responds to America’s Next Top Model Winner Adrianne Curry’s Critique of Her Body in The Last of Us

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    Melanie Lynskey cleared up some of Adrianne Curry‘s concerns about her physique and whether or not it’s suitable for a post-apocalyptic world.

    On Wednesday, the America’s Next Top Model cycle 1 winner responded to a photo of the actor, critiquing her appearance as not being befitting of her role in the post-apocalyptic TV series The Last of Us. She wrote in a since-deleted tweet, “her body says life of luxury…not post apocolyptic [sic] warlord.” She added, “where is Linda Hamilton when you need her?,” referring to the Terminator star. Lynskey saw the social media message before the model deleted it, screenshotting the exchange and tweeting it out with the caption, “Firstly—this is a photo from my cover shoot for InStyle magazine, not a still from HBO’s The Last Of Us.” She added, “And I’m playing a person who meticulously planned & executed an overthrow of FEDRA. I am supposed to be SMART, ma’am. I don’t need to be muscly. That’s what henchmen are for.”

    In a string of subsequent tweets, Lynskey went on to explain exactly why being involved in this show and playing her character Kathleen is so important to her. “Other than getting to work with creative geniuses who I respect and admire (Neil & Craig) the thing that excited me most about doing #TheLastOfUs is that my casting suggested the possibility of a future in which people start listening to the person with the best ideas,” she wrote. “Not the coolest or the toughest person. The organizer. The person who knows where everything is. The person who is doing the planning. The person who can multitask. The one who’s decisive.”

    The Yellowjackets star went on to share, “Women, and especially women in leadership positions, are scrutinized incessantly. Her voice is too shrill. Her voice is too quiet. She pays too much attention to how she looks. She doesn’t pay enough attention to how she looks. She’s too angry. She’s not angry enough.” Lynskey then added, on a personal note, “I was excited at the idea of playing a woman who had, in a desperate and tragic time, jumped into a role she had never planned on having and nobody else had planned on her having, and then she actually got shit done. I wanted her to look like she should have a notepad on her at all times. I wanted her to be feminine, and soft-voiced, and all the things that we’ve been told are ‘weak.’ Because honestly, fuck that. I understand that some people are mad that I’m not the typical casting for this role. That’s thrilling to me. Other than the moments after action is called, when you feel like you’re actually in someone else’s body, the most exciting part of my job is subverting expectations” She concluded, “I’m so grateful to Craig and Neil for creating a truly new character. Someone I have never seen before. And for trusting me with her. And for letting me be on THE MOST AMAZING SHOW. And I’m also grateful because the love and support I receive from you all is so overwhelming and powerful- I feel like we are a community and I feel very seen and loved. Ok rant over and thank you all so very much.”

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    Emily Kirkpatrick

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  • ‘The Last of Us’ Season 1 Episode 4 Recap: Who Is Henry?

    ‘The Last of Us’ Season 1 Episode 4 Recap: Who Is Henry?

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    In a few weeks, Showtime sensation Yellowjackets throws the gauntlet down against the HBO juggernaut known as Succession. In this week’s The Last of Us, we get the smallest glimpse into that future event in the form of Emmy-nominated Yellowjackets star Melanie Lynskey, stepping up to the Home Box Office with gun in hand, for the aptly titled episode, “Please Hold My Hand.”

    Anyone who experienced the first season of Lynskey’s cannibalistic survival horror drama knows not to underestimate Shauna Shipman, slayer of lovers, killer of rabbits, and taker of mushrooms. (In fairness, Shauna’s mushroom trip was probably safer than the fungus sweeping the Last of Us nation; it was a deadly trip all the same.) Unfortunately, the denizens of the Last of Us universe have not experienced that show, and as such, do not know better.

    Case in point: the doctor who delivered Lynskey’s character, Kathleen, into the world. A lot has happened since her infancy: decades of history, including an extinction event that’s apparently driven Kathleen into the position of resistance leader. We know very little about Kathleen other than what’s implied: she and her allies in Kansas City were once under the thumb of the military-government known as FEDRA, but now, she’s the one with all the firepower. But she’s not necessarily winning the war. 

    Something has happened to Kathleen, something that’s preventing her from seeing past the color red. There’s a man out there named Henry, who did something very bad to Kathleen recently, and potentially the rest of her community. He’s “a collaborator,” she says, implying that he traded information with FEDRA in exchange for his safety. Now, the shoe’s on the other foot, and Kathleen’s out for blood, consequences be damned—even if that means interrogating and ultimately killing the only doctor in town, the last doctor alive for all she or we know, and certainly the very same person who brought Kathleen into this world.

