HBO
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 Sunday night. ‘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.
Does Ellie believe Joel?
In this episode, Joel and Ellie succeed! They’re in Reno and find the doctor they’ve been looking for. They just need to have the doctor run some tests and the surrogate father/daughter bond is intact, healthy and perfectly fine.
But yes, a little backup. I love how this episode takes us back to the quieter times between Joel and Ellie. Considering how reluctant they were to even be in the same space at the beginning of the series, they’re clearly a perfect surrogate father/daughter pair for each other.
Andrew: There are wonderful moments. But now that Joel is completely open to letting Ellie take the role of her dead daughter, there’s a sort of manic, almost hopeless note to her relationship at the beginning of the episode: Joel’s solidity. There are no more monosyllabic veneers. He talks too much now.he suddenly that too want to connect.
Kyle: he can also argue that it is sudden that too Trying to protect the surrogate daughter at the expense of humanity…
HBO
unlike nearly every other group of people we’ve encountered Last of Us Space, there doesn’t seem to be anything particularly sinister about Rino Firefly. Yet another episode-opening flashback, where we meet Ellie’s mother and learn the incredible true story of how Ellie actually lived, got her knife, and I got her knife a few times. The joke summarized earlier came true).
But as far as we know, they are not a community of sadistic evangelical vigilante brain removers. They put the needs of the many above the needs of the few, so to speak. And it’s not that I don’t feel deeply for Joel, who is clearly unprepared or unwilling or unable to lose another daughter.
That leads me to my question: Is Joel the bad guy? Have we, the audience, ever been tricked by Pedro Pascal’s daddy charm into rooting for a monster?
The only way to reach the opposite conclusion is to be hopelessly sentimental about everything. And as Marlene points out, Ellie’s willingness to sacrifice herself for that greater good makes Joel’s behavior even worse.
That said, I think both the game and the show do a good job of threading the needle while they don’t. defense Joel’s action explain they. By the time we get to these final scenes, we understand how and why a very broken Joel essentially sacrifices humanity for this girl he met relatively recently. You don’t have to agree to it to understand it. I think it’s an amazing narrative feat.
