This story contains many spoilers to “The Last of Us” Season 2Episode 6.
The infected have learned to stalk and run. The cordyceps fungus is now in the air. And Joel (Pedro Pascal) is not immortal. The first five episodes of “The Last of Us” offered several new threats and at least an important death. In depth in his second season, the adaptation of the HBO series of the popular video game remains faithful to his homonym by sending his protagonist Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and his companion Dina (Isabela Merced) in a mission of revenge since his fortified complex in Wyoming to The Wilds of Seattle. His goal is to find Joel's murderer, Abby (Kaitlyn Dever). But the northwest of the Pacific presents challenges beyond cauliflower meat dining rooms and mortal bad girls. The brutal conflict between the Washington Liberation Front and the primitive religious worship of the Serafitos makes Ellie's mission even more dangerous and complex, and the images of the program are more horrible.
Episode 6 brought Joel of the dead in a series of flashbacks who gave an idea of their unique breeding skills, revealed the event that triggered the crack between Joel and Ellie and discovers what happened with the husband of the Gail therapist (Catherine O'Hara), Eugene (Joe Pantoliano). While I was in Patrol, Eugene was bitten by the infected. Ellie made Joel promise that she would not kill Eugene until she had the opportunity to say goodbye to her wife. But when Ellie goes for a moment to recover her horses, Joel breaks the promise.
Like episode 3 of season 1, the delivery of the Sunday series was the rare episode that deviated from the narrative of the game to tell a deeper story about the characters. Starting in Ellie's 15th birthday and moving through the later ones, the episode related the changing dynamics in the father-daughter relationship of the main characters, from a strict link between orphan and its adoptive protector until almost the departure.
Lorraine Ali, Tracy Brown and Mary Mcnamara gathered to discuss the last episode of the thriller full of spores.
The tension source between Gail (Catherine O'Hara) and Joel (Pedro Pascal) is revealed in episode 6.
(Liane Hentscher / HBO)
ALI: “The Last of Us” presents things similar to zombies and mortality cults, but I love that the real terror in the heart of season 2 is the possibility of raising a teenager. The issue in the core of episode 6 focused greatly on the tense dynamics of the father-dash between Joel and Ellie and the dangers of transmitting generational trauma. We even get a background history in Joel's difficult childhood, although I would like to have more in that front.
What we have a lot More of Ellie's hostility towards Joel, and is exhausting so that the showrunners probably never pretended. Naturally, there is a lot of anger in Ellie as he rushes towards adulthood in a desperate infernal landscape with a murderer/guardian who lied repeatedly. But now that she is the main character of the series, I need more than Ellie than only one or two gears of anger and contempt, especially given the complexity of her relationship.
Joel killed to save her and condemned humanity in the process! A bond forged in such a tragedy should inspire a lot of emotions, even in a challenging teenager who is still clumsy in expressing his feelings. But that depth or nuances simply was not there for me, even when the series asked us for such moments. The flashbacks of Ellie's birthday celebrations with Joel felt as explaining how the two separated instead of emotional snapshots that captured the roots of their departure. Has the surprising depth and beauty of season 1 spoiled me? I miss the terror and joy of that abandoned shopping center.
Brown: It is interesting that you mention the abandoned shopping center, Lorraine, because I think that is what everything returns to Ellie. I do not know if it is because I have spent many hours playing as Ellie in the “The Last of Us” games, or because I understand what it is to be an anguished teenager much more than being a father, but I thought that episode 6 helped shed some light on the behaviors and dynamics of Ellie and Joel.
In episode 4, while trying to explain his immunity to the fungus of cordyceps to Dina, Ellie mentions that there are many times that he would not be immune. In this last episode, we learned that one of the reasons why Ellie is angry with Joel is because she lied about what happened in Salt Lake City with the firefly. But she is also angry with him because he took away the only thing he thought could give him his life and immunity. “My life would have imported, but you took me away,” he tells him on his porch, in what seems to have been his last conversation.
We know that Joel has been molded because of not being able to save his daughter Sarah at the beginning of the outbreak. For Ellie, I think the loss that has affected her is Riley and the fault of surviving her trip to that abandoned shopping center. If it weren't immune, Ellie would have died that day with her best friend and her first love. As he did not, he needed something to help justify why he is still alive. What greater meaning could someone find for his life in a world devastated by a pandemic to be the reason why humanity can find a cure?
