With The Last Of Us season 2 done and dusted, let’s dive into the spoilery stuff, shall we? Some thoughts on this season and what comes next.
Warning! Lots of spoilers to follow for all of The Last Of Us season 1 and 2. We’ll also dive into the entirety of The Last Of Us Part II video game and what to expect from season 3 and even 4, but we’ll add another warning for that in the piece.
There’s always a strange sense of emptiness when a TV show you’ve religiously been watching – and in my case, writing and podcasting about – comes to an end. That’s certainly true about The Last Of Us, HBO’s high-profile video game adaptation starring Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey. What am I supposed to do now that I can’t talk about Ellie and Joel’s relationship on a weekly basis? Should I just move on with my life, as if the series hasn’t dominated it for the past seven weeks?
What makes the emptiness even worse this time around is that The Last Of Us season 2 was a rocky affair. It was much more ambitious and adventurous in its take on the source material compared to season 1, but it didn’t always work, leaving viewers like myself conflicted. I liked the season, but I’m still trying to figure out if I loved it.
The problem with The Last Of Us season 2 was always going to be the structure of The Last Of Us Part II. There was no way co-creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann could fit the entire story into just seven episodes, so we were always likely to get just half a story.
And that’s exactly what we got. Season 2 ended on a shocking note as Abby ambushed our heroes at the theatre, mercilessly shooting Jesse in the head and holding Tommy, Dina and Ellie at gunpoint while seething with rage. In all fairness, Ellie did slaughter most of her friends, so it’s easy to see why she’d be a little pissed off.
Episode 7 highlighted all of the season’s weaknesses. The Last Of Us season 2 has rushed through major plot points and moments and, just like Ellie, the series has become blinded by the search for a resolution rather than focusing on what effect all of this has had on our characters. Episode 7, the shortest of the lot, included strange moments like Ellie briefly ending up on the Seraphite island, which took away from the heft of other moments, like Ellie killing the pregnant Mel who begs Ellie to cut out her unborn child as she’s bleeding out.
I often make notes on the films and TV shows I cover. They’re usually ineligible scribbles, made in the dark without my eyes ever leaving the screen, but they’re just there to strengthen and compile my thoughts. For The Last Of Us episode 7, they’re even more scattered and frustrated as I was trying to keep up with the story and make sense of it, and understand what Ellie was going through. After the episode, I felt breathless – in need of a strong cup of coffee (or maybe something stronger).
Video games and TV are very different, of course, and what works in one wouldn’t necessarily work in another, but even then, trying to tell Ellie’s half of the story in just seven episodes was always an ambitious, perhaps impossible task. The Last Of Us season 2 has been driven by plot rather than story; more emphasis has been placed on what happens on screen than what it tells us about the world Ellie and her friends inhabit.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve still thoroughly enjoyed this season and I respect a lot of the choices made by Mazin and Druckmann this time around. Episode 2 was a particular highlight of the season, showing a major attack on Jackson as well as including the controversial killing of Joel at the hands of Abby. It was a stylish episode that got the balance right, but after that, the delicate balance between action and emotion was lost.
Suddenly, the road towards Ellie’s revenge became rocky. Episode 3 was mostly filler and the end of episode 5, perhaps the most imperial episode of the season, felt light in its execution. You might even wonder why I’m calling the episode imperial – and if you do, you’re only proving my point.
Episode 5 introduced the spores into the story, but more importantly, it features Ellie fully moving to the dark side by killing Nora. Not just killing her, either, but brutally torturing her with a pipe before abandoning her in the basement of a hospital to die. As the finale showed, albeit lightly, Ellie isn’t quite the same after this. Such cruelty represented a point of no return for the character, who has now become the very thing she’s hunting; spiteful, sadistic and blinded by her need for revenge.
The final episode ends with Abby pointing the gun at Ellie and the screen cutting to black as a shot rings out. We then jump back in time to Seattle Day One as Abby wakes up at the WLF base, signaling that next season will follow those same three days from her perspective, just like in the game where the player is forced into the shoes of the very woman they’ve been hunting for the past 12 hours.
If you’ve played the game, you knew this was coming, and where the season would likely end. I found myself still a little shocked, or perhaps just rattled, by the decision to end things here. This is mostly because we will be waiting for season 3 at least a couple of years. To end the second season of one of the biggest TV shows of recent years on a cliffhanger like that is a bold move, but what comes next?
Season 3 is happening for sure, but Mazin recently also confirmed that the series would need a fourth season to complete the story. But is it really necessary?
From here-on out, we’ll be diving into the second half and ending of the video game so if you’re not familiar with it, you might want to return to this article at a later date. In other words, spoilers!
As revealed at the very end of episode 7, The Last Of Us season 3 will focus mostly on Abby as we follow her through the same three days as we did with Ellie. Like with the game, Druckmann and Mazin are asking for our empathy and for us to consider Abby as more than just a villain.
The turnaround in the game was met with hate from fans when The Last Of Us Part II was released in 2020. Things got so nasty that Laura Bailey, the actress who portrayed the character in the game, received death threats, including some for her child. It was always a gamble to ask gamers (a notoriously rational bunch) to adopt a character they’ve been trained to hate over 12 hours of intense game play, but the reaction from some was still shocking.
After the initial shock of having to play as Abby, the rest of the game turned out to be a heck of an experience. As you step into Abby’s shoes, you come to appreciate her physicality, her sense of righteousness and her morals. But TV works differently. Watching TV, even when you engage critically with what you watch, is a passive action, whereas playing a video game is a much more active one.
And that’s where I fear The Last Of Us season 3 will falter. Will we ever be able to relate to Abby and hate Ellie for her actions? Season 2 has seemed a little scared of making us truly hate or despise Ellie – will we be able to see her from Abby’s perspective, as the villain of her story?
Season 4, if officially greenlit by HBO, will likely cover the game’s final section after Ellie and Dina have settled on a nice, peaceful farm, but Ellie, barely surviving an encounter with Abby, struggles with PTSD. Her need for revenge still hasn’t died down and she’s about to push away Dina and her family in order to seek it once more.
It’s a short, but powerful segment and it certainly could warrant a whole season to itself. Pacing might become an issue though. We still don’t know how many episodes season 3 will have, but if we assume all seasons will have less than 10 episodes, season 4 would be a lot slower than the previous seasons.
Fans have already expressed their worries that telling the game’s story in three seasons would make it feel stretched and unnecessary. Mazin and Druckmann still have plenty of time to crack the perfect recipe for the next two seasons of The Last Of Us, but we have a feeling it’ll be a proper challenge.
All episodes of The Last Of Us season 1 and 2 are now on Sky and NOW.
