This message contains spoilers for the episode of this week of The last of usWho is now streaming on max.
Between his set of massive action set and the brutal murder of one of the two main characters in the series, the previous episode of The last of us“Through the Valley”, was about as seismic as a television hour can be for a drama like this. Joel’s death, the timing of this one at the start of the season, and the sadistic way in which it happened, let players and non-players speak all week-with some wondering if they are always interested in watching the program if the relationship of Joel and Ellie is not at the center.
Before writing this episode, Craig Mazin had to know that Joel’s death would be a divisor, just as it happened at the start of the second match. So this episode has two big tasks to perform. The first is to allow viewers to resume the intensity of “through the valley” while Mazin and Company have set up the next big arc of the series: Ellie and Dina preparing to go to Seattle to take revenge on Abby. The second is to try to establish that the series can Go without Joel – that Ellie is a convincing solo advance even without his substitution father, and that her interaction with this so expanded distribution compensates a lot of what we have lost with the exit of Pedro Pascal.
He definitively succeeded in the first assignment. The second is TBD, although there are promising signs in Bella Ramsey’s work with Isabela Merced as Dina.
After the punch (or burning, or stab) of the siege of the murder of Jackson and Joel, a quieter transition episode allows characters to find their composure as much as viewers. We resume in the hours that followed these twin tragedies. Tommy solemnly cleanses his brother’s body and tries to find a good thought in this horror saying to him: “Give Sarah my love.” Ellie wakes up in the hospital with a central line
Publisher’s choice Hands until each viewer of
The Pitt
Who saw this and immediately started to wonder what procedure procedure, Dr. Trinity Santos, made in this post-apocalyptic world.
And everyone feels protective of the young woman he left.
We see that there is still a great memorial for Joel, full of flowers and gratitude notes. If the other people who died that day have received a similar treatment, we do not see it, because they are anonymous extras that do not matter in this story. Or maybe Joel – brother -in -law of Jackson’s leader, and a full -fledged leadership figure on patrols and construction – was simply considered a big problem, compared to Joe Random who made his way through the Bloater. Related contentsAfter Ellie returned home, Dina spoke a news that we know that she has been pocketed for months now: that Abby and her crew are part of a militia based in Seattle known as WLF (Washington Liberation Front). Dina is ready and ready to chase them with Ellie. But Tommy insists that they bring the plan to the municipal council, promising to support them if they do.
We then cut in Seattle, not to register with Abby, but to meet a new group: a religious cult of a certain kind which carries matching outfits and matching facial scars. They use arcs and arrows rather than firearms, and communicate with a series of complicated whistles that one of their members promises to finally teach his young daughter. By walking in the woods, the group is attacked and the father refers to their opposition of “wolves” – alias the WLF.
Putting the scene here is an interesting choice, if not entirely satisfactory. It offers a little action in an episode which is otherwise filled with speeches and beautiful landscape photographs. He establishes wolves as a real threat, even before we arrived at the closing scenes where Dina and Ellie find their corpses, and we see that wolves are much larger and better organized than our heroes have stupidly supposed. But the cultists, who are of the game, evoke some of the more stupid and more pretentious elements of
The Walking Dead And the point on the danger that the wolves present could have been made without this interlude. There is also something to say to keep us in Ellie’s POV for the moment, even if the show was to deviate earlier in the season to determine why Abby was looking to take revenge on Joel in the first place.Hear arguments during the meeting of the Jackson municipal council.
Liane Hentscher / HBO
The meeting of the municipal council has a funny rhythm where a man named Scott acts essentially like the Colin Robinson (the energy vampire of
What we do in the shade ) Post-apocalypse, buzz on cultures when everyone is there to talk about Ellie and Dina’s proposal. Talking about this last front is not going well, mainly because the people who are against the plan are so obviously correct. In a world like this, there is no value to continue Abby. It risks labor and resources. This potentially puts Jackson on the radar of other communities that could try to come and try to grasp what Maria and the others have built. Ellie remains calm and tries to paint her cause as being on justice rather than revenge, but the two are fully interchangeable in these circumstances, and the council is rightly voting. It does not help and dina that the most energetic voice in support of revenge is Seth, the homophobic in Loudmouth which drowned women to kiss during the New Year’s dance. Before the vote, Ellie promises to respect the decision of the council, but of course, she goes to Seattle, no matter how they govern. And soon, she and Dina are loaded with provisions and weapons (including a sniper rifle that Seth insists that Ellie has set up her own firearm) and starting the journey of 800 miles to the northwest.
Should anyone be surprised? Not if they have known Ellie for five years. Earlier in the episode, Gail – which is much colder and more misanthropic than you want someone in their work to be – said to Tommy, “some people just can’t be saved.” It is an incredibly stupid and useless thing that it is done. When Joel massacred the fireflies, it was at least with a productive objective in mind: to save his life. If Joel could somehow speak to her when she visits her grave, he would cry so that she returns home and would continue her life.
Ellie and Dina forces even closer than they were in Jackson. Jesse is not there to distract or try Dina. There is no one else who can ensure that Ellie feels aware of oneself, even if she is afraid of accepting the signals that Dina continues to give her – “I was not
that Above, ”she said to kiss-because she is terrified to get there and be rejected. Nothing can replace the chemistry between Ramsey and Pascal, but Merced makes an interesting scene partner, and Ellie’s struggle to keep his guard around his crush offers good equipment so that Ramsey plays so that Ellie does not seem only concentrated on this poorly proven plan.
As they talk about music along the way, their references are older artists like Frank Zappa. It makes sense not only because Ellie has spent so much time around the old man Joel, and because the vinyl is much easier to play in this reality, but because in the world of the series, the cordycers epidemic occurred in 2003. In this universe, there is no Taylor Swift, no Kendrick and Beyoncé has never had a solo career. Infected along the way, we don’t see it. But the involvement is that the trip is picaresque and without incident. It seems good, not only as a change of rhythm after the massive horde which attacked Jackson last week, but as a reminder that infected are really only a means for an end with this story, placing characters like Ellie in a chaotic world, without law and without right. It is a bad choice that Ellie and Dina made to go to Seattle. We have not yet seen if all of this was a dramatic bad choice speaks last of us.