    Welcome back to The Last of Us, where you root for people who make it hard to root for them. It’s a central trait of the video game Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann are adapting, at least, and if it’s not apparent yet, the creators are doing their best to clarify the theme by casting the immensely likable Lynskey as a complex person making complex choices—catastrophic ones, possibly. While she has her eyes so firmly focused on a vengeful vendetta against this enigmatic Henry, Kathleen willingly averts her gaze from a more pressing concern: the fungus among us, as some form of horrid creature lurks beneath the surface of the Kansas City QZ. 

    “Seal the building for now,” Kathleen tells one of her most trusted soldiers, upon discovering what essentially amounts to a breathing basement floor in a condemned building. “We’ll deal with this after. After.”

    Ignoring some sort of cordyceps creature in favor of settling a score. Denying the needs of the many in the face of satisfying the needs of the self. It’s a hallmark of so much human history (perhaps not the cordyceps part; then again, perhaps the cordyceps part), and certainly, one that echoes throughout The Last of Us. As Kathleen, Lynskey’s just the latest embodiment of this idea.

    But look at us, channeling our inner Kathleen. Her debut comes after a whole lot of before with Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey), road-tripping away from the late Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlett) in search of someone else: Joel’s estranged brother Tommy (Gabriel Luna). Even without Bill and Frank, and even with Tess (Anna Torv) dead and gone, Joel’s eyes remain fixed on his ever-dwindling family—a classification that does not currently include Ellie, who he sees as “cargo,” less than human.

    Of course, Joel’s relationship with Ellie is already starting to change. And how could it not, now that Ellie’s armed with such deadly weapons as “No Pun Intended: Volume Too,” not to mention a literal deadly weapon in the form of a handgun? Jokes and ammo fuel the relationship between Joel and Ellie this time around, as they continue their cross-country trek toward Tommy’s last known whereabouts in Wyoming. As much as it’s a joy to see Lynskey’s Last of Us debut, “Please Hold My Hand” accomplishes something just as great, and indeed, something even more important: Joel and Ellie as a pair, the defining duo at the heart of this story.

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    Josh Wigler

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  • ‘The Last of Us’ Season 1 Episode 3 Recap: Frank, My Dear

    ‘The Last of Us’ Season 1 Episode 3 Recap: Frank, My Dear

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    It’s only January. It is way too soon to talk about The Last of Us’s third episode, “Long Long Time,” as the best episode of 2023, let alone the best episode of The Last of Us, right? Right. But! Is it too soon to declare it the best episode of 2023 and The Last of Us, so far? Not from where I’m standing.

    Following an opening two installments that demonstrated astounding fidelity to the video game it’s based on, The Last of Us breaks the mold with its riveting third episode, a 75-minute meditation on life and love in the not-quite-a-zombie apocalypse. Driven forward by powerful performances from TV treasures Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett, “Long Long Time” marks the biggest departure from the Last of Us source material to date, offering a very different look at the video game characters of Bill and Frank, to the point that they may as well be show-only inventions. 

    While their origins are very much rooted in the game, Bill and Frank’s HBO debut (tragically short-lived as it may be) imbues the TV series with something that not even the fungus-free Ellie (Bella Ramsey) has managed to instill in Pedro Pascal’s Joel quite yet: hope, in an otherwise hopeless world. Of course, by the episode’s end, “Long Long Time” also manages to leave the audience completely wrecked. It’s still The Last of Us, after all.

    The episode begins in the aftermath of a different wreck: Tess (Anna Torv), gone but not forgotten following her explosive sacrifice play. Joel would prefer if Ellie forgets all about her, but Ellie evokes Tess’s name all the same: “Nobody made you go along with this plan. You needed a truck battery or something, and you made a choice. Don’t blame me for something that isn’t my fault.” Fair enough, Joel probably thinks, but doesn’t say aloud, as the two reluctant companions set off to link up with Bill and Frank, two of Joel and Tess’s business partners outside of the quarantine zone, who are better equipped to deal with a precocious child than the tragically childless Joel.

