The first season of 'The Last of Us', the most talked-about project of the beginning of the year, has concluded. We analyze what we saw in the final episode.
Episode 9 turned out to be unexpectedly short – just 43 minutes. But that's not the only surprise the creators had in store for us. What was the finale of the adaptation of the cult game 'The Last of Us' like?
Previous recaps:
Warning: spoilers for Episode 9 of 'The Last of Us' follow
Her Name is Ellie
The new episode of 'The Last of Us' begins with a pregnant woman running through the forest. As we later learn, her name is Anna, and she is running to save not only her own life – she is about to give birth.
The girl heads to a farmhouse standing alone in a field, on whose water tower the symbol of the Fireflies is emblazoned.
This shot slightly reminded me of Andrew Wyeth's painting 'Christina's World'.
In the house, the girl locks herself in a room on the second floor, but it doesn't help – an infected person breaks in, attacks the heroine, dies after a brief struggle, leaving a bite on her leg. At that same moment, a child is born – a girl. The very same unique girl, the carrier of immunity, Ellie.
By evening, Marlene arrives at the house. She takes the child and, at Anna's request, kills the woman herself.
This scene is incredibly touching and brutal – in the style of the entire season. Besides the important backstory of the main character from a plot perspective, there are a couple of interesting details here.
Ellie's mother is played by actress Ashley Johnson. Not only is she strikingly similar to Bella Ramsey, but it is her voice that speaks for the game's Ellie. This is perhaps one of the most lyrical cameos.
The house where Ellie was born is also special. The interior layout is strikingly similar to the layout of the house from the second part of The Last of Us – an interesting nod to fans.
Anna leaves her daughter the knife she used to cut the umbilical cord and kill the infected – the main MacGuffin of the episode and, perhaps, the entire season.
The game didn't give us information about where Ellie's immunity came from, and the series 'The Last of Us' version convinced me. You can't ignore the promise Marlene makes to her friend Anna. Knowing the difficult choice she will have to make, this moment feels even more emotional.
Do You Want to Learn to Play the Guitar?
The plot returns us to Joel and Ellie. The girl is lost in thought – the road has been tough. Joel tries to cheer the child up by offering to teach her to play the guitar sometime – another reference to the second part of the game. They approach the Hospital where, as they believe, the Fireflies are based.
And then our heroes meet him – the giraffe. A real, live (not even computer-generated) giraffe, who seems unaware that the apocalypse has happened. The scene is amazingly similar to the game.
This joyful event makes Joel open his heart to Ellie. First, he persuades her to return to Tommy, and admits that the wounds from losing Sarah stopped hurting only after he met Ellie.
A magical moment, because it's the only one where Joel is happy. Exhausted by years of grief for his lost daughter, he finds peace and love in another lonely person. And the crushing realization that this moment is short, and there will be no more.
Before they can exchange their dubious puns, the heroes are attacked by Fireflies. Ellie is taken, and Joel is knocked out with a strong blow from a rifle butt to the back of the head.
Waking up, Joel sees Marlene.
Marlene says Ellie is being prepared for surgery. The professor suggests that the girl's immunity is the result of infection in the womb. That the cordyceps in her brain sends signals that she is not human. And to get the antidote, it needs to be removed from Ellie's head, but the girl will not survive.
Ellie herself was not told about this, and Joel asks not to perform the operation, but is refused. Marlene says she understands the man's pain like no one else. She gives him Ellie's knife, and orders her soldiers to escort Joel to the highway without the right to return.
Well, that's where the carnage begins. The desperate man attacks the soldiers, takes their weapons, and cold-bloodedly kills the Fireflies, one by one. He doesn't miss a single shot, just like in the fifth episode of 'The Last of Us'.
The scene sends chills down your spine. We see Joel, who will do anything not to lose his child again.
Bursting into the operating room, he shoots the Professor – perhaps the only person who could have saved humanity. He takes Ellie, who is under anesthesia, and leaves the Hospital.
In the parking lot, Joel meets Marlene. The woman tries to persuade him to back down. She explains that he cannot give her a normal world, but she can give it to him. He shoots the leader of the Fireflies, and ignoring her pleas for mercy, kills her just as cold-bloodedly.
If You Keep Going, You'll Find Something Worth Fighting For
Ellie will wake up later in the car. Joel will tell her a made-up story about dozens of others like her who will save the world. About bandits who attacked the Hospital and killed Marlene.
The episode will end with the most ambiguous dialogue. The girl confesses that she once had to kill her friend Riley, and asks Joel to swear that everything he said is true.
He will swear.
She will answer: 'Okay'.
Impressions
Wow... As a big fan of the game, honestly, even though I was waiting for the adaptation, I didn't have high expectations.
And the series 'The Last of Us' turned out great. It deviated from the original, but very competently and logically, for the sake of improving the script. I am amazed by the talent with which the creators, led by Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin, maintained the line between an independent story and references for fans.
Of course, 'The Last of Us' is not exactly a survival horror in the spirit of 'The Walking Dead', with which, by the way, the first part of the game was easily compared. It is more of a human story, a psychological drama, closer to Martin McDonagh's 'Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri'. It is an almanac of love, but without romanticization, love as ruthless as the world around it.
I will especially highlight the cinematography: four amazing specialists, among whom was Ksenia Sereda, found a perhaps unoriginal but very suitable shooting technique, and sometimes delighted us with non-trivial angles.
Pedro Pascal played a very thoughtful Joel. And his 'Daddy is the state of mind' perfectly illustrated this work as well.
But the conqueror of my heart, of course, is Bella Ramsey. She managed to show Ellie's emotional growth, and the final 'Okay' made the bubble of restrained tears burst. I hope to see her in other projects.
But I will also criticize the series (just a little): I lacked action. At some point, you completely forget about the infected; the danger from them sometimes seems rather far-fetched.
I will gladly wait for the next seasons. The references were heavy (we saw both Dina and Abby, Maria was essentially an important character). Exciting.
An outstanding series turned out, no doubt. The finale of 'The Last of Us' is excellent, poignant in its complexity and understanding that the world is somewhat more complicated than it usually seems in many other, not-so-good series. Probably everyone has already noted that Joel is written amazingly: throughout the series, we saw that he does not shy away from violence, is ready to kill if necessary, and in the finale, this quality of his was not even turned up to the maximum, but simply shown without any filters. When he shoots the doctor who is trying to prove something to him with some horrifying indifference, it seems like a robot, not a person. At the same time, it's hard not to understand Pascal, and morally he is right in some ways (if you are deprived of your dignity and they want to take your life, you have the right to resist).
We have already written that 'The Last of Us' does not shy away from complex topics, and the theme of this episode, it seems to me, is purely political: different people on Joel and Ellie's path organized eternal sects built on faith in their own exclusivity and righteousness, wallowed in cruelty, and blamed everything on the end of the world. And the Fireflies turned out to be no better.
It is obvious that between saving humanity and Ellie's life, she would probably have chosen the former (but didn't, because she wasn't given a choice, and Marlene's argument is a lie), but this is a false dichotomy. When it all comes down to a choice between bad and very bad, it means things have gone wrong long ago. And the Fireflies are no better than FEDRA – the same indifference to human life for an abstract good (and probably unattainable) goal. The same willingness to sacrifice humanity for humanity.
It seems to me that the sad moral of this story turned out to be that the world before the apocalypse was no better. That you cannot blame your own inhumanity and cruelty on the realities of the time. That you either remain human or live in a broken world (in the apt expression of Marlene, who is almost Hamlet with a 'time out of joint'), blaming the world for it when you should blame yourself. Not that these are any new thoughts, but I needed to get it off my chest.
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