‘The Last of Us’ season 2, episode 1 recap: all grown up
The best video game-to-screen adaptation is back. As danger nears the safe haven, Joel faces his biggest challenge yet: a teenage daughter. Join us as we unpack
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This story contains spoilers from this episode of The Last of Us.
I’M GLAD TO BE back in the world of The Last of Us. I mean, not to be in it, but to watch it after bingeing The Walking Dead as my interlude since season one debuted last year. But the zombie-sized hole in my weekly watching schedule wasn’t filled with Rick and his revolving door of problems (I only got up to season six – it dragged). It wasn’t as sophisticated as show creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann’s video game-to-screen adaptation. The Last of Us is, if not, the best of its kind.
This is the self-carved league season two finds itself in as it comes out this week. (In Australia, we now enter the streaming world of Max.) We meet the consequences of Joel (Pedro Pascal)’s massacre of the Fireflies (a great band name), taking the form of Abby (Kaitlyn Dever, who we just saw in Apple Cider Vinegar with an impeccable Aussie accent) and her crew. They just missed out on the attack by three days, coming back from a mission to save the wounded.
It’s personal for Abby as she lays down her Firefly tag on one of the graves (just how personal is yet to be seen), urging her crew to kill Joel slowly when they capture him. She’s even got a profile on him: “Fifties, greying, beard, six feet tall, scar on his right temple.” This is certainly the descriptor for one of the world’s most in-demand actors. “Oh, yeah, they say he’s handsome.” Indeed!
How do you pay for therapy in a post-apocalyptic world?
Much like how the first season opened, we time jump five years. It’s 2028, New Year’s Eve, Ellie and Joel have settled nicely in the haven of Jackson, Wyoming. Ellie has joined the patrol team like the other teens in town, which is supervised by Jesse (Young Mazino), while Joel is patrol MVP with his own office. He’s widely respected around town and amongst the patrol squad; people walk on eggshells around Ellie. This is a point of tension Joel’s been trying to unpack as he finds himself with a now 19-year-old daughter, an age, he admits to Dina, he didn’t get to with his own birth daughter.
What’s kept him from unpacking it further, even during his sessions with the town therapist Gail (Catherine O’Hara), is what he had to do to save Ellie. The revelation of Ellie’s immunity to the Fireflies at the end of season one would mean that they would have to sacrifice the young girl. In the grand scheme of things, you’d pull the lever on this trolley problem. Joel knows this, which is why he’s so racked with guilt. He of course can’t tell this to Gail, who has her own misgivings about Joel and his leadership style. (He killed her husband, Eugene, who had presumably been bitten on patrol.) As more truckloads of refugees arrive at Jackson everyday, it’s clear where Joel’s morals sit as he wants to protect his overflowing ship first. But he too was a refugee once, as Maria, his sister-in-law and council member, reminds him.
Having a therapist in town sets up much of the inner turmoil that’s to be explored as the season progresses. But the chief question this scene answers is: how do you pay for therapy in a post-apocalyptic world? Weed. Really bad, all-stem weed. Because how else will you alleviate this “reality is nothing but a collective hunch,” as one council member quotes Lily Tomlin.
The Last of Us: a coming of age story
By no stretch of the imagination is having a teenage daughter an original or world-shifting experience, Gail stresses to Joel. This lends some humour to how awkwardly he navigates this. In essence, season two charts a classic coming-of-age tale. Now in her late teens, Ellie is having young adult feelings: a blossoming romance with Dina, and as their supermarket recon demonstrates, murderous urges.
As the young patrol team saddle up, we get some exposition on the years between season one and two. Ellie had a brief situationship (I wonder if this term exists in the Last of Us world) with Kat, another member of the patrol squad, and Dina was previously in an on-again-off-again relationship with Jesse. Even a zombie apocalypse can’t stop young love.
Even as their own relationship blooms, Dina and Ellie are of the ride-or-die variety. If they make it official, Joel is already on board with Dina, admitting to Gail that she seems more like his daughter than Ellie. As they take each other to the New Year’s Eve dance, one bigot gets in the way, instantly squashed by Joel before Ellie can get a word in. Even in her teenage outburst, it’s comical how mystified he looks to Ellie’s desire for independence.
Ellie discovers a Stalker
One of my main qualms with The Walking Dead was how long it dragged on before the Walkers developed some sort of evolutionary traits. We get this in season two of The Last of Us when Ellie encounters a ‘Stalker’ at the supermarket. Characteristically, Stalkers show some intelligence when closing in on a victim. The one Ellie encounters spotted her from across the supermarket, stealthily prowling at a distance and even running away as Ellie taunts it. It’s “smart” she tells the council when she and Dina make it back to Jackson. Headed up by Joel’s brother and sister-in-law, the council adjourns early – it’s four hours to 2029.
As the festivities go on, we get confirmation of the two challenges Joel and Ellie will face. On the human front, Abby and her crew are zeroing in on Jackson, clad in their tactical gear, their faces worn with travel. And on the Infected front, the fungus tendrils have made their way into the town’s pipes and sewage. With season two underway, this may be the end of Jackson, Wyoming.
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