“The Last of Us” is back. With the hit show’s first season, HBO delivered the best adaptation of a video game ever made, a heart-shattering examination of humanity (and inhumanity) during a zombielike apocalypse. The show’s second season premieres April 13 on HBO — and, without spoiling anything, Seattle should play a major role.
The second season of “The Last of Us,” which blends creative liberty and faithful re-creation of its source material, will adapt a portion of 2020’s gut-wrenching The Last of Us Part II, one of the best video games ever. Because that game follows its protagonists on a revenge tour through Seattle — drawing a jagged, bloody line between vengeance and justice, showing that some stories have no hero — it’s likely the Emerald City will backdrop the action.
Ahead of the premiere, Seattle Times staffers Dominic Baez and Trevor Lenzmeier — editors for TV and the features department, respectively, and massive “Last of Us” fans — discussed what they love about the games and the show’s first season, what they’re looking forward to in Season 2 and how Seattle factors into it all.
Editor’s note: Spoilers for Season 2 will not be mentioned outright, but we will discuss details from the video game upon which the season is partially based. So: Beware, viewers, as hints (and infected) are lurking, not to mention spoilers from 2023’s first season.
Last time on “The Last of Us”
Trevor Lenzmeier: So, Dom, what happened in Season 1? How did we get here?
Dominic Baez: So, so violently. “The Last of Us” follows jaded smuggler Joel (a pitch-perfect Pedro Pascal) and capricious teen Ellie (a delightfully foul-mouthed Bella Ramsey) as the makeshift family journeys across America after a fungal infection destroys human civilization and turns people into “monsters.” (The way the fungus creeps out of mouths … pure nightmare fuel.)
Joel must deliver Ellie, who is immune to the infection, to a hospital where doctors are searching for a cure. The world has descended into chaos, with far more monsters than just the infected: cannibals, murderers and many, many people struggling to survive. In a desperate act of selfish love at the end of Season 1, Joel makes a world-altering choice to protect Ellie, the surrogate daughter he can’t bear to lose. That fateful decision sets in motion the events of Season 2.
TL: Now, I realize this might sound unsettling …
DB: “The Last of Us” is rarely pleasant. