Review 748: The Last of Us (Season 2)
Set five years after the events of Season 1. Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie's (Bella Ramsey) collective past catches up to them, driving them into conflict with each other and a world even more dangerous and unpredictable than the one they left behind.
A lot of it has to do with the fact that showrunners Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin have opted to split the games narrative over two seasons. This can be a double edged sword because when done right you get adaptations like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and Denis Villeneuve's two recent Dune adaptations or how David Benioff and D. B. Weiss split A Storm of Swords, the third book in George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire over Seasons 3 & 4. In all of these cases, it felt the filmmakers and showrunners actually needed the extra time to flesh out the material and character beats. This is definitely not the case with The Last of Us (Season 2) where the results are a flawed group of episodes that never mesh together as a satisfying whole.
Much like the game, The Last of Us is about Obsession, Anguish, Mercy and the Cycle of Revenge, not all of them recieve fufilling explanations or resolutions and I'm not sure what you'd get if you stripped away all that rich post-appocalyptic world building.
The season kicks off with a bang with the premiere episode "Future Days" Showrunner Craig Mazin directed the hell out that episode with beautiful wide shots that showcase the Wyoming landscapes, close ups on the characters faces and an ending New Year's Eve which makes excellent use of hand-held cameras and shot to match the game.
Looking back, the season was pretty good, even spectacular, on a week to week basis. But when bought together as a whole The season felt very "stop and start" at times, one minute there would be an action packed emotional hammer like Ep. 2: Through the Valley and then we get a whole episode dedicated to character development like Taken as a whole, This season has felt, clunky, disjointed and above all compromised. It's frustrating in how stunning many elements of the production are which are, unfortunately, let down by some head scratching creative choices.
Much like its game counterpart, Season 1 ended with Joel shooting up a hospital full of unethical doctors and Fireflies to save Ellie whom they are willing to sacrifice to make a Joel lies to It was an ending that probably deserved to be just that, the end of Joel and Ellie’s story and considering where the second game leads to, there’s a part of me that wishes that it had been.
Joel is starting to sense that deep down that the problem that exists between him and Ellie stems from the lie he told her at the end of the first game. You can't commit acts of violence and walk away and that be the end of your story. The repercussions create more of them. It's as if, like the game, the show is faming as though this was a bad thing for Joel to do. But the thing is that Joel wasn't wrong. Those Fireflies decided to throw their entire code of ethics and morals and sacrifice a young girl on the off chance that they could develop a cure. Joel did what any parent would do and saved his surrogate daughter. The world The Last of Us takes place in is damaged beyond repair.
Once again Craig Mazin leads an exceptionally talented directing team with Mark Mylod (Succession, Game of Thrones), Peter Hoar (returning from the first season), Kate Herron (Sex Education, Loki), Stephen Williams (Lost, Person of Interest & Westworld), Neil Druckmann and Nina Lopez-Corrado (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) tackling these episodes.
There's a huge battle between the townsfolk of Jackson and the infected that matches the spectacle of the battles on Game of Thrones, particularly Castle Black and Hardhome come to mind. From the start of the episode, there's the hint of an approaching storm, both in terms of wether and the infected. The episode also features an emotional gut punch in the form of Joel’s death. I’m unsure whether this show can survive without one half of its leads.
It’s this lack of Joel and Ellie that keeps Season 2 from reaching the spectacular heights of the first. I wondered whether the show could survive without 1 half of its core duo after Ep. 2. Having seen the full season, I can safely say those worries were justified.
An unfortunate consequence of Ellie and Dina's little road trip is the pacing is a pronounced lack of urgency in the season. I never got a sense of urgency from the story or that they cared about what was happening and that what they were doing was all that important to Ellie outside of the plot saying it was.
