Warning: The following contains spoilers for The Last of Us season two through episode four as well as references to the games. Read at your own risk.

Introduction

Episode four of HBO’s The Last of Us, Day One, feels like the first episode of a new series. In a good way. We’ve said goodbye to Joel in episode two, we had episode three to take a breath, and now we’re moving on to the current story.

As I’ve talked about before there’s a lot going on with the show that you can’t really do a deep dive on without spoiling the story of the game. So once again I promise I won’t do that and will instead stick to higher level commentary based on what we’ve actually seen so far. I likewise promise to circle back on things once I’m allowed to talk about them. One of which I’m actually able to do now, so that proves I’m not a liar!

Anyway, let’s get into it.

What is the New Theme of The Last of Us?

Back in season one I talked (and talked, and talked…) about how there was a very clear thesis statement which was shared by the show and the game: “This is a love story, and that’s not good.”

The thrust of season one and part one of The Last of Us was the idea of what would people do for love. And that, not infrequently, love could make us do horrible things. It could make us set a city on a path to destruction or kill innocent people.

But it could also sustain us. Which in a way brings us to the themes of season two and part two of the game.

I say “in a way” because it’s not direct. There’s what Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann say the themes are in the official podcast but then there’s the themes that are coming out regardless.

According to Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, the thrust of season two is the concept of justice. Season one is what would we do because of love, season two is what would we do for justice for those we love and care about.

And it is that! Abby wanted justice against Joel, Ellie wants justice against Abby. But a theme that’s underlying this - and one Craig acknowledges but I think underplays when he talks about it as a background concept instead of a foundation of the story - is community.

What is community? Who are people in community with? What do you do for your community? How do you sustain it and protect it?

Do you even recognize it’s something to sustain and protect?

We’ve only seen glimpses of the Seraphites - the “Scars” as they’re called - but we’ve seen enough of them to get an idea that they represent a community based on religion and extreme religious belief at that. They take care of each other, our introduction is one of them teaching a small child in a seemingly peaceful setting, but they are also brutal. Based on the way they dismiss others as heretics we can probably guess this group has a “you’re with us or against us” mindset. Having watched one submit to extreme torture and still not shake his devotion to his - god? Religious figure? (We still don’t know this yet, so again we’re just guessing) - their belief might be based on the idea that good stuff happens after you die if you do what you’re supposed to and anything good that happens when you’re alive isn’t a given.

(Which in fairness, is the basis for a few real world religions as well. I say as someone who grew up Catholic.)

Jeffrey Wright’s Isaac and the WLF give us another extreme. One about rules and military and might. Isaac also shows us the continuation of theme that we saw back in season one with Kathleen who likewise was a leader who fought FEDRA only to create a system of ruling that was arguably worse than what she replaced.

From Isaac’s conversation with the Seraphite he was torturing, we also learn that both of these communities have been locked in battle for who knows how long. And that the reasons behind that are retaliation - your group did this, so we did that - over and over and over again.

It’s heavy handed but obviously this is a bigger version of what’s going on with Ellie and Abby right now. Joel killed Abby’s father so Abby killed Joel, now Ellie is trying to kill Abby.

The thing that gets overlooked both by the characters and frankly a not insignificant section of the audience is that there is an off ramp. The most obvious of course is realizing that the violent solution isn’t the one you have to take nor should be taken. There was no reason for Joel to kill Abby’s father other than that he didn’t give a shit about killing an innocent man. There were plenty of other ways Joel could’ve gotten Ellie off that operating table without leaving a dead doctor behind him.

There’s also the part where the narrow minded focus on justice (or is it revenge?) is what destroys communities. Back in season one Kathleen wanted revenge-slash-justice for her brother which resulted in her being responsible for destroying Kansas City. Based on the way Isaac didn’t sound like he cared for the way the government handled things by taking people’s rights away, perhaps he tried to get justice by going against FEDRA and, well, he and Seattle are clearly doing super great right now.

I bring this up because we can use these lenses to look at Ellie’s story. As we’ve found Ellie in season two, she lacks community. Yeah, she lives in Jackson and she sort of has friends. But we’re repeatedly told she’s a loner. She has to be nudged by multiple people to go out in public and show her face at things like a New Year’s dance. Later, when she has to try to convince people to help her get justice for Joel’s death, she dismisses dances and pot lucks as what matters compared to the idea of being ready to give retribution when the time comes.

