Videogame adaptations have not, historically, had the best critical reputations; and zombie apocalypse stories are a bit played out. This is what was working against “The Last of Us” when HBO debuted Season 1 in 2023. A series based on a game, set in a postapocalyptic landscape populated by ferocious monsters? Did we need another show like this, given that we already have something like seven iterations of the “Walking Dead”?
Apparently so, given the level of acclaim and popularity the first “The Last of Us” season enjoyed. Craig Mazin, working with the game’s creator, Neil Druckmann, reimagined and reinvigorated an exhausted action-horror subgenre, making it work for television by taking advantage of what the medium allows. They broke their sweeping, epic story into gripping individual episodes, filled with small but potent moments of tension and tragedy.
It helped also that “The Last of Us” has such appealing lead characters: the gruff mercenary Joel (Pedro Pascal) and the foul-mouthed teenager Ellie (Bella Ramsey), who travel together across a country populated by murderous gangs and rapacious creatures. Viewers very quickly became invested in these two, pulling for them not only to survive but also to make the most of whatever time they might have left on Earth.
It has been over two years since the Season 1 finale aired, so some fans might need a refresher on what Joel and Ellie went through and where they are now. So before Season 2 debuts on Sunday, here is what you need to know.
So there are these mushrooms …
Some say the world will end in fire; some say ice. In “The Last of Us,” we fear the fungus. The story starts with an explanation of the fungi cordyceps, a parasitic genus that in the real world can infect insects, effectively seizing control of their brains. In the TV series, these parasites begin infecting humans in 2003 (perhaps through tainted flour). In a matter of days, the whole planet is overrun with mindless killing machines who can infect other humans with their bite.
Most of Season 1 is set in 2023, after many of the noninfected have been clustered into scattered, isolated enclaves, each with its own rudimentary government and social structure. In the decades since the cordyceps plague started, the infected have gone through changes, evolving new powers and becoming stronger, while guided by an interconnected fungal root structure. The best way for humans to survive has been to seal themselves off as best as possible from the rampaging hordes.
But as the humans have tried to rebuild and repopulate, they have remained haunted by the rash choices made during the initial pandemic frenzy. Infections began taking hold on a Thursday. By the following Monday, society had collapsed, as people were either herded into quarantine zones or slaughtered by the military. Some bitterness lingers.
A man and a mission
We first meet Joel in 2003 in Austin, Texas, living with his daughter, Sarah (Nico Parker). In the series’s first episode, a seemingly ordinary day quickly and unexpectedly turns into a panicked race for survival, during which a soldier shoots and kills Sarah. The experience hardens Joel, who along with his brother, Tommy (Gabriel Luna), spends years on the road, scavenging and killing.
Tommy eventually settles in Wyoming while Joel and his partner, Tess (Anna Torv), end up in the Boston quarantine zone, where Joel works with the authoritarian federal agency FEDRA while running an illegal side business as a smuggler with Tess. Joel and Tess attempt to leave Boston early in Season 1, agreeing to deliver the mysteriously valuable Ellie to an anti-FEDRA organization known as the Fireflies, in exchange for a functioning vehicle. But after a horde of the infected destroy the couple’s Firefly contacts — and bite Tess — Joel finds himself stuck taking care of this sassy 14-year-old all by himself.
Ellie’s story
What is so special about Ellie? As far as the Fireflies know (and as far as we know), she is the only human on Earth unaffected by cordyceps. The reason is unclear. It is possible that because her mother gave birth to her while under attack by the infected, Ellie has a tiny bit of infected blood in her — just enough to work like a vaccine. Joel’s plan in Season 1 is to take Ellie to a Firefly encampment out west, where there are doctors and scientists who might use her blood to develop a cure.
Ellie is a typical teen: cocky and defiant at times, painfully self-conscious at others. She crushes on girls, and she is a devoted fan of the few pieces of pre-plague popular culture she has encountered — in particular, the video game “Mortal Kombat II,” the comic book series “Savage Starlight” and Will Livingston’s “No Pun Intended” joke books. She annoys Joel at first, but much of Season 1 is about the bond that forms between them. Joel is initially reluctant to get close to a child who reminds him so much of his own dead daughter; but he eventually becomes Ellie’s fiercest protector and a surrogate father.
But we digress …
Dramas about societal collapse are often bleak, and “The Last of Us,” quite often, is no exception. But the way this series is structured allows for smaller moments of warmth and triumph, which — coupled with Ellie’s sense of humor and Joel’s derring-do — make the show as entertaining as it is harrowing. Season 1 was filled with short-term objectives and side stories. In nearly every episode, something in the story resolved, helping to give the larger plot a sense of purpose. “The Last of Us,” so far, has not been a slow, repetitive march toward oblivion.
It may be hard for Season 2 live up to the Emmy-winning Season 1 episodes “Long, Long Time” (which covered the romance between one gay couple as they made a cozy life for themselves amid catastrophe) and “Left Behind” (which looked back at Ellie’s first date, at an abandoned Boston shopping mall). But fans should expect this show to keep taking little detours and to keep telling compact, moving mini-stories.
And that is good, because …
No happily ever after
Season 1 established that “The Last of Us” is not an “everything is going to be OK” kind of show. Likable characters die. Seemingly good situations turn bad. Even Joel’s mission to deliver Ellie to the Fireflies goes awry.
After surviving a bloody uprising in Kansas City and Christian cannibals in Colorado, Joel and Ellie find their way to Salt Lake City, where the Fireflies capture Ellie and incapacitate Joel. When he awakes, Joel realizes that the Fireflies’ research into a cordyceps cure requires killing Ellie. Unwilling to let her go, he slaughters Fireflies by the score before carrying an unconscious Ellie away. Later, he lies to her, saying the Fireflies realized a cure was impossible.
This ending — equal parts stirring and sad — pushes the audiences to think about what it really wants. Is the eradication of cordyceps the goal? Or do we just want to see a happy Ellie and Joel? These questions will continue to haunt Season 2.
What now?
Season 2 begins five years after the Season 1 finale and has Joel and Ellie living comfortably in Jackson, Wyo., where Tommy and a band of survivors have forged a thriving colony. But trouble is brewing. The Fireflies want revenge against Joel, and Ellie seems to have lost faith in him too.
Fans of the video games know that its story takes some hard and shocking turns. Mazin and Druckmann have said that the TV series will follow its own path, but that does not mean they will make things easier for Joel and Ellie. Easy is not really what this show is about. Even the heartwarming “Long, Long Time” and “Left Behind” are suffused with sorrow and loss.
But those painful moments tend to be balanced by scenes in which the survivors enjoy a fresh strawberry, or a nervous kiss. As the teenage Firefly Riley (Storm Reid) told Ellie in “Left Behind,” the living need to savor every second of their human existence, “whether it’s two minutes or two days.” That idea, too, is central to this show, and it is something viewers may want to keep in mind whenever Season 2 inevitably turns dark.
