I’m going to need this show to seriously stop trying it’s darnedest to make me depressed, I can do that all on my own.
SPOILERS FOR THE LAST OF US SEASON 2
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What an opening. The first two scenes from this episode really leave you absolutely haunted by the tragedy of how the last episode concluded. The beautiful juxtaposition of seeing Tommy completely silent as he cleans Joels corpse as he lets the tear flow with the contrast of Ellie waking and immediately screaming in grief. This honestly was a brilliant way to show how our two characters will handle Joels death. Tommy has shut down, trying to hide it, and keeping his grief to himself as it slowly eats him inside and boils out, whilst Ellie is far more explosive.
“Give Sarah my love” – Really had to drive that golf club into my soul didn’t you Druckmann.
We then cut to three months later, a time jump I thought was an odd place to find our characters again. The immediate urgency and grief of Joels passing felt lessened by the fact that the characters had been given far more time to grieve and recover than the audience had. Ellie’s revenge quest feels like it lacks that sense of urgency it had in game.
Bella Ramsey needs to be praised for how they handled the scene going through Joel’s stuff when they return from the hospital. The scene with the jacket in the wardrobe absolutely body slammed me for another fortnight in therapy, seriously Druckmann you’re keeping my therapist in business. But I do think the stand out cast member this episode has to be Gabriel Luna as Tommy. His quiet grief kept just under the surface is palpable, and whilst he may have Ellie fooled on how troubled he really is, he’s not fooled us. Again though, I’m sure we just need to give it time I’m ready to see the darker side to Tommy.
Something the show continues to do well is fleshing out side characters, this episode gives single note character Seth from the game a bit more complexity by having him side with Ellie at the council meeting. Dina also being given a direct tie-in to the plot of chasing down Abby by having her be the keeper of knowledge when Ellie recovers is a more natural inclusion for her to join Ellies journey as opposed to in-game Dina just kinda going “yeah I’m down, road trip baby!”. Also Catherine O’Hara how do you keep playing characters I think I’ll hate that slowly win me over, Gail is a great addition to this show.
The episode also sets up a few more side stories ahead of time with our first look at WLF and the Seraphites. Plus Dina why you vomiting, what’s going on here? HMMMMMMMM….
Whilst I think some urgency in this series is gone with the choice to set this episode 3-months after Joels murder, the show still gives its characters the anger and grief we expect. It feels a touch slower than I think we should be moving, considering how much ground and story we need to cover, I worry we’re spending too long on the set up and we’ll lose valuable story beats elsewhere to make up for it. There’s a key scene from the games in particular that the show, at this stage, is stating never happened. A scene that most fans of the game would agree is arguably the best part of the entire second game, perhaps the show and characters are lying to us for now and we will see that scene later, perhaps at the end of the show much like in game. But if we lose scenes like that for pacing sakes to flesh out other areas it’ll be a serious detriment to the characters and overall story.
With only four more episodes in this season to go I worry greatly at the pacing of things. It feels like by the end of this episode we are only now setting off on the story of this season and we’re already nearly half way there with so much to cover. Fingers crossed the show is capable of getting us to its natural end point without it feeling rushed. I eagerly await to see how much chaos we get up to once Ellie reaches Seattle next week.
