*The recap before you contains spoilers for the fifth episode of “The Last of Us”, and on the way also for the game The Last of Us I, and on the way probably also for the zombie apocalypse that will come upon us one day*
This might make the gamers among you feel a little old: the game The Last of Us came out ten years ago. The whole internet went crazy for this game, for its combat and stealth mechanics, for the zombies, but mostly – for its story, which was as hard and merciless as the action itself. so yes, There was a lot of skepticism about its HBO TV adaptation – which even people who have never owned a PlayStation in their lives know as “The Last of Us”. Many veteran players did not want to touch their beloved game. And honestly, I didn’t want to either. I thought that the game itself already gives a full and immersive experience that puts you into the world and lets you feel the difficulty of surviving in a world that has been destroyed and that there is no need to touch it. The story is excellent and well written and there is no need to change it.
But I also understood the reason this series exists. I mean, the reason it’s not “money, money, money” – this series also exists for the fans, but most of all, the goal is to give a good story to as many people as possible. Not everyone is a gamer, certainly not on consoles, and a lot of people who would have enjoyed the story didn’t know this game at all, so it’s clear that this series has a place on television. Not only does she have space, she also added things that couldn’t be done in the game. And yet, she is not perfect. Let’s start from the end, or rather, the beginning of the end.
The last episode of “The Last of Us” opens with another flashback (the favorite tool of the creators of the series, Neil Druckman and Craig Mazin – which at this stage, admittedly, is a bit chewy). The nature of the flashbacks changed throughout the season: the first of them were far from the characters, such as a fictitious interview from the 1960s with a famous mycologist in the first episode, a glimpse of the outbreak of the epidemic in Jakarta in the second episode – in short, world building. But as the series continued, the flashbacks became more and more personal and this time we return to the most personal place there is: the moment of Eli’s birth.
Anna Williams, Ellie’s mother, is played by Ashley Johnson – who voiced Ellie in the games. Many viewers predicted that she would be cast in some way since we have already seen Troy Baker (Joel in the original game, James – David’s assistant from the previous episode – in the series), Jeffrey Pierce (Tommy in the game, Pierce in the series) and also Marla Dandridge, The only one from the cast who played the character she originally dubbed (Merlin, the leader of the fireflies, who we saw in the first episode and who will soon return). It’s a really fun nod to the fans, it goes over the heads of the new viewers and that’s totally fine. Anyway, back to the flashback itself: Anna runs away to an abandoned house that apparently served as a base for her and her friends. She enters, blocking the door followed by a zombie, the first and last for this episode. After a too-quick fight, Anna kills the zombie and gives birth to Ellie. She sees that she has been bitten and cuts her umbilical cord – and thus we find out, for the first time in the history of the franchise, that this is actually how Ellie became immune – an issue that remains unknown in the games. Then Merlin arrives, finds Anna at home and realizes that she has to kill her best friend. She takes the baby and shoots Anna. Dandridge is excellent in this scene and even though the elimination is very quick, her pain is clear. She kills Anna like she takes off a Band-Aid.
And now we return to the present of the series – and after the previous episode which was very wintry, we arrive at spring. After the trauma of the events of episode 8 (including attempted cannibalism), Ellie becomes distant and quiet and just like in the game, Joel tries to cheer her up and starts making plans for the future. From here comes a sequence with some elements of the game that disappeared from the series: collecting on the side for the road, the trick of lifting Eli to a higher area so that she can bring Joel a ladder – and there is a feeling that these are simply things that are important to mark with a V before the end. And then comes the real moment everyone who finished the game has been waiting for: the giraffes. This is one of the iconic moments in the game, in which Joel and Ellie suddenly encounter two giraffes that have been released and are roaming freely in the city (somewhat in the atmosphere of “12 Monkeys”). This is a moment that gives a feeling of hope, that shows that after all the death and mushrooms – there is still beauty in the world of “the last of us”. This is one of the most peaceful and beautiful moments in the series, even as a viewer experiencing this scene for the second time, it is no longer the same. On the way to the next destination (finding the fireflies) Joel asks Ellie for more silly puns and Ellie, of course, agrees. But a firefly sneaks up behind them and throws a stun grenade at them – and Joel wakes up in the hospital, next to Merlin.
And this is where Merlin drops the biggest plot bomb of the series on Joel: the procedure that Ellie had to go through, which may lead to the development of a vaccine for the fungus that destroyed the world, will kill Ellie, since the fungus grows in the brain. Joel tries to resist but Merlin chooses to sacrifice Ellie for the greater good. She orders her soldiers to escort Joel to the highway and as soon as they reach the stairwell – he has already made his choice as far as the good of everything is concerned, turns around and kills the two soldiers. Here the sound becomes muffled, weaker, as Joel cuts off his social conscience to protect Ellie. Here in the game comes a long action scene in which Joel goes from room to room in search of Ellie, murdering everyone who stands in his way until he reaches the room where she is sedated just before the operation. So true, it’s not exactly like going through this scene in the game – in fact, being forced to go through it whether the player agrees with Joel’s choice or thinks it’s shocking – but it still works.
Later Ellie wakes up in the car and Joel chooses to lie to her – saying that there are dozens of vaccinated people like her and that they have stopped looking for a cure. Meanwhile, Joel remembers how he killed her, even as she begs him to let her go – because he knows she’ll just keep chasing him. When their car breaks down and they continue on their way on foot, Ellie is suddenly not sure that everything Joel told her is true. She asks him to swear. And just like in the last scene of the game, Joel swears. and lies And so the season ends.
So the problem is that the ending we were waiting for was much shorter and compressed than in the game. Instead of long and tense action scenes, Joel just moves fast and kills everyone – it’s true that you can’t translate the amount of enemies in the game to the series without reaching absurdity, but it was still too fast. This scene (and the whole episode, to be honest) is well done, but for the climax of the game, more was possible. The length of the episode was 43 minutes, and it was possible to insert more action and for a change I am not talking about the zombies. It was possible to make the most significant scene in the game a little more significant. If Druckman and Mazin allowed themselves to let episode three reach the length of an hour and twenty, there is no reason to compress the last episode in such a way.
The attitude towards “the last of us” is a bit complex. It is a work that on the one hand does a great favor to the story, the atmosphere and the characters and manages to stay faithful to the original, but along the way it gives up a lot of things that made the game work. Besides, I said before that I don’t talk about the zombies, but I want to talk about the zombies: the series takes place in a world where there are zombies in heaps (sometimes literally), but as it progressed the zombies became a kind of setting. It is clear to me that it is neither possible nor correct to convey the entire game experience on TV, but the gameplay elements, the choices of the characters and the exercise of judgment (and a slightly less light finger on the trigger) given the fact that at any moment a huge zombie can appear are an essential part of the story as well and not only of the action. The series gives a more focused experience that emphasizes the fight against humans more than the fight against zombies, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need more zombies. Beyond that, the ending raises questions about the second season. It is known that the second season will follow the second game, in which Ellie is already older. Will they wait a few years for Bella Ramsay to grow up or cast someone new (Ellie in the second game is indeed 19, which is also Bella Ramsay’s age in real life, but she really doesn’t look 19)? And will they recreate the game one by one this time too or will they change it to compensate the many players who were not satisfied with the sequel? Who knows, right now we can only look at the creation of “The Last of Us” as a whole and say that it is a successful series overall – but unlike the game, the first season probably won’t appear on many “greatest of all time” lists.