Warning
Major Spoilers for Season 2 Ahead
By this point in the history of
the viewer of Peak TV might think themselves numb to the death of a major
character. But I’d argue that what separated the great dramas is the
willingness to early in their run or at a certain point, kill off a vital character
and then reimagine what to do going forward.
This has happened so many times
in my lifetime. David Milch decided to have Wild Bill Hickok die in the fourth
episode of Deadwood despite the brilliance of Keith Carradine because it
was historically accurate. Within the first minutes of Day 5 of 24 the
writers killed off David Palmer and then did the same for most of the regulars
at CTU we’d come to know and love over four seasons and unleashed one of the
greatest seasons in the history of TV, one that deservedly won the show the
Emmy that year. Recent viewers know that the death of Logan Roy in the third
episode of the final season of Succession officially moved the series
into the pantheon of television masterpieces and did much to convince even
those (like yours truly) who saw no value in the show of its merits. In its
second season Slow Horses was willing to kill off a character we’d grown
very fond of in the second episode and make it the driving action for the cast
going forward and for the rest of the series so far.
And last night The Last of Us was
more than willing to do the same. For those who were familiar with the video
game source material (I was not but I have read the description) early in the
second game Joel Miller is killed off by Abby. The series did much in the
season 2 premiere Future Days to put everything in motion. We met Abby (the
always incredible Kaitlyn Dever) in the opening minutes of the episode and
showed her and her militia standing over the graves of all those that we saw
Joel massacre in the final minutes of Season 1. Joel had, as we were reminded,
killed off the entire group of soldiers and the doctors who were going to
operate on Ellie (Bella Ramsey) the woman who offered a cure to save mankind
from the fungus that is infected everyone on the planet. Ellie had said she was
willing to die. Joel killed them anyway and lied to her about it afterwards.
In that moment the show had done
something almost unheard of it in the annals of TV history. For all of Season 1
we’d watched as Pedro Pascal had spent the last twenty years hardening his
heart, then opening it again to Ellie, who offered the hope of mankind’s
salvation. We’d watch him grow to love her and find happiness again and we
reveled in their journey and bond. And then in the final minutes of the season
finale he went from hero to a man who had essentially doomed mankind because of his love for Ellie. Even those
viewers who had come to unabashedly marvel in Pascal’s gift as a performer had
to seriously question what they had seen and try to reevaluate it with what
they had known: we’ve seen countless antiheroes over the last twenty years but
Joel had spent the season seeming to be a genuine hero – until his last
actions.
We’ve had more than two years to
deal with what was going to happen next: both the strike and the epic
production value of this episode made it clear this would happen. And the fact
that Joel’s death is canon in the games would seem to argue what was going to
happen. From a dramatic standpoint, I’d also argue it had to happen:
Joel essentially destroyed any hope of mankind’s salvation (at least for now)
due to his own actions. The idea of him getting a happy ending in a world that
has been taken over by zombies may be remote, but I’d argue from a dramatic and
emotional standpoint it is the only storyline that would work.
And it’s clear going into Season
2 that Joel seems unable or unwilling to face what he has done. It’s clear
watching the brilliant season premiere that Ellie knows at some level what Joel
did for her and is holding it against him. It’s also clear that Joel has spent
the last five years (the time lapse between the first two seasons) lying to
everyone including his brother and his family. In an episode that will surely
be submitted for Emmy consideration we see Pascal go to therapy with perhaps
the last living psychiatrist (Catherine O’Hara will surely earn a nomination
for her work). He launches into his usual grievances for the past month and
O’Hara’s character, thankfully, is having none of it. She tells him that’s she
angry at Joel because last year at this time, he killed her husband who must
have been infected. She also knows Joel is prevaricating about not telling the
truth: “What did you do out there?” she asked. There’s a long silent moment
when we just stare at Joel’s face. “I saved her,” he says, then stands and walks
out.
Ellie knows this at some level
and is feeling guilty about in last night’s episode when she hears about the
death of Eugene and how nothing could be done to prevent it. By this point Abby
and her band of militia have caught up to Jackson Hole and are outside of it.
