I will have such revenges on you both,
That all the world shall–I will do such things,–
What they are, yet I know not: but they shall be
The terrors of the earth.
~King Lear
The Last Of Us just dropped one of the most gruesome, devastating episodes of TV I’ve seen in a very long time, and even though I knew it was coming, this was not an easy watch. Not since that Negan baseball bat scene in The Walking Dead have we witnessed such a stomach-churning act of brutality on the small screen. Frankly, I could have done without. Spoilers ahead.
I’ll hand it to HBO and showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann: They were pretty faithful to the video game this episode. I was reminded, in no small way, of the feelings I experienced the first time I watched Abby kill Joel when The Last Of Us Part II first dropped. It’s different watching it play out in a TV show than a game, though both were profound moments of horrific violence and loss.
The loss of life, for one thing. The loss of a great character in Joel. And the loss of something else, perhaps even worse: My reason to care about this story. I know I’m not alone among gamers when I say this. For many of us, the brutal and shocking and premature death of Joel was a dealbreaker. The fact that the game asked us to then empathize with Abby, whose vengeful slaughter is so utterly devoid of anything like humanity, irked me even more.
And I have not changed my feelings on this in the intervening years. Nor has the show given me any reason to have a change of heart. Abby is cruel and violent and petty. She’s a monster, far more than Joel ever was. More than the hulking beast that breaks through Jackson Hole’s defenses down below (in a battle scene which we’ll get to in a minute). She is wholly and utterly irredeemable. I played to the very end of The Last Of Us Part II and never changed my mind on that front. The show does a very, very good job reminding me why.
Kaitlyn Dever does a fantastic job bringing this monster to life. As I watched her run from the horde of Cordyceps, as they smashed themselves against the chainlink fence and crawled after her, I thought to myself: If only one had bitten her right then. If only she’d been devoured before Joel ever showed up to save her life. I mean, what kind of monster is rescued by a man and then lures him to his death under false pretenses?
Maybe it’s just the way this story is written that bothers me so much. The doctor Joel killed was just a faceless nobody in both the first season and the first game. He was about to take the life of an innocent fourteen-year-old. I have no sympathy for this man. I do have sympathy for his daughter, before she makes it her life’s work to exact revenge on a man who she never even bothers to ask “Why?”
There’s a certain bitter irony watching Ellie, now 19, beg for Joel’s life. That’s how old she was when her dad was killed by Joel. Of course, Joel just put a bullet through his brain and he did it to save his adoptive daughter. Abby takes her time. She shoots him in the knee with a shotgun, then orders one of her lackeys to fasten a tourniquet so he won’t bleed out. She beats Joel with a golfclub and then with her fists. By the time Elly shows up, his face is a bloody, bruised mess. Abby’s friends are nervous, even disgusted at this point, horrified at her capacity for violence. Well, they haven’t seen the half of it, and they certainly haven’t seen the last of Ellie.
I wish I could take more pleasure in the revenge story that follows. “You’re all dead!” Ellie screams at them, sobbing on the floor, as Abby sticks the broken golf club through Joel’s neck. Well that’s the price you pay for vengeance. That’s the story now. That’s what’s coming. Revenge is a curse for all involved. Joel took the easy way out.
I knew it was coming, just like I knew about Ned Stark and the Red Wedding and the Viper vs the Mountain, but none of these are easy to watch unfold, even when you know what’s coming. The difference is that those were stories I enjoyed, no matter how hard they were, but this one . . . this one is just ugly. It’s just ugly and then more ugly and not a shred of joy or relief or love. All of those things are just memories now.
I did not like this story when I played it in the video game and I do not like it now, however well the show admittedly did at adapting the source material. This was a great episode of TV, but I just don’t care anymore now that Joel is gone. Killing off a main character is precarious work. If you do it right, you propel the story forward. Ned Stark is a great example of a character whose death serves as a brilliant catalyst for all that follows. It’s the inciting event, in many ways, for all of Game Of Thrones. But this? This is just nihilism. The Last Of Us Part II is a masterpiece in many ways, an extraordinary technical achievement, but it’s just so bleak. I remember how much I hated it when it first came out, after loving the first game so much. Well, I suspect I will feel no differently about the rest of HBO’s adaptation. It didn’t have to be this way. But them’s the breaks.