    The journey to Bill and Frank’s is a relatively peaceful one. No explosions, no deaths, unless we’re counting the clicker Ellie examines and then stabs in the head at a local gas station. (Not just any gas station, mind you, but a Cumberland Farms! Consider it one last tip of the Red Sox cap to the New England faithful.) Despite no imminent danger, ghosts lurk throughout Joel and Ellie’s trek. They walk past the ancient wreckage of a plane crash, busted and overgrown like everything else in the greater Boston area. They talk about theories surrounding the Cordyceps outbreak, with Joel throwing his lot behind “the big bread theory.” They reach a makeshift graveyard littered with the bones of uninfected individuals, executed for fear of overcrowding the quarantine zones—ironic, given humanity’s current place on the endangered species list.

    “Why kill them? Why not just leave them be?” Ellie asks, not understanding why these folks had to die. Joel’s heartbreaking answer: “Dead people can’t be infected.”

    Fifteen minutes of television have elapsed at this point. With an hour still on the clock, The Last of Us pushes into another window of sorts, tripping backward in time all the way to the start of the outbreak. We see soldiers round up a group of people on a truck, the same people whose bones Joel and Ellie will someday meet on the side of the road. But just when it feels like the show’s about to dive into the backstories of these soon-to-be corpses, the action instead shifts to someone else entirely—someone who is very, very alive.

    Enter: Bill, the veritable Ron Swanson of the apocalypse. It’s not just because the heavily bearded man comes to us courtesy of Parks and Recreation alum Nick Offerman. It’s also because this heavily bearded man acts exactly as one would expect Offerman’s Ron to under similar circumstances, with grim-faced badassery and a deep stockpile of supplies. The proud survivalist watches surveillance camera footage of soldiers rounding up the people of Bill’s town, Lincoln. (Another elaboration from the game, where it’s literally named “Bill’s Town.”) When he’s satisfied that they’re all gone, Bill emerges from his underground bunker and sets about his new life, securing supplies, boobytrapping property, eating lavish home-cooked dinners for one, and otherwise generally thriving at the end of the world.

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    Josh Wigler

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  • ‘The Last of Us’: Inside That Tragic, Gorgeous, and Surprising Love Story Episode

    ‘The Last of Us’: Inside That Tragic, Gorgeous, and Surprising Love Story Episode

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    Spoilers for The Last of Us episode three ahead

    Hitting many of the same narrative beats, recreating iconic shots, and expanding upon the original digital design with painstakingly hand-built sets, HBO’s The Last of Us had, through its first two episodes, deliberately and closely echoed the postapocalyptic game on which it’s based. From the beginning, the question of how the adaptation would eventually set itself apart was twofold, a matter of both when it’d shift directions and to exactly what degree. Enter Sunday’s third episode, “Long Long Time,” which is a decades-spanning and near-feature-length love story that “explodes expectations,” as one of its stars, Nick Offerman, puts it to Vanity Fair.

    In the game, Bill is a minor character whose survivalist bent comes in handy when it comes to helping protagonists Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) on their perilous cross-country journey. He’s encountered briefly through Joel’s perspective, entering the enclosed mini safe town Bill has built for himself as he claims to contentedly live in isolation. “You come to realize that he’s actually lying,” says game creator Neil Druckmann, who developed the series with Emmy winner Craig Mazin. “There was something Bill cared about more than survival—there’s this other man named Frank.” Frank is not a speaking role in the game; the relationship between him and Bill is only subtly alluded to. But here Mazin saw his opportunity to put his stamp on the Last of Us show, to give viewers “a breath” after two intense and bloody opening episodes, and to buck expectations. We’ve been on the run with Joel and Ellie, and finally viewers get to sit down and stay awhile with Bill and Frank. 

    “I said, ‘Neil, I’ve got a crazy idea,’” Mazin recalls. “And he was like, ‘Do it. Let’s see how it goes.’ And off we went.”

    In “Long Long Time” we meet Offerman’s Bill in 2003, the show’s earliest ongoing timeline so far, as the episode begins. His survivalist paranoias improbably come true as the world starts melting down. Singularly equipped to, yes, survive in the world that nobody but him saw coming, he constructs a bunker and an entire electrical ecosystem around it to live comfortably for as long as he wants. As this origin story goes, he finds a stranger lurking outside his property, starving and dirty and (so he claims) not infected—Frank, played by Murray Bartlett. After confirming, Bill reluctantly lets the man in for a shower, a meal, and a glass of wine. They realize they’re attracted to each other—the blossoming of a romance that the episode, directed by Peter Hoar, charts with gorgeous and heartbreaking specificity through the end of both their lives. Not exactly typical video game stuff.