But here’s the thing - even if we put aside the part where Ellie wasn’t the only person who had lost someone that day, or the idea that the town of Jackson still had great need to repair and recover, what had Ellie done to earn any support from others in town?

We spent two episodes seeing Ellie be a pissy, argumentative loner. Now I’m not saying Ellie didn’t have good reason! Heck, just being a teenager is reason enough, let alone a teenager in the apocalypse. I’m saying that unfortunately an after effect of Ellie pushing the world away is that she had no connections she could rely on when she needed them. Honestly, how many people in that town hall even knew who Ellie was other than maybe “Joel’s daughter?”

Per Craig Mazin, Ellie had a community of one, which was Joel. She didn’t want to have any others, and when we caught up with her in season two she was iffy on wanting Joel as well. But as she starts out on her mission to kill Abby, it’s community that even gives her any tools to have a chance. Dina’s in love with her so she helps, and Dina recognizes that it’s important to allow for bonds with people to form which is why Seth in turn helps her. If it had been up to Ellie she would’ve kept snubbing Seth and gone out without food or improved weapons.

As we move into the real story of the post Joel world, one of the things we see is that a crossroads is forming in front of Ellie. It was purely about justice/revenge, but now she’s got Dina and Dina is pregnant. Again the symbolism isn’t subtle (and I’ll again say I don’t fault the show for this because certain members of the audience have proven they need to be hit over the head) but you can see the paths: One is focusing on killing Abby, which even Ellie recognizes puts Dina and now the baby at risk. The other is a possible future where Ellie has the most basic community of all: A family with a loved one and a new generation to raise together.

Of course possibly there’s a third option where Ellie could have both. That’s the sort of thing we have to wait and see to find out.

One thing I do like is that, with the extra time to let emotions and character motivations breathe, we can see that Ellie actually does understand what’s in front of her. There’s no need to make sure a player doesn’t get bored waiting for a new quest to pop up, so we can let Ellie and Dina talk more about what they feel and want. Ellie actually does like the idea of being a Dad. Maybe she can recognize, as Jackson as a whole does, that the thing that actually helps people survive the apocalypse is not lashing out at those who hurt you, but rather finding the things that sustain you.

We have to wait and see.

Lagniappe

As always, because some things would start to get too spoilery if I talked too much about them I’m keeping some observations to quick bullet points.

