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new episodes of Last of Us premieres every Sunday night on HBO, and Ars’ Kyle Orland (who’s played the game) and Andrew Cunningham (who hasn’t yet) talk about them here every Monday morning. ‘s summary doesn’t delve into every plot point in the episode, but clearly heavy spoiler so watch the episode first if you want to go fresh.
The game shows a short cut from the events of Episode 6 to Ellie hunting wild prey in the snow. Since it’s my first time working directly with Ellie, I don’t even know if the invisible Joel is alive or dead.
Nor do we know anything about a mild-mannered stranger named David whom Ellie ran into while hunting. He even looks like a plausible replacement for Joel, at points during the early docile portion of the in-game team-up.
Seeing everything from Ellie’s point of view really heightens the tension and mystery of David’s entire arc.
David suffers the most. It’s kind of like the show needs to stuff him full of red flags to make sure that viewers really don’t like him or feel bad for him, but it’s also like most antagonists. is already slightly flattened.
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Kyle: The whole preacher subplot is completely new to the show, as far as I can tell, as is David’s puzzling vision of a violent teenager as a partner leading the herd. I can understand why you’d want to root for it, but yes, that’s another situation where the red flags are a little too obvious.
But I didn’t believe, not for a split second, that Ellie was in danger of joining up with this creepy fundamentalist/mushroom worshiper/child hitter/cannibal dude. This big emotional showdown.
And…were there a lot of other people in this community? where did they go A more organic and satisfying version is not the dramatic one-on-one showdown between David and Ellie at the World’s Most Flammable Restaurant, but David’s own community seeing how creepy he is. It sounds like that’s not the case in the game, but it also sounds like the character is treated radically differently.
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This is my main question for new starters. Did you ever feel like David was potentially just a nice guy and Ellie was someone you could justly trust and/or let your guard down in front of? It feels like the game struggled to squeeze in for a while, but it didn’t work here. Again, we knew some of David’s darker secrets from the beginning…
On the other hand, the first scene where David and Ellie meet – I saw it! David (played by Scott Shepard, a fairly prolific character actor with one of the “Have I seen him?” faces) has a certain reassuring charisma in him. Unfortunately, we’ve seen too many Bad Guy markers from him before we know he’s reading his To Serve Man.
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Kyle: Where this episode follows the game pretty closely is that it leans more towards the “torture porn” side of the equation than any part of the story so far. Seeing the two prisoners tortured and killed without having to retaliate, and getting revenge by almost chopping up Ellie herself really takes it to a new level. It will also be
And having Ellie slaughter David at the end of the episode is a little too long and uncomfortable. Indeed, Ellie is as traumatized as she needs to be for story purposes. Not that David was close enough to really betray her. Between the two, Joel and Ellie wield enough violence in this episode to make the tearful reunion a little sour. It’s not the place I used to be.
Kyle: Indeed, there’s a certain “war on terrorism” mentality that creeps into the story from decades ago.
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Andrew: It’s where society ended, and the show mentions it from time to time, but not much. The United States may have invaded Iraq six months before society collapsed.
Kyle: We suspect that Osama bin Laden’s cave hideout was relatively safe from the infected. Do you think it depends on the amount of cordyceps-infused flour they import?
Andrew: It makes you want to know more about how the world outside the United States is handling the apocalypse.
All that death, however, is building towards the big finale. Without getting too spoiled, do you remember what Joel and Ellie are trekking for/towards at this point? Also, any big predictions for the final episode?
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I want to be pleasantly surprised! Maybe the show will settle into this predictable cadence, and next week it will be especially amazing when all the scientists are so sober and professional.
Andrew: Too late, you set my expectations too high! If you don’t like the finale, it’s all your fault.