    “It was about showing both the passage of time and the creation of a functioning relationship that implied that two people could have success in this world,” Mazin says. “Regardless of the nature of their love, whether it’s romantic or platonic or parental, not everything has to end badly. And they really do have a happy ending as far as I’m concerned.”

    Veterans of TV known for their more offbeat characterizations, Bartlett (The White Lotus) and Offerman (Parks and Recreation) pull off something magical in just a single episode, believably developing a relationship that initially feels new and exciting and strange, then turns worn and a little cranky and genuinely profound. The chemistry is natural and quiet, the depth of the performances intricately woven between them. Bartlett secured the part in an audition, and Mazin was able to cast Offerman—an acquaintance—after another actor couldn’t commit due to scheduling. In fact, Offerman himself first had to say no due to timing, only for the role to work out when it came back around.

    “Craig told me that they took a good look at Murray and said, ‘Oh man, we’re going to need some counterpoint to this guy,’” Offerman says and then laughs. By this point, White Lotus had made Bartlett an Emmy-bound star. “Imagine seeing Indiana Jones and then your agent is like, ‘So they want you to be in a relationship with the guy with the hat and the whip,’” Offerman says. “How did I get here?”

    The coup of “Long Long Time” comes down, in many ways, to just how quickly it establishes deep intimacy between the men. Bartlett and Offerman say that Mazin’s script laid much of the groundwork for allowing them to jump in, find that particular romantic texture, and then pop out for the main story to continue progressing. (The episode ends when Joel and Ellie, planning to hand Ellie off to the couple’s capable care, arrive at the house and find them dead.) “We were set up for success,” Bartlett says. “Some of these scenes are very vulnerable and very delicate. We were lucky enough to have someone [in Hoar] who would just tread very carefully in maneuvering us in the right directions to tell the version of the story that we wanted to tell.”

    It’s all in the little details—flashes of a life partnership taking place years apart. After they meet, we see them make love. Mazin, who is not gay, says it’s “the first sex scene I’ve ever written in my career.” The creator leaned on queer collaborators on the episode like Bartlett, Hoar, and others to ensure it and similar moments felt authentic and specific to these characters: “I do believe when you’re writing outside of your familiarity, it’s important to do your homework and to also have people nearby who are being paid and working with you—not just your friends that you’re bothering—who can say, ‘Actually, this is better, this would be more true.’”

    Offerman and Bartlett fell into a dynamic easily and in good humor. “Murray liked me, I’ll go that far,” Offerman says dryly over Zoom, with Bartlett smirking beside him. (“I liked you enough, dude,” Bartlett replies.) They approached the naked scenes, both literally and figuratively, “meticulously,” Bartlett says, zeroing in on upending tropes of “these two rugged guys in a postapocalyptic world.” They both chuckle recalling one key moment that marks a time jump of several years, with the two characters bickering like an old married couple—a signal that their love has lasted. “When we burst out of the house screaming at each other into the street, to me, it’s such a triumphant memory,” Offerman says. In one of the final sequences, Bill walks in from his garden while Frank, who now uses a wheelchair and is ill with some unnamed malady, is painting. They take each other in. “There’s no words,” Bartlett remembers of shooting the scene. “It’s a beautiful moment.”  

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    David Canfield

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  • ‘The Last of Us’ Season 1 Episode 2 Recap: Umami Bomb

    ‘The Last of Us’ Season 1 Episode 2 Recap: Umami Bomb

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    The Last of Us exploded onto HBO with a massive series premiere, scoring 4.7 million viewers for its opening installment. It’s HBO’s second-biggest premiere since 2010’s Boardwalk Empire, surpassed only by a certain dragon show. With its second episode, The Last of Us explodes in a literal way, as the show’s fungal foes finally arrive in earnest, and one party member exits the stage in tragically early and fiery fashion.

    Directed by Neil Druckmann, co-creator of the Last of Us video game and show alike, episode two, “Infected,” lives up to its title, taking us all the way back to the origin point of the extinction-level event: Jakarta, Indonesia, briefly referenced in the series premiere. If John Hannah’s Doctor Neuman called the mushroom apocalypse back in 1968, then University of Indonesia mycology professor Ibu Ratna verifies it here in 2003. The scientist (played by Indonesian acting icon Christine Hakim) spends the last day of her life before the fall of civilization much the same as Pedro Pascal’s Joel: eating a meal, perhaps not thinking much of the day ahead. Then, a pair of soldiers appear in the restaurant she’s dining in, unannounced. They escort Professor Ratna to a facility to help them confirm the government’s worst fears: a human host infected by a lethal fungal strain, one that should not exist in humans at all.

