THE LAST OF US: Through the Valley

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Welp, there it is, to coin a phrase.

The second episode of the second season of The Last of Us featured one of the most eye-popping battle sequences since the days of the heights of Game of Thrones, but let’s face it; that’s not how it will be remembered. This will forever be The One Where Joel Died — or possibly The One After Which The Ratings Plummeted. After all, Pedro Pascal is a superstar at the moment — one of the few in the game, actually – and for some fans of the show, his removal will be a dealbreaker for them. It was impossible for us to avoid encountering this spoiler in writing about the show (gamers weren’t exactly tight-lipped about it) so we were prepared for it. It probably was a shock if you didn’t know it was coming, but for us at least, this wasn’t quite the Red Wedding moment it might have been. Like we suspect a lot of viewers, our main reaction was, “Oh. We’re here already.”

Which isn’t to suggest that it wasn’t a powerful and well-acted moment. Given the likelihood that a majority of viewers knew it was coming, writers/executive producers Craig Mazin, Neil Druckmann and Halley Wegryn Gross did a spectacular job of crafting a tense, dramatic and exciting episode around the inevitability. What struck us about this episode was the smooth confidence of its telling; trusting that enough work had been done establishing the people of Jackson Hole and the dynamics of Abby’s group that it could simply let the events unfold on two fronts, cleanly and efficiently without worrying too much about the particulars. Sure, it strains credulity to the breaking point that, in this vast expanse of snow, Abby would literally stumble upon the one man she’s spent half-a-decade looking for, but at this point, if you’re applying credulity to this show as a criterion of its quality, you’re pretty much missing the point of it. Joel found Abby and rescued her because that’s the final ironic cruelty visited upon him; that after all of his years of closing himself off from people in order to survive, he was killed because of a moment of compassion, rescuing another would-be surrogate daughter. It doesn’t matter if there were too many coincidences leading up to it. Ellie opened up Joel’s heart, which caused him to do a terrible thing, and ultimately sealed his fate.

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Similarly, it would seem on the surface at least that a city as well-protected and well-organized as Jackson Hole shouldn’t have suffered such devastating losses in an attack it’s evidently spent years preparing for, but as we noted in last week’s recap, the cordyceps running through the town’s water pipes wasn’t just foreshadowing of the attack to come, it was a metaphor about rot and the illusion of safety in a precarious world. Jackson may be as close to idyllic as living gets to be in this world, but it’s still a place rife with grudges, agendas, and prejudices. An imperfect system, failing right at the moment it’s most needed.

Or has it? That’s the other interesting aspect of the storytelling this episode: the near total lack of consequences for anything that happened. We simply don’t know how badly Jackson was devastated, just as we don’t know how Ellie’s going to react next. We got an attack and a big death and then the credits rolled, leaving us to stew in shock and debate the morality of it. Personally, we never felt the need to spend too much time unpacking this one. Yes, Abby is brutal and comes off more than a little crazy. Yes, Joel’s actions five years ago were horrible, but perfectly understandable from a parent’s point of view. Yes, Ellie is right to be furious that Joel lied to her and removed her agency when it came to the most important question of her life. Everyone’s right in their own way and everyone acted terribly. That’s tragedy, baby. That’s why Joel only nodded once he realized who he was facing. He was never going to beg for his life, nor would he even fight for it under these circumstances. He accepted it completely – and in true Joel Miller fashion, told his executioner to shut the fuck up.

It appears that almost all of the main characters except for Joel survived. We don’t see Catherine O’Hara’s Gail during this episode, but we doubt her storyline is over, especially since Jesse and Ellie had an extended conversation about her late husband and the apparently tragic and mysterious circumstances of his death. That’s the thing about the setup this season: by jumping ahead five years and then abruptly killing off a main character, the show has left itself plenty of opportunities to fill in the blanks. In other words, there’s no way in hell this was Pedro Pascal’s last episode of The Last of Us.

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Having comforted you with that thought, we think it’s worth remembering that every single thing about the story and the setup and the remaining characters has been thrown into the air and we don’t know how any of the pieces are going to land — which is fantastic. It would probably be a mistake for the show to return to the patented Pascal charm offensive too often. We need to feel that loss to understand whatever it is that Ellie does next. If she’s constantly having conversations with his force ghost or whatever, it’s going to dampen the intensity going forward. Joel’s gone, Jackson’s devastated, and Ellie is going to have a fucking shit fit. Let’s go.

[Picture credit: Liane Hentscher/HBO]

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