Abby is determined to get to Joel and kill him. There’s an excellent argument
that her single-minded determination to do so leads her to awaken a group of
zombies, who then end up attacking first her and then laying siege to Jackson.
We see the horrible cost in the episode (I’ll get to that) but I can’t help but
think Abby wouldn’t mind the cost-benefit analysis as she ends up being rescued
by Joel. She managed to lead him right into the promise of safety and in to the
arms of her team.
Joel during what will be his
final moments remains stoic about what he’s done. Perhaps at some level he’s
spent the last five years waiting for the consequences of his actions to catch
up to him and thinks he should pay for it. Just as likely, giving Pascal’s
portrayal, he knows he’s about to die and has no intention of showing anything
resembling remorse for his actions – even to the woman whose father he killed
to save her. Or worst of all, he agreed with Abby and knew that he had this
coming.
I suspect I will be in the
minority when I saw that Joel didn’t nearly pay enough for his actions. Yes it
is tragic that Ellie had to watch him die and it is more so that the two of
them never worked things out before that (the scenes with Ramsey in this
episode are more than worthy of an Emmy). But perhaps because it is either
because I didn’t watch the first season until fairly recently or maybe I really
do agree with Abby when she says: “Some things are just wrong.” That he will no
doubt be remembered as a martyr by those who don’t know the truth (at least not
yet) and is going to inspire a quest of horrible vengeance by Ellie that will
no doubt lead to more people dying seems far better than the man deserves.
So now that I’ve told you what I
think of Joel’s death, I think it’s time to move on to what I think of The
Last of Us as a whole. And the answer probably shouldn’t come as a shock,
only the fact that it’s taken me so long to get to this point. It is a
masterpiece, another in the surprisingly good track record HBO is forming with
so much IP over the last few years. I saw it play out with The Penguin and
it seems to be playing out with Dune: Prophecy (I took a pass on that one)
and now it seems very clear that HBO can do the same when their source material
is - and we all know some critics
dismissed it at the start – ‘just a video game’.
That was not the reason I avoided
it when it exploded on to the cultural landscape in January of 2023. Part of
it, I will acknowledge, was because it was on Sunday historically an extremely
busy time for me as a viewer and I had more than my share of shows on my plate.
The larger part, I suspect, had to do with the fact that it deals with a world
after a zombie apocalypse and considering my utter contempt for all things Walking
Dead that was a much bigger strike.
Last of Us seems to avoided my biggest from
with that franchise: in which all characters are more or less sacrificed as
grist for the zombie mill. The Last of Us chose to make its structure
episodic like the game that inspired it: Joel and Ellie were the only two
regulars for Season 1 and the show followed their interactions as they traveled
across the country, dealing with characters overtime. And this allowed Craig Mazin
to tell essentially a group of short stories with an overarching plot for the
season, something that has been mostly absent in the era of Peak TV. This has
clearly paid huge dividends for the show: in just their third episode ‘Long,
Long Time’ has already entered the echelon of the greatest episodes in TV
history.
And none of this made the series
any less of an ensemble series: in July of 2023 Last of Us received six
Emmy nominations in the Guest Actor and Actress in a Drama category and managed
to win Emmys in both of them (Nick Offerman & Storm Reid). Frankly any
series that could find roles for so many of my favorite actors in small roles - not just Offerman, but Murray Bartlett, Anna
Torv and Melanie Lynskey – was something I could easily overcome my issues with
zombies for.
And it seems very clear that Last
of Us has also avoided my other big issue with The Walking Dead: it’s
far more interested in what comes after rather than just waiting for the next
zombie attack. The decision was made clear in the season 2 premiere taking
place in Jackson Hole, Wyoming as a kind of an armed camp against the evils of
the zombies. Wisely ‘Future Days’ chose to set its first episode showing the
world in a kind of peace. There’s a barricade outside, and people are going on
patrols with guns for reconnaissance but there’s a kind of relaxed, at ease, feel
I have no real sense of from any of the Walking Dead series. (Please don’t
tell me if I’m wrong; I’m standing by my original resistance.) Indeed when
Ellie and Dina (Isabella Merced) go on patrol, there’s clear as much flirtation
going on there as there is fear of a zombie attack – which ends up happening.