    “Cordyceps cannot survive in humans,” says Ratna, leaning on her years of expertise, denying the truth on the microscope slide right in front of her. But there’s no room for denial when she sees the infection thriving in a human body, cold and naked on an autopsy table, a white web of tendrils sprouting beneath the surface of the skin, more embedded in the throat. An empathetic, but visibly terrified military official (Yaya A.W. Unru) sits down with the horrified Ratna, to tell her how they came across this Cordyceps-infected corpse. (Corpse-dyceps? No? Listen, I’m just trying to lighten the mood here. It’s the end times!)

    Effectively, the woman violently attacked a number of colleagues at her place of work, a flour and grain facility. (Not a joke: a widespread number of fans left the Last of Us series premiere pointing at bread as the source of the apocalypse, with Joel’s half-assed Atkins Diet, or maybe just his inability to make a grocery run, literally saving his life. It sounded fairly ridiculous in the moment, but who’s laughing now?) While the folks the woman attacked have all been handled—as in, executed “according to procedure”—there’s no accounting for the person who bit the infected woman, and no accounting for fourteen missing coworkers either. The military official begs Ratna for guidance on what to do next.

    “I have spent my life studying these things, so please listen carefully: there is no medicine, there is no vaccine,” Ratna tells the officer. When pressed on what they can do to stop the thread, Ratna’s answer is a single, horrible word, spoken in English: “Bomb.”

    Twenty years later, we see the results of Professor Ratna’s scientific guidance, as far away from Jakarta as a bombed-out New England. Joel and his partner Tess (Anna Torv) continue their mission to safely escort a teenager named Ellie (Bella Ramsey) to what’s left of the Massachusetts State House in Boston. But much like Ratna, Joel, and Tess are having trouble believing what they’re seeing: Ellie has tested positive for Cordyceps, and yet, she’s not a monster. Just as Cordyceps growing within humans was once thought an impossibility, Ellie’s apparent immunity swings things back in the other direction. Against all advice from Firefly leader Marlene (Merle Dandrige), Ellie tells Joel and Tess all about her bite, and her resistance to the cause of mankind’s near-extinction. 

    “There’s a Firefly base camp out west, with doctors working on the cure,” says Ellie. “Whatever happened to me, is the key to–”

    “–finding the vaccine,” says Joel, finishing the sentence, incredulous about what he’s hearing. “That’s what this is? We’ve heard this a million times … this isn’t going to end well, Tess. We need to go back.”

    In another universe, in another show entirely, Anna Torv once embodied a soldier who encountered stranger situations than fungal zombies; perhaps some measure of that acceptance has leaked over from Fringe to The Last of Us, as Torv’s Tess shuts down Joel’s pitch to turn back around to the quarantine zone, and instead decides to finish the mission of delivering Ellie to the Fireflies. By the end of the episode, you can imagine Joel’s plea ringing through whatever’s left of Tess’s ears.

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    Josh Wigler

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  • ‘Scariest thing I’ve ever seen’: Edmonton-made horror film Skinamarink breaks a million at the box office | Globalnews.ca

    ‘Scariest thing I’ve ever seen’: Edmonton-made horror film Skinamarink breaks a million at the box office | Globalnews.ca

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    An Edmonton-made film has reviews from the New Yorker, The Atlantic and Rolling Stone — and now it’s made over a million dollars at the box office.

    The debut film for director Kyle Edward Ball, Skinamarink, has had sold-out screenings in Toronto, New York and Los Angeles with audience members calling it ‘the scariest thing they’ve ever seen’.

    The movie was filmed in the Edmonton director’s childhood home with a small budget of US$15,000 and is quite possibly the talk of the horror movie world right now.

    John Kmech, associate producer on the film, is also a novice in the film world — his only other credit is on a documentary about Edmonton’s Waste Management Centre — and is blown away by the support so far.

    “I don’t think anybody thought anything like this was going to happen. It was really just intended as his local feature film debut,” said Kmech.

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    The poster for Edmonton-made horror movie Skinamarink.

