The Last of Us: Exploring Loose, Dumb Love, and Loss With Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey and the Fireflies
We interrupt any zombie drama with a touching love story, this time during a different phase of your life, so we can show an extended back-story of your life.
“The Last of Us” continues to stretch its formula, as Joel (Pedro Pascal) remained gravely wounded from events at the conclusion of its sixth episode, leaving Ellie (Bella Ramsey) to tend to him in the seventh, subtitled “Left Behind.”
The meat of the hour flashed back to the bad-attitude recipient of military training who was dragged by her AWOL friend, Riley, to a abandoned mall, which turned out to be not as abandoned as advertised.
The trip is meant for Riley to say farewell, as she has decided to join the Fireflies. Yet as the hour unfolds, it pretty clearly becomes what amounts to a first date, with Riley exposing the wide-eyed Ellie to a host of wonders – escalators, arcade games, photo booths, a merry-go-round – before a spontaneous kiss that takes their relationship in a new and more romantic direction. The show found the source of the book of stupid jokes.
This being “The Last of Us,” nothing good can last for long, and a zombie intruded on their moment together, wounding both of them. The encounter leads to her realization that she is immune to zombie plague, while Riley has a dire fate, and Ellie finds a Needle and thread to close his wound.
Although “Left Behind” added a bit to the ongoing Joel-Ellie dynamic, with her refusal to abandon him, its exploration of love and loss in this grim world evoked both the third episode, with its Linda Ronstadt-scored detour involving Frank and Bill; and the fifth, to the extent that during a zombie apocalypse, even the good die young.
This ends for everyone sooner or later, right? Accepting her cruel fate is what Riley says. (As a footnote both actors are actually 19 even though they’re playing younger, which likely made their scenes together more impactful.)
The series gave a respite while showing the effects of young love, underscoring how The Last of Us keeps bucking expectations and why so many people can’t get off this merry go-round.
The point of the latest episode of ‘The Last of Us’ is that people are left to their own devices in a lawless environment and become monsters during zombie apocalypses when shown how tough, steely and smart they are.
With David, the leader of a starving community that he presides over as its spiritual guide still ailing, he met up with the man who’s been in charge of it for decades.
Yet despite a pleasant voice and sounding completely reasonable at first, David was exposed as a different kind of monster, resorting to cannibalism to feed his struggling flock, and eventually trying to sexually assault the teenage Ellie, who, thanks to her grit, he saw as a kindred spirit.
In one of the more horrific images the series has produced, first Ellie and then Joel witnessed the remnants of what David was relying upon for food, with the latter discovering a gruesome locker where bodies were being stored.
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Already a huge success for HBO (which, like CNN, is a unit of Warner Bros. Discovery) in terms of viewership and media buzz, the series has one more episode to essentially cement its credentials in terms the other priority associated with prestige-TV fare: Being remembered when Emmy awards season kicks into high gear this spring.
Aside from a rich roster of guest stars, Pascal and Ramsey might not have completely closed that deal given the historic hurdles faced by this genre on that front; still, with each of these last few hours, they continue to build upon what already appeared to be a pretty compelling case.