“Would it have made a difference if my family had hurt his people first? No. No. And if I hadn’t killed him, if he had gotten away, I promise you I would have hunted him down forever.”
(SPOILER WARNING!)
Feel Her Love, eh? Fnarr, fnarr 😊
Actually, though, the ep title really is a double entendre, albeit not in a smutty, Carry On film kind of way. Yes, there’s the literal motto of the Seraphites (or “scars”, as the WLF disparagingly refer to them). But it’s also, presumably, a reference to the burgeoning love affair between Ellie and Dina; which, having been properly established last week, is already in jeopardy with the unexpected return of old flame (and father to her baby) Jesse.
In a leaner (and shorter) episode than of late, the theme of an unbreakable cycle of violence was explicitly to the fore here. It’s at the core of Ellie’s quest for revenge against Abby, whose own quest for revenge was what sparked that. Here that was unsubtly hammered home again by the exchanges between Ellie and Nora in the hospital, as Nora told Ellie what Joel had done to earn Abby’s wrath – only for her (and us) to find out that Ellie already knew. And she doesn’t care.
Those were powerful scenes, and it seems a shame to lose Tati Gabrielle as Nora so soon. But it did give director Stephen Williams the chance to show Ellie’s brutal beating of Nora as a mirror to Abby’s brutal beating of Joel in ep2. We also heard some more about the conflict between the Wolves and the Seraphites, with one Wolf referring to the possibility of going to war “again”. Plainly, this is a long running conflict, with each side having claimed different areas of Seattle – sound familiar? To counterpoint the Seraphite massacre of the Wolves last time, this time we saw the reverse, a group of Seraphites having been mercilessly gunned down below a mural of their Prophet, then left to rot in the sun (it’s surprisingly unrainy in this version of Seattle).
But in case you still hadn’t got the point about the neverending cycle of revenge, Dina spelled it out quite plainly with her charming childhood anecdote about shooting the man who murdered her family. She wouldn’t have cared if they’d done something to provoke him first; she’d have gone after him regardless. Subtle it was not, but right now perhaps it’s something we all need to hear.
Aside from the hammered-home themes, though, this was one of the more action-packed eps of late (though not surpassing the Infected attack on Jackson in ep2). It was also the one that, in this season at least, most clearly demonstrated the show’s genesis as a video game, as Our Heroes repeatedly stumbled from frying pan to fire in a series of well-executed action sequences. So, we got the not entirely unexpected attack of the “smart” Infected in that “haunted but empty” factory; followed in short order by a chase with the Wolves leading to the Seraphite-dominated park, from which Ellie escaped only to charge headlong into danger again at the hospital.
These were thrilling action sequences that nevertheless advanced the plot as they went. So, we learnt that Seattle still has a big Infected problem from the factory, while the park sequence helped spell out the Seraphites’ methods and motives. Then, at the hospital, Ellie learnt that bites weren’t the only way Infection could spread, as fungal spores drifted lazily in her torchlight.
More than ever, these scenes cemented the fact that, deep characterisation aside, this is a horror show you’re watching. The Seraphite priest’s disembowelling of that helpless captive was brutal and medieval; while the fungal growth all over the walls in the B2 hospital level, with embedded victims, was obviously a nod to similar scenes in Aliens.
The revelation that the cordyceps fungus can now be spread via airborne spores significantly ups the stakes when it comes to dealing with the Infected. For gamers, I gather this won’t have been a surprise; this is how it’s always been shown to spread in the games. Perhaps the showrunners wanted to make the Infected more like conventional zombies, or perhaps they were saving it for a suitably dramatic point.
For myself, it came as no major surprise, because this is generally how fungus reproduces in the real world. Even the real cordyceps fungus, once it’s burst out of the head of the ant it’s been controlling, ejects spores into the atmosphere to start the cycle again. So, chillingly real – though perhaps not as chilling as the fact that you can now buy officially branded Last of Us coffee, flavoured with actual cordyceps 😊
Even amidst all this breathless action, though, there was still time for some affecting character moments. As previously mentioned, Seattle is perhaps best known (apart from its coffee) for its music, and Ellie is a real music lover. So it felt highly appropriate when Bella Ramsey took to the stage of that abandoned theatre to play Seattle legends Pearl Jam’s ‘Future Days’, which I gather features heavily in the game too. (How she knows a song from 2013 when the Last of Us world ended in 2003 was not explained).
It did provide another bonding moment for Ellie and Dina, but the events of the ep look like throwing a spanner into the works of their budding relationship, with the unexpected return of Jesse. I’d assumed we’d be seeing him again at some point – Young Mazino is very much a rising star, so it would have been weird for him not to have featured again. And it’s true that, despite Ellie’s protestations, she and Dina would have been toast in that factory if he hadn’t turned up to rescue them.
Nonetheless, you have to wonder how Jackson will function in the absence of both him and Tommy (who we haven’t seen yet). Perhaps that will be a future plot point, but it also reinforces how much both these girls mean to him. So there’s obviously going to be an interesting love triangle going forward – when the three of them are finally reunited, that is.
Speaking of returning stars, again I wasn’t entirely surprised to see Pedro Pascal reappear as Joel, in what appears to be a flashback. The show’s done flashbacks before, and Pascal is the biggest name involved, so I was rather expecting this. It was, though, an odd place to end the episode, cutting to black from Ellie’s assault on Nora to her waking up in happier times with Joel, then to the credits. Usually, the episodes end on some form of cliffhanger – perhaps the showrunners are banking on Pedro Pascal’s reappearance to drag the viewer back next week.
Despite a shorter running time than usual (44 minutes as opposed to the usual hour or so), this was a very intense episode that packed a lot of plot and subtext in with its action. Jeffrey Wright was nowhere to be seen this week, but I think we can be fairly certain that a confrontation between Isaac and Ellie is on the cards soon. Our Heroes have been split up, in a tried and tested gambit to maximise the story’s jeopardy by putting them in different forms of peril. And with the Wolves/Seraphites war beginning to dominate the action alongside Ellie’s quest for revenge, it feels like the plot proper is really starting to move.
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