    Kyle Edward Ball / Shudder

     

    The synopsis says the movie is about two children who wake up in the middle of the night to find their father is missing and all the windows and doors in their home have vanished.

    Kmech got involved with the movie after seeing Ball’s YouTube channel, where the director made nightmares come to life. Ball would ask viewers to describe their nightmares in the comments and in turn would make 5-minute videos that are “best watched with the lights off and headphones on,” according to the description for the channel, Bitesized Nightmares.

    The production of Skinamarink was crowdfunded online, making about $8,500 in donations.

    Trending Now

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    Ball reached out to Kmech when he had a first cut of the film done in November 2021, because Kmech was the only person on the crew who hadn’t read the shooting script.

    “Despite the fact a lot of people are calling this a found footage film, it did have a 96-page shooting script. It was very tightly plotted and envisioned by Kyle,” he said.

    Kmech watched it by himself and said he was full of adrenaline and tension.

    “I really think it’s like really nothing I’ve ever seen in a film before.”

    Kmech said TikTok helped create hype for the movie after it was leaked online and creators started raving about the relentlessly eerie ambience of the 100-minute film.

    “Some of the early reactions that people were having were they were saying ‘This is the scariest thing that I’ve ever seen,’ … people who were saying that it made them cry,” he said.

    As for what’s next for Kmech and Ball, they’re very busy thanks to the virality of their movie, and that isn’t leaving much time to plan future projects.

    “I’ve heard that he wants to start writing something else in the next couple of months once he’s able to get past this initial rush. But I haven’t talked about anything — like this was really totally unexpected,” said Kmech.

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    Kmech mentioned another production that has put the province’s film and TV industry on the map: The Last of Us, the HBO series that had Albertans bursting with pride after it was filmed at several locations in Calgary and Edmonton.

    “They’re really kind of polar opposite, you know, one is a $15,000, micro-budget experimental film and I think The Last of Us is one of the biggest TV productions ever,” he said.


    Click to play video: '‘The Last of Us’ premiere draws excitement, momentum for Alberta film industry'


    ‘The Last of Us’ premiere draws excitement, momentum for Alberta film industry


    “But they were both filmed here. So I think that’s also incredible.”

    There are only two more chances to see Skinamarink in Edmonton, at the indie theatre Metro Cinema, on Jan. 29 and 31.

    These screenings were added after the first run sold out completely and prompted lineups outside the theatre, so don’t hesitate to get your tickets online.

    &copy 2023 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

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    Stephanie Swensrude

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  • ‘The Last of Us’ Season 1: All the Easter Eggs You May Have Missed

    ‘The Last of Us’ Season 1: All the Easter Eggs You May Have Missed

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    Apocalypse Now

    Joel, Tommy (Gabriel Luna), and Sarah’s journey through Austin, Texas plays out incredibly similarly to the way it plays in the game—most importantly, it roots the viewer in Sarah’s point of view. The player controls Sarah for the first sequence of the game, ending with her death in the first (but certainly not last) brutal twist. The show bears this out with great fidelity, from camera angles shot from the back of Tommy’s truck, to seeing a neighbor’s home completely on fire, through the car crash in Austin proper. (The exploding airplane is a flashy innovation for the show.) It all culminates at the same point: Sarah’s death in the arms of her father, a scene that’s almost exactly one-to-one between the game and the show, from dialogue down to choreography.

    “Do I Look Like Your Mother?”

    It’s one of the most quotable lines from the premiere, coming from the lips of Fireflies Boston leader, Marlene. Notably, Marlene is played on the show by Merle Dandridge, who also voiced the character in the original Last of Us game. What’s more, Marlene’s line here—and even more specifically, that she’s the reason Ellie grew up under tight FEDRA supervision—speaks to an offhanded remark from Ellie within the first couple hours of the game, in which she says her mother and Marlene were old friends. How that backstory plays out on the show, if it plays out at all, is anyone’s guess.

    THE LAST OF US: Merle Dandridge and Natasha Mumba.Courtesy of HBO.

    Who is Riley?

    “Was Riley a terrorist?” It’s another pointed piece of dialogue from the conversation between Ellie and Marlene. At this point, viewers rightly have no idea who Marlene’s talking about. But fans of the games know better—at least, the ones who played The Last of Us: Left Behind bonus story know better. Left Behind is a downloadable content tale featuring Ellie’s experience before the events of the first game, and it prominently features a character named Riley. This isn’t just a simple nod toward Ellie’s backstory, either. Actress Storm Reid has been cast as Riley for a future episode, so Left Behind fans can count on seeing the DLC play out at some point in the first season of The Last of Us.