The Battle Of Jackson Hole
Speaking of Game Of Thrones, the Cordyceps horde attacks Jackson Hole and overwhelms the town’s impressive defenses. It reminded me so much of the various battles in Game Of Thrones that I half-expected the Night King to appear, lift his arms and raise all the slaughtered survivors from the dead, their eyes glowing a pale, icy blue. If Jon Snow had rushed in to save Tommy from the Bloater.
This was certainly an epic and impressive battle, on a scale I really wasn’t expecting from this series. It was exciting, scary, well-choreographed and clearly very expensive to film. But some things that work in games just translate poorly to a “premium HBO show” like this. Bloaters are one of them. They must have put 100 rounds into the Bloater, plus a full tank of flamethrower juice, and it only just barely dies. What might work in a fantasy show, or a campy horror movie, comes off as weirdly goofy here. Out of place. It breaks down the wall like one of the giants from beyond the Wall and then stomps through town with intention, eventually chasing Tommy into a barricaded alley. I wasn’t really worried during this scene, because a far more horrifying act of violence was taking place up at Abby’s lodge. And because the Bloater is just such a cartoon monster compared to the larger horde, or the genuinely frightening clickers our heroes have encountered.
Overall, this was a great battle outside of the silly Bloater, and I wish I could say that I enjoyed it but I was distracted by feelings of hatred toward Abby, and my own thoughts. I wonder how they’ll try to make this work. Will they really try to make audiences empathize with Abby? After that? Are we really going to divide the rest of this season between Ellie and Abby and try to put them on the same moral terrain? I don’t think it’s going to work, both because Abby is so monstrous and depraved and because Ellie in this show is just not a strong enough character to carry this on her own. Without Joel. The first game and the first season worked because, as Ellie says this episode, “I’m me, and Joel is Joel, and nothing is going to ever change that.”
Well, nothing except the vanity of game directors, I suppose. But it’s always down to the writing, isn’t it? That’s the real killer.
Eugene’s Weed Station
I saved the least important bits for last. Joel and Dina are out on patrol and so are Ellie and Jesse. A big storm rolls in and everyone is called back, but it’s so cold and nasty out that Ellie and Jesse take shelter. Joel and Dina, well, they run into Abby. (A big change from the game is that Dina is the one who reveals Joel’s identity instead of Joel himself, which is a good change; the game kind of made him look like an idiot).
In any case, Ellie and Jesse hole up in an old gas station where Eugene used to grow weed. We learned Joel killed last week during the ridiculous therapy scene, and find out now was out of necessity because Eugene had been bitten. This is probably the last time we’ll see Ellie having fun or being happy or really having the opportunity to be genuinely carefree. She’s excited about the pot, about the gas mask with the bong attached to it. She’s still a little bit innocent, but not for long. Maybe in flashbacks, if they include those, we’ll get to glimpse this version of Ellie again.
Speaking of which, by and large I liked Ellie a lot more this week than last. She wasn’t as bratty or obnoxious, outside of a couple brief moments, and Bella Ramsey did a great job in that final scene, begging and pleading for Joel to get up, for Abby not to kill him. It was a heartbreaking moment and I think she did a really great job. Everyone did this episode. Pedro Pascal doesn’t have a lot of lines in the leadup to his death, but I absolutely cackled when he told Abby to just “STFU and get it over with” though she only responds by calling him a stupid old man and telling him he’s not allowed to rush this. Because, you know, he tortured her dad so she gets to torture him. Or, uh, something. Abby is genuinely one of the most abhorrent characters I’ve ever encountered. Just loathsome.
So that’s that. That’s what The Last Of Us is now. If you were hoping for more heartwarming stories of Joel and Ellie surviving a terrifying apocalypse, you’re out of luck. This is a revenge story. Abby got her revenge, now Ellie gets to take a crack at it, too. And Tommy was built up quite a bit this episode as a bonafide badass himself, which will certainly come into play. Because there’s no way he’s letting his brother’s death go anymore than Ellie.
This was a great episode and I hated it with a passion. I guess that’s how I felt about the game, too.
Read my review of last week’s episode here.
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