The Last of Us (TV Program)

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    ‘The Last of Us’ Season 2, Episode 1: Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

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    It seems this season will be driven by one simple idea: that when Joel saved Ellie at the end of Season 1 and then lied to her, he made a mess.‘The Last of Us’ Season 2, Episode 1: ‘Future Days’“The Last of Us” began with a prologue that set up everything about to happen, in the episode and in the series. In a scene set in 1968, a scientist explained that his greatest fear was that a warming planet would provide the perfect incubating conditions for a mind-controlling fungus that could turn humans into brainless killers. There is obviously more to “The Last of Us” than just, “What if there were mushroom zombies?” But that idea put the plot in motion.The second season of “The Last of Us” begins with two prologues. In one, we meet Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), one of the surviving Fireflies from the Season 1 finale’s Salt Lake City massacre. Abby and her fellow resistance-fighters gather around their loved one’s graves to discuss a plan to retaliate against Joel Miller (Pedro Pascal), the man who slaughtered so many of their people. (“Slowly,” Abby says, when her allies say they will kill Joel.)In the other prologue, we flash back to the final scene from that finale, when Ellie (Bella Ramsey) made Joel swear that he took her away from the Fireflies because they had given up on finding a cure for the cordyceps plague. Joel gave Ellie his word, which she warily accepted.I expect there to be as many twists, turns, new characters and new story lines in Season 2 as there were in Season 1. But based on the premiere, it seems this season will also be driven by one simple idea: that when Joel saved Ellie from the Fireflies and then lied to her, he made a godawful mess.After the prologues, the episode jumps ahead five years. Joel and Ellie are now settled in Jackson, Wyo., the edenic survivor colony run in part by Joel’s brother, Tommy (Gabriel Luna), and Tommy’s wife, Maria (Rutina Wesley). Joel is making himself useful with his fix-it know-how, and Ellie has been honing her fighting skills and going on patrols, to gather supplies and to winnow down the numbers of the infected in the area. But while they seem reasonably content, something has soured between them.As I mentioned in my reviews last season, one of my great fascinations with any postapocalyptic story is in seeing how people make fortresses for themselves, sealed off from the surrounding mayhem — and also seeing how they try to build fulfilling lives inside their hidey-holes. So it’s a pleasure early in this episode to get reacquainted with Jackson, a place that has electricity, agriculture, law, and even culture in the form of music and dancing.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The Last of Us’ Review: On the Road Again

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      Season 2 of HBO’s zombie drama begins with Joel and Ellie safe and settled. One guess how long that lasts.HBO’s video-game-inspired, postapocalyptic hit “The Last of Us” likes to cover all its zombie bases. The first season emphasized urban hellscapes — lots of cowering and running in the ruins of Boston, Kansas City and Salt Lake City — while moving toward the open spaces of Wyoming. Season 2, premiering Sunday, goes the other direction, starting out as a grisly western — stockaded town, horse patrols, waves of attackers — but moving back to the city, this time an emptied-out Seattle.Wherever it goes, though, “The Last of Us” remains (as my colleague James Poniewozik pointed out in his Season 1 review) a zombie tale that polishes and elaborates on the conventions of the genre but does not transcend them. The course of its action and the dynamics of its relationships run in familiar grooves, lubricated by generous applications of blood and goo.Where the show has differed from the genre standard is in the dramatic weight and screen time it devotes to those relationships, or, seen another way, in its sentimentality. (I say potahto.)Other zombie shows flesh out love, friendship and loyalty just enough to provide a little extra frisson when a character becomes lunch. “The Last of Us,” which was created and is still overseen by Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin, doesn’t reverse that equation — it still spends time, and a lot of HBO’s money, on elaborate scenes of mayhem, in close quarters or on broad canvases. But it really wants you to care. If the Hallmark Channel had a zombie drama, it might look like a PG version of “The Last of Us.”At the heart of the series, making the greatest demands on our emotions, is the Mutt and Jeff pairing of Joel (Pedro Pascal) — a hard case whose daughter was killed at the beginning of the show’s zombie-spawning fungal pandemic — and Ellie (Bella Ramsey), a teenager he met two decades later. Ellie, who would try the patience of adults far saintlier than Joel, happens to be immune to the fungus, and in Season 1 Joel reluctantly agreed to take her on a cross-country journey in pursuit of a cure. They emerged from the perilous, season-long road trip as each other’s surrogate family.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More