    The First Ending

    The first episode of The Last of Us ends on a major cliffhanger: Ellie tests positive for Cordyceps, but insists she’s not infected. She shows a bite mark that’s weeks old, an aberration from everything known about Cordyceps infection. The show’s version of the twist plays out very similarly to how it goes down in the game. The game doesn’t have a backstory for the soldier Joel, Ellie, and Tess encounter in this scene, and indeed, there are two soldiers who swoop in to scan the traveling trio. But everything else—the pouring rain, the bobbing and weaving through a mess of obstacles at night—comes right from the video game, and is yet another one of the show’s examples of how HBO’s The Last of Us is going to feel a whole lot like the Naughty Dog original.

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    Josh Wigler

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  • ‘The Last of Us Game’ Creator’s Parents Can “Finally Experience” His Work

    ‘The Last of Us Game’ Creator’s Parents Can “Finally Experience” His Work

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    Monday was an important day for Neil Druckmann. The cocreator of the beloved postapocalyptic video game The Last of Us had spent about a decade trying to adapt his story of an unlikely duo who band together to survive a harrowing trek across America. Now, finally, he was preparing to attend the glitzy premiere for the nine-episode HBO television adaptation he cocreated with Chernobyl’s Craig Mazin. But first, Druckmann needed to screen the show to another important group of constituents, the employees of Naughty Dog, the video game studio behind The Last of Us and its sequel. “I got to see it with hundreds of my colleagues, many of whom worked on the game for many, many years,” Druckmann tells VF a few days later. “They got to see their work realized, I think, to such a beautiful degree, and they were moved to tears.” One animator emailed Druckmann after the screening, ecstatic that two scenes she’d worked on for the video game had been recreated, shot-for-shot, in the TV show. “That was really special,” says Druckmann. 

    There’s a lot riding on The Last of Us, and not just for HBO as it attempts to launch a fresh franchise series under new, bottom-line focused owners. Hollywood has tried to turn video game IP into Marvel- and DC-magnitude cash cows for years with few successes. The Last of Us was critically acclaimed when it was released in 2013 and it quickly garnered legions of devoted fans who will be watching the series with a critical eye. But the TV adaptation can’t just pander to gamers. It must also find a way to invite in viewers who never considered playing their way through the PlayStation title, people like Druckmann’s parents. “They don’t play video games but they finally got to experience The Last of Us on their own,” says Druckmann, who brought them to Monday’s premiere.

    Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal star in The Last of Us on HBO.

    By Liane Hentscher/HBO.

    Tel Aviv–born Druckmann worked his way up from intern to copresident at Naughty Dog, where he also cowrote 2007’s Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. That game broke ground with its stunning visuals and focus on character development, paving the way for the release of The Last of Us a few years later. He originally planned to adapt The Last of Us into a movie with Sam Raimi, but, after that project fell apart, he found a new creative partner in Mazin, a longtime fan of the game. The Last of Us drops viewers into an alternate present-day world, one where 20 years ago, a fungus called Cordyceps laid waste to most of humanity. Joel (Pedro Pascal), a survivor of the Cordyceps outbreak, is tasked with escorting teenage Ellie (Bella Ramsey) across the country, fighting off the infected and relying on help from a cast of side characters—among them Bill and Frank, played by Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett, respectively. The reviews so far have been overwhelmingly positive, with Vanity Fair’s Richard Lawson calling it “an unrelentingly dark but steadfastly humane series.” That’s helping Druckmann breathe a little easier heading into The Last of Us’s Sunday night release: “I’m hopeful that our show lands and finds its audience, and we kind of help shift how these adaptations are made.”

    Vanity Fair: You started adapting The Last of Us as a movie not long after the game came out. Did you always see the potential to tell this story in another medium?

    Neil Druckmann: When we were making The Last of Us, we had already started working on games in a way that was pretty different for big budget games in that we put story first. Back then, you’d have designers creating really fun encounters or fun setups, and then story would come in, like, “here are all these levels, write something to tie them all together.” I think that’s why we got pretty poor stories. Instead, we said with The Last of Us, which was the evolution of a lot of the work we did on Uncharted, what if the whole thing was constructed around a relationship? 

