Fireflies – Simon’s Incoherent Blog

The Last of Us: Season 2, Episode 2 – Through the Valley

“This is bullshit, right? It’s just a drill.”
“Yeah. It’s a drill.”
“Unless we’re attacked, and then it’s not.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

Whoa.

Well, if you were disappointed by the low key, character-focused opener of The Last of Us season 2, this episode will have more than made up for that. All the spectacle, action and drama you could hope for was here in spades, along with some jaw-dropping plot developments. It’s just that, typically for this show, that first episode was necessary to establish the stakes before throwing us headlong into the carnage.

The Last of Us: Season 2, Episode 1 – Future Days

“This is where we live. And what’s that?”
“The fence!”
“And what’s inside?”
“People!”
“And what’s outside?”
“Monsters!”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

It’s a typically slow-burn start for the sophomore season of video game adaptation The Last of Us, a show whose first season I very much enjoyed despite never having played any of the games. As before, the most obvious comparison is to the seemingly never-ending The Walking Dead, and as before, The Last of Us is a far more thoughtful show. Both have very strong characterisation, but while TWD’s season openers typically included a spectacular horde of zombies, this dispensed with spectacle to build on the characters and relationships that were so strong last time.

The Last of Us: season 1, episode 9 – Look for the Light

“You can’t keep her safe forever. No matter how hard you try, no matter how many people you kill, she’s gonna grow up, Joel.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

Season finales, especially in big budget genre shows, tend to be things of spectacle, with all the budget thrown at the screen to keep the audience on tenterhooks for the next year. In a Walking Dead season finale, you could pretty much guarantee hordes of zombies invading the heroes’ sanctuary, with action, explosions and headshots aplenty.

The Last of Us: season 1, episode 7 – Left Behind

“It ends this way sooner or later for everyone, right? Some of us just get there faster than others. But we don’t quit.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

This week’s ep is another example of what sets The Last of Us apart from other post-apocalyptic dramas – it’s not an action piece driven by plot, but a character piece that happens to be set after the end of the world. Hearkening back to the heights of ep3, Left Behind is another virtual two-hander, featuring basically only two characters. But unlike the heartrending story of Bill and Frank, this tale unfolds not over twenty years but the course of a single night – a night that changed Ellie’s life in more ways than one.

The Last of Us: season 1, episode 6 – Kin

“Be careful who you put your faith in. The only people who can betray us, are the ones we trust.”

(SPOILER WARNING!)

After last week’s sturm und drang of action and emotion, it’s a much quieter ep for The Last of Us this week. As the title suggests, it’s all about family – both blood and adoptive. We’ve seen Joel and Ellie’s relationship thawing into something like an ersatz father-daughter relationship throughout, and this ep brings that front and centre as both are forced to confront how they feel about each other. Without an Infected anywhere in sight, which might displease some of the game fans watching.