Ellie and Dina survive, get admonished for going off the lead (gently) and a
council of Elders meets to consider the next steps. That said, no one wants to delay
the New Year’s Eve party.
The final minutes of ‘Future Days’
were beautiful in a sense I’m not used to in my post-apocalyptic story because
of how normal it seems. People are drinking and dancing on the floor,
there’s band music, there’s a drunk homophobe spoiling everybody’s fun, the
father hits him, the daughter gets upset – the end of the world is just the same as is
now! Of course the status quo can’t last; we are made aware of both the zombie
presence and Abby at the end of the season premiere and we’re left to wonder
which will end up disrupting things first.
We got the answer last night: all
of the above. Mixed in with Joel running into his fate was the fact that
Jackson was about to go under siege from zombies. I have little doubt the Game
of Thrones comparisons will begin immediately after this episode (Mark
Mylod, the director, was a prominent force on that show as well as Succession)
But while so many of the battles in Westeros left me cold (pun definitely
intended) I was emotionally involved in last night’s battle in a way that I’ve
never been before in so many series and films. And by all standards I shouldn’t
have been: almost every character who was fighting during this entire battle
I’d basically just met last week (with the exception of Tommy). I expected many
if not most we’re going to die horribly and then some I’d gotten attached to
would be infected. And indeed considering how much in the initial fighting and
then hand to hand Tommy was involved in, I figured: they’ll him off. Or they’ll
kill off his wife, she’s not a regular yet.
But that’s not what happened.
Instead I witness the kind of guerilla type combat that I have rarely seen
outside the films of Steven Spielberg or Christopher Nolan. The battle spent
most of the episode following both Tommy and Maria as they ran around, trying
to keep people safe, putting their safety ahead of others, watching their
friends and neighbors falling to the hordes. Then Tommy literally was cornered
with the zombie equivalent of Groot and a flamethrower that was slowly but gradually
running out of fuel. I kept waiting for what I knew was inevitable – and it
didn’t happen. The last shot we see of Jackson is of Maria and Tommy searching
for each other in the carnage that has unfolded and then embracing. Of course,
they don’t know they’re about to undergo emotional damage far worse than what
they’ve just survived.
HBO owned the Drama Emmys for
2023. Succession and The White Lotus won every award on the main
night and Last of Us was the biggest winner of all, taking eight Emmys.
Yes most of them were technical but that didn’t stop Game of Thrones from
taking the title of most awarded show in Emmy history and in just 11 episodes Last
of Us has already proven it is far better at a human level than we ever saw
in Westeros both in character building and in its battle sequences. The
question after just two episode is how many Emmy nominations and wins
Season 2 will end up getting. The majority of the technical awards will no
doubt be split fairly evenly with Severance and it is a given that
Pascal and Ramsey will repeat their nominations for Best Actor and Actress in a
Drama. I have yet to see Jeffrey Wright enter the stage (when does he have the
time?!) but it’s already clear that Dever, O’Hara and Gabriel Luna have moved
to forefront of major contenders for Emmys going forward.
The Last of Us has so many elements about the
worst of television during the 21st century that I have come to
loathe over the period. So the fact that it is clearly a masterpiece is a
tribute to how Craig Mazin has seen every single possible thing that can go
wrong with a franchise and goes out of his way to avoid it every step of the
way. It recognizes that this is a series not about the end of the world but
what happens the day after that and the day after that. It argues that even in
the aftermath of the destruction of everything you once loved, humanity must
find a way to go on. And it registers because it knows that none of the greater
societal ills of the world and the problems we have as people don’t disappear
just because there’s a horde of monsters behind every corner. There’s an old saying: “We may be through with
the past but the past ain’t through with you.” Joel seems to have learned that and paid the price
for it. The question is, how many more people will die before Ellie learns that
same lesson?
My Score: 5 stars.
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