    The idea of it becoming something else was obvious to people because the structure of it is very much a three-act story. It is episodic in its nature as these characters go through different parts of the U.S., meet a cast of characters and slowly change over time through each one of these mini adventures. But it wasn’t constructed with the idea of ever adapting it, it just leveraged a lot of the things that we’ve learned from other kinds of media. Because of the success of Uncharted, there was a lot of interest in adapting it. Even before we finished the game, we had production companies and studios approach us. And I was very reluctant. I was fearful that this beautiful thing we created at Naughty Dog would turn into one of these poor adaptations that I’ve seen that at times can be embarrassing to the whole industry. 

    Craig Mazin has said that he felt like he cheated with The Last of Us because the story was already there and he didn’t have to build it out like you would with other video game adaptations. 

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    Natalie Jarvey

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  • ‘The Last of Us’ Is One of the Best Video Game Adaptations Ever

    ‘The Last of Us’ Is One of the Best Video Game Adaptations Ever

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    On the post-apocalypse television spectrum, there is the comic book nightmare of The Walking Dead at one pole and the literary grace and hopefulness of Station Eleven at the other. Somewhere between the two, but far closer to the grim, lies The Last of Us (HBO, January 15), an unrelentingly dark but steadfastly humane series based on the critically acclaimed and massively popular video game.

    That’s a note of distinction in itself: the series, shepherded into being by Chernobyl writer Craig Mazin and game creator Neil Druckmann, is surely among the most respectable video game adaptations in the canon. But the show hasn’t taken weak, juvenile source material and somehow polished it into prestige. The video game itself is a finely wrought entity (or, at least, the cut scenes that I’ve watched suggest as much). Little needed to be added to the ambition of the series to make it worthy of an HBO Sunday night. 

    Mazin does find new ways to add dramatic flavor. He’s given the series a double structure, one similar to other limited series lurking on cable and streaming. There is the main narrative: a haunted man, Joel (Pedro Pascal), ferries a spunky (and haunted) teenager, Ellie (Bella Ramsey), across a ruined America, 18 years after a fast-spreading fungal infection turned the world into a zombie-ridden hellscape of tattered military dictatorships and marauding reavers. Threaded throughout that mission are myriad digressions, flashbacks to various points before and during the plague when the lives of certain side characters and the backstories of the two leads are spun out in somber, elegiac fashion. 

    So, there is some timeline juggling to be done. But Mazin makes it pretty clear what is happening when. What The Last of Us struggles with is making these tragic, heroic stories—of quotidian things like love and loyalty surviving amid the rubble—feel fresh. We have already seen so many examples of this particular storytelling motif—on the various Walking Dead shows, on Station Eleven, in I Am Legend and The Hunger Games, and so many other properties. While many of the discrete narratives in The Last of Us are cannily staged, both poignant and dreadful, they eventually coalesce into something glumly familiar; we feel the same howling desolation, flecked with glimmers of ragged life, that we’ve felt before.

    Still, it is worth pointing out the many merits of the series. There is a particularly affecting interlude in which a stoic survivalist played by Nick Offerman meets and falls in love with a fellow remnant, played by White Lotus breakout Murray Bartlett. These two doomed lovers dart through the series, only occupying one episode, but they resonate. Not only because it is rare to see a gay love story in a butch series like this one, but because it exists almost entirely outside of the show’s violence. It is instead a small tale of peaceful isolation, one in warped dialogue with many of our own experiences of the last few years. 

    Later on, an episode introduces us to a preacher (Scott Shepherd) who initially appears refreshingly compassionate, and then very much does not. That hour is the show in full spine-tingling horror mode—for the most part, the series is a thriller-drama in which the scares are either lurking in the past or implicitly close by, out of frame. A steely character played, against type, by Melanie Lynskey effectively communicates a whole saga of past conflict while further delineating the show’s complex moral shading. Few people on the series are absolutely good or bad; they mostly dwell in the ambivalence of survival, their tribes’ righteousness hinging near entirely on perspective. 

    The tension between means and ends culminates, of course, with Joel and Ellie. The series ends (for now?) on the same note of bleak disquiet—a terrible, and perhaps completely unjustified, sacrifice made—that closed out the video game. Perhaps because that ending is already so iconic, or perhaps because the series feels curiously hurried in its pacing, it doesn’t land with the same grand, despondent ambiguity as it did in 2013. Or, maybe, we just expect such textured pathos from filmed entertainment. It was more striking and novel, ten years ago, when encountered in a video game. 

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    Richard Lawson

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