McNamara: I am grateful for the episode, even if only because I gave my own adolescents what they wanted most: more Pedro Pascal. (I miss him too but with much less passion). But as you say, Tracy, Survivor's fault is real and now Ellie is looking at another emotional burden: Joel was killed by actions she took to save her life.
Review Ellie's birthdays was very moving, joining the changes in both characters. How the Vanguardian Joel of season 1 became the gently distressed therapy patient of season 2. Why Ellie was so rude and derogatory with him. She knew all the time he had lied about Salt Lake City, and suspected that she knew: gifts, especially the trip to the Museum of Natural Science and History, seemed equally motivated by love and penance.
In one of Ellie's birthday, Joel takes her to a museum of natural science and history.
(Liane Hentscher / HBO)
I also loved his time in the spatial part of the museum because he stressed the whims of human history; This is not the first advanced civilization to fall, leaving behind the ruins. Joel remembers when humans traveled to the stars (and had the resources to build museums); For Ellie, a Wyoming to Seattle trip is equally tense. They were always essentially travelers in time in the lives of others.
But the most important thing for me, this episode solved how Ellie had left him with Joel before Abby ruined everything. The truth was finally talked about, both Joel and Ellie. I didn't think I could forgive him, but he wanted to try. That they removed it before she could find her way to forgiveness, she must certainly promote some of the anger, right?
ALI: Ok, I officially feel hard, especially because we are discussing an episode designed to plome the emotions of the characters and spectators. I am glad that season 2 connects with you two, and millions more of HBO and Max subscribers. Or is HBO Max? Or Old Old HBO? Anyway, this series of the series does not resonate with my adult, in the raising of the children or my adolescent Hullen inner, that is, the part of my being that guides many of my precipitated decisions and dictates my baggy posture. That said, I love chemistry between Ellie and Dina. His love and his fierce loyalty to each other is a culminating point of season 2. And it seems that they will now be parents.
Brown: As Ellie says, she will be dad! The way in which Ellie and Dina's relationship was developed during the season has been one of my favorite differences between the program and the game. But speaking of the game, the birthday trip to the museum and the conversation of the porch where Ellie tells Joel that he wants to forgive him that Mary mentioned are great moments of flashback adapted directly from “The Last of Us Part II” with some minor changes. In the game, Ellie and Joel spend time reviewing a dinosaur exhibition before reaching the space exploration exhibition, which I admit that I am a bit sad that we could not see. And Ellie confronts Joel about the truth of what happened in Salt Lake is a separated time long before the porch conversation in the game.
Joel shoots Eugene (Joe Pantoliano) after being bitten, breaking his promise of Ellie to let him live to say goodbye to his wife, Gail. It is a change of the video game, where the character dies of natural causes.
(Liane Hentscher / HBO)
A big difference between “The Last of Us Part II” and the program is the story that involves Eugene and Gail. The Eugene in the game was a Jackson resident who lived his life until he died of natural causes in his 70 years, which is something that the youngest generation can only dream. Gail, on the other hand, is an original character, and my response to his introduction was mainly “Horay Catherine O'Hara, Horay Therapy”. Catherine O'Hara is always a delight and it is clear that all those who live in the world of “The Last of Us” could use some therapy. But in episode 6 we see that the story of Eugene and Gail also serves as a point of inflammation in the strangulation of Joel and Ellie.
We already knew that Joel had killed Eugene from his Gail therapy session at the beginning of the season, but what did you think about all that sequence, Mary? Did your understanding of Joel or Ellie affected in some way?
McNamara: Well, I have to say that it was an example of bad parenting. The patrol has rules, hard but necessary for community safety. Ellie (who is, hello, damn immune) I wanted to fold them. He faces classical parents/children. But instead of just saying “no” to her and “any last word?” For Eugene before shooting him, Joel allowed him to believe that he was going out with his, which was simply dumb. Of course I was going to shoot Eugene; He had to shoot Eugene. But, honestly, it made no sense to lie about that, especially when the lie would be exposed almost instantly. Sometimes, a father just has to be the bad, even if that means making Catherine O'Hara really angry with you.
And although I agree with you on the energy of Ellie and Dina that offer love instead of revenge during your excursion to Seattle, I would like writers to have discovered a way to bring O'Hara.