• Given the conversation with Isaac and the Seraphite, it appears that the show is not completely shying away from the real world parallels to what’s going on between Israel and Palestine that somewhat inspired the second game, which Neil Druckmann himself has acknowledged (warning for game two spoilers in that article). I am not touching these particular parallels with a one hundred foot pole nor all the money in the world. I’ll just say that it’s fascinating to see the viewpoints certain segments of the so called fanbase think Neil Druckmann believes compared to what is being said in the show.
• I felt deeply for the guy in the van smiling awkwardly while being absolutely miserable.
• The concept of “Voters” as an insult hits a little too close to home these days if you live in the US.
• Now that the show has revealed that Dina is pregnant, I can circle back to a couple of things I had to be vague about last week. The first is that when we saw Dina for the first time after the time jump, Isabela Merced has Dina’s hands linger near Dina’s stomach. Dina didn’t know for sure she was pregnant yet, but being late had it on her mind.
• The second was that if you look carefully in last week’s episode, Dina started wearing a watch that was not dissimilar in design to Joel’s. She didn’t have that watch before, so it was a nice touch on behalf of the costume department to give the visual cue that now that Joel is gone, Dina was going to become the new representative of the idea of family for Ellie.
• On that topic, Ann Foley is the new costume designer for season two. Her past credits include She-Hulk so… yanno. I’m trying to reserve judgement. There’s some things I do genuinely like, such as the aforementioned watch. However, I have to admit there’s some things that aren’t working for me. In a teaser interview with The Art of Costume Podcast Ann Foley talked about how there’s an entire team focused on adding wear to the clothing to reflect that this is the apocalypse. But I gotta say so far I agree with other people who say that you can’t really see that? Yeah, there was some dirt on those FEDRA visors in the 2018 flashback but in what’s modern day we are not seeing nearly enough things like visible mending and frayed hems on the clothing in Jacksonville. There are real world things you could look to for research - “make do and mend” from World War II alone could more than get you past good enough - and I’m just not seeing it. I’m hoping to see more evidence in the upcoming eps but right now this is a miss.
• To give another example, the way Dina’s jeans fit her curves like a glove, complete with just the right waistline to be fashionable for when those jeans were in style, took me out. Compare this to something like the Black Widow movie where even though the trope is for Black Widows to have skin tight outfits, Yelena’s in the film is actually lose and baggy because the white suit she wears wasn’t made for her. I would even allow for Dina to have worked out a deal with someone to alter some jeans so they did fit her that way. But the idea that these jeans look like she could’ve taken them directly from the store in both condition and fit? No. Not working for me. Throw a patch on the knees or something! At least vaguely gesture to the passage of time!
• Compare this to the detailed work you see on things like old cars and buses. There you can tell the passage of time with overgrown plants, discolored paint, and so on. Props (heh) to Don Mcaulay and his team on production design.
• I don’t want to get into spoilers but it’s worth noting that the episode is called Day One.
• Look, Jeffrey Wright is an amazing actor who can do a monologue like nobody’s business. That being said, between him and Abby I’m really starting to think the WLF’s chief weapons are fear, surprise, and talking your victims to death.
• Emily Mendez on editing this week. I have a POV quibble during the van scene at the beginning (we swap from being in the back of the van to the front, which was confusing and made me wonder about coverage) but that one misstep is more than made up for by how well done everything from the start of the infected showing up underground to Dina and Ellie’s escape was perfectly done. You never once felt lost or unable to understand what was happening and where they were going. Particularly amazing given how much was going on.
• Not going to lie, when Dina and Ellie were trying to escape in the rain I was looking for yellow paint to guide them. I’m easily pleased enough that I wouldn’t have hated at least one splash of it as pure fanservice.
• Props where due, the show is doing much better with the idea that the infected can get messages from tendrils in the ground than they did last season. I still think it’s a stupid idea - the infected don’t have their own tendrils connected to the earth so what? They’re getting this via text message from sprouts? - but I’m happy to apply suspension of disbelief when the world building is played more consistently. We had the disturbed tendrils that led to the infected knowing to go in the direction of Jackson, then the tendrils this time being disturbed by the flares. This is much better than last season where we kept being told it was so super dangerous to potentially walk on infected ground and then nobody ever watched their step ever again even when actually walking on infected bodies.
• I know this is probably largely a matter of more budget to work with this season vs last, but the show is also doing better with presenting the infected as an actual problem. In season one we saw them so rarely that newbies to the story made the not unreasonable conclusion that as long as you stayed away from highly populated areas you were fine. This season is doing much better with showing that you could run into them anywhere and have no idea if it’s just a random couple or hundreds.
• Speaking of great ways to add tension, I still love Dina’s silent counting of how many infected she hears.
• Pretty much everyone who has worked on the show has raved about Isabela Merced’s performance and I’m going to add my voice to the bunch. That shot of her listening to Ellie sing, where you could see Dina going through all the emotions of realizing how much she loves Ellie while being moved at what that song represents to Ellie and Joel, was amazing. Moreso when you realize odds are very high that that was filmed with just Isabela and a camera, no Bella Ramsey in sight. Which, yes, is the job of an actor. But not every actor is good, so props when you see someone with skill.
• I also like how Isabela Merced manages to show why somebody would be drawn to Dina even though, frankly, she’s a little fucked up like Ellie is. Like she is way too down with murder for the average person. But she’s also charismatic and has a light in her. Isabela’s portrayal is really encapsulating how Dina represents that crossroads for Ellie symbolically as well as on a character level.
• Ellie tanking that infected bite was a badass move.
• The show has Dina find out about Ellie’s immunity in a different way from the game. Generally speaking I think the show handled it better than the game in ways I won’t get into too much because of possible spoilers. But, in fairness to the game, some of this is that as I mentioned earlier the show can give scenes more room to breathe.
• That being said, I personally would’ve tested Ellie by tying her up to a chair instead of letting her get a nice nap while I have to trust I’m not going to fall asleep and wake up with my head split open. Also if I was Ellie I’d show off that bite mark she got from the infected in the grocery store since Dina was there and it shows a passage of time. But whatever. There’s a lot of things I’d do differently in the apocalypse from most protagonists. Stay the hell home, for a start.

And that’s all she wrote. Three more episodes to go! Thanks for reading, and see you next week.