Finally, The Last Of Us season 2 allows Ellie to share her game counterpart’s reckless hatred of the humble bottle.
Warning! Includes incredibly minor spoilers for The Last Of Us season 2 episode 1.
The Last Of Us is back! It feels like we’ve been waiting for what feels like an eternity to catch up with Pedro Pascal’s Joel and Bella Ramsey’s Ellie after they travelled across the fungus-infected country back in season 1. The second season begins adapting The Last Of Us Part II, developer Naughty Dog’s 2020 smash hit videogame and a sequel to 2013’s The Last Of Us.
There’s a lot to be excited about in the new season, but one tiny aspect of episode 1 brings us a great deal of satisfaction.
As Ellie and Dina (Isabela Merced) venture into an abandoned building to kill some infected during their patrol, the pair have to climb onto a truck and then sneak in through the window. It’s a pleasing throwback to its source, which had players do the exact same thing in this part of the game.
When Ellie climbs in, she encounters a new kind of infected: the Stalker. They’re silent and deadly, and while they’re not quite as terrifying as the Clickers, they’re still enough to make this writer hold her breath while they’re on screen. Thankfully, Ellie figures out how to get the upper hand on them; throw a bottle to distract them.
In both of The Last Of Us games, the player is forced to pick up countless bottles and bricks, throwing them in order to distract enemies. Creating a loud distraction works miracles when an infected is about to find you hiding behind a shelving unit, or you can use a bottle to lure multiple infected into one area before torching them with a Molotov cocktail.
The Last Of Us season 1 featured zero bottles (or bricks, for that matter). Granted, there’s a lot of ground to cover, but couldn’t creators Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann have had Joel pick up one bottle to distract a Clicker, just once? I saw no crafting of med kits either, and Pedro Pascal definitely didn’t have to loot any ammo or upgrade his weapons.
Ellie picking up a bottle is such a small thing that will mean nothing to a large part of the audience, but to the fans of the games, it’s a fun little nod, an homage really, to a hugely important part of the gameplay.
We’re eagerly waiting for Ellie to push a bin in place to climb over a low wall.
New episodes of The Last Of Us premiere every Monday on Sky and NOW. Check out our review of the opening episode here.
