Forty three minutes. Television sometimes has the defect of wanting to produce superlative endings, as if increasing the duration, the number of visual effects and parallel plots were the only resource to convey the sensation of climax to the viewer. But, in the case of The Last of Us, writers and showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann only need forty-three minutes to wrap up the first season. A pending question is resolved, a new situation is presented, the tension is raised to maximum power and the main dramatic arc of the season is closed. Thumbs up.
The episode introduces Anna (Ashley Johnson), a pregnant woman who, precisely at the time of her delivery, is attacked by an infected person. It’s Ellie’s origin story: if she’s immune to mushroom-men bites, it’s because her mother was infected minutes before she cut the umbilical cord, inadvertently allowing her offspring to have resistance to the virus.
In addition to the fact that Ellie’s mother is played by Ellie from the video game, this presentation is a gift for lovers of television fiction. How many series would have preferred to leave mysteries like Ellie’s immunity or the cause of the pandemic in the air, especially in this post-Lost world in which we live? But Mazin and Druckmann prefer narrative honesty, revealing relevant information at the right time so that we can focus on the dramatic conflicts of the protagonists.
After Ellie (Bella Ramsey) saved his life and after surviving a threat as religious as it was cannibalistic, Joel (Pedro Pascal) finds himself at the Firefly science base in Salt Lake City. It was the objective of the strange couple: to find the scientists so they could study Ellie, the only human (known) immune to the bites of those infected by cordyceps. And when Joel wakes up, Ellie is already in the operating room for surgery.
The problem is that, as Marlene (Merle Dandridge) informs him, the man will never see his partner alive again. The fungus is present in Ellie’s brain and if they want to analyze her body, they must perform an operation that will kill her. Joel, furious, does not agree with the decision made by the Fireflies, who reason that the future of humanity is more important than the life of a single person.
The irony, moreover, is that Marlene argues to Joel that Ellie would possibly choose to sacrifice herself. And it is possible that she is right. But the truth is that she herself, who was supposed to protect her as she had promised her mother, did not inform the teenager of the risks of the operation. She did not want to risk the future of the organization with the patient’s right to choose.
After presenting Joel and the viewer with an impossible situation (the future of humanity or Ellie’s future), he decides to rescue Ellie. This involves murdering Marlene, the only doctor capable of running studies on Cordyceps, and anyone who gets in his way at the half-abandoned hospital. There is some interesting reading about Joel’s bloody mission, if the series is too direct compared to The last of us video game that makes things more complicated for the player, but it is deeply unsettling to see Joel taking the law into his own hands. He is lethal. At last you can see the Joel that both Tommy (Gabriel Luna) and Maria (Rutina Wesley) had talked about: a man willing to do anything to survive.
With this violent, vengeful, resolute and unforgiving drift of Joel, a perfectly executed dramatic arc for the adaptation of The last of us is finished: Joel’s conversion from lone wolf to adoptive father, episode by episode. Tess (Anna Torv) with her last words before her death made Joel open her heart a little to Ellie, from whom he wanted to distance himself from her because she reminded him of Sarah (Nico Parker), the deceased daughter of her
The episode focused on Bill (Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlett) spoke to us on a conceptual level of the need for human beings to connect even in the most adverse situations. Henry (Lamar Johnson), with his betrayal of the resistance to obtain treatment for his brother, showed the barbarities one can commit to save a loved one. And, while we could see that Joel and Ellie adopted increasingly close, more formative, more affectionate dynamics, the script clearly showed the extent to which they had strengthened the ties of a constructed family.
He did it in the episode in Jackson, when Ellie chose to risk it with Joel over losing the only person who had cared for her since Riley’s death (Storm Reid) to Joel’s silent satisfaction, and he did it again after the attack of the cannibals on Joel, when Ellie did everything in her power not to lose him. Now that she was the one on the line, Joel chose violence to save her.
It is a very stimulating outcome for this dramatic arc: The last of us worked throughout the season to convey a certain optimism and the traces of humanity in an environment devastated by a fungus and its mushroom-men. But, against all odds for those unfamiliar with the reference material, these links led to the most bleak outcome possible: seeing love as a trigger for a decent man to become a killing machine.
Also, it puts the relationship between Joel and Ellie on a very awkward plane. When she regains consciousness, she asks Joel what happened. He answers with lies: there are more guys like her and that’s why they were able to leave. Of course, she doubts, but he reaffirms his version. It is not clear to what extent Ellie believes him or prefers to believe him: what is clear is that this paternal-child love developed between them is now based on a falsehood.
And lies, in the world of television fiction, always end up coming to light. Will they be uncovered in the second season, already confirmed by HBO?