The penultimate episode "The Price" is an all flashback episode focussing on Joel & Ellie through their years in Jackson Wyoming as they celebrate Ellie's various birthdays and she grows increasingly suspicious of his lie from the end of Season 1. In a Season which focuses on the endless cycles of violence and revenge, it's so lovely to see a mostly standalone episode that focuses on the more tender moments between this and character while also giving Pedro Pascal one more chance to shine as Joel. His presence serves as a reminder of what Ellie and the show have lost. What this episode shows is that there isn’t anything better than creating happiness for somebody that you love. In no exaggerated way, there’s nothing more important to Joel than Ellie’s happiness and he demonstrates how much he knows her. He knows the things that she loves the most and he gives it to her in the best way one could in this world and for a moment in time, they’re both happy and they both love each other and it’s probably the happiest we’ll ever see them. Much like the game, whenever the show focuses on Joel and Ellie, that’s when it shines most.
Once again, the show is Visually gorgeous looking, you can tell this show is made by people who love and respect the games through and through. The cinematography is fantastic, featuring some a scene in episode two where Abby crawls under a fence that's being crushed by the horde is claustrophobic and intensely shot. The scene where Joel and Ellie visit an abandoned museum so he can show her the Apollo 15 command module has some beautifully warm lighting
Ellie has matured a lot from Season 1. Then she was very much a kid who relied on Joel for everything, trusted him with every part of her and now that she's gone through her teen years, she's establishing a sense of who she is. The once solid bond of trust between her and Joel is being tested and now she's starting to question everything again. Ellie is in pain throughout this season following the death of Joel. Being able to effectively weave between teenage Pugnacity and goofy sass and vengeance fuelled rage and Her being around Dina allows her to be
Pedro Pascal’s Joel has a much smaller role, but he’s as good as he was in the first season bringing the charisma and that made him such an engaging presence in the first season. Joel is struggling in his relationship with Ellie. The porchside conversation between him and Ellie in Ep. 6 which is the last shot of the game is It’s clear that he’s terrified of losing Ellie
A very welcome newcomer is Dina (Isabel Merced), a resident of Jackson and Ellie's love interest. Dina is a freewheeling spirit with an unwielding loyalty to Ellie
The most prominent newcomer of the show is Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), What's fascinating about Abby is that she isn't a villain. She's an anti-hero and a force of nature. She's dirven by a desire for revenge and while her actions are brutal, they're motivated by personal grief and loss. She will not be stopped. In any other story, we might be on Abby’s side, but here it is a completely
Joining Abby on her quest for vengeance are Owen (Spencer Lord), Nora (Tati Gabrielle from Netflix's You and The 100), Mel (How to Blow Up a Pipeline's Ariela Barer) and Manny (Danny Ramirez) who although capable and interesting are largely interchangeable.
One fantastic addition to the show Isaac Dixon (Jeffrey Wright) reprising his role from the game. Isaac remembers what the world was like before. He was the leader of the W.L.F from his point of view, he didn't betray FEDRA, FEDRA betrayed him in terms of eithics, commitment to citizenry and so he took steps to reinvent himself maybe at the expense of others. The opening of Episode 4: Day One acts as kind of an origin story for this larger than life character, who he was, where his morals lay but when we see him again in the present, he's but a shell of his former self; the W.L.F are almost as bad as FEDRA He has a lot of power.
One guest star that I did not expect to see pop up in this season was Tony Dalton from Better Call Saul and Marvel’s Hawkeye as Javier Miller, Joel and Tommy’s father, a character who was not in the game. Joel is protector, it’s his job he’s had since he was a kid protecting Tommy from their abusive father. Dalton played the older Miller with a great mixture of warmth and hardness. The struggle of generational fatherhood to be better than him has driven Joel ever since.
Ending the season on a phoney cliffhanger, while the shift towards Abby's perspective is certainly enticing, I hate how we might potentially have to wait another two years before getting any kind of resolution considering the long production time between seasons and seasons of modern television in general. I'm also not sure if I (or indeed viewers wether you're a game player or not) are all that interested in actually spending a whole season or maybe a half season (whatever form Season 3 will take) with Abby and her supporting cast? I've enjoyed Kaitlyn Dever's portrayal of Abby throughout this season but at this point I don't how much I care to see her perspective on the events considering how hamfisted her storyline is in the game and the attempts to make the player like her after killing Joel are or this conflict between her and Ellie which really isn't all that compelling which makes me all the more worried for Season 3 because I think that'll fall flat unless there's some big escalation between them which considering how the game plays out is highly unlikely.
I honestly believe that it's going to be all downhill from here. 3.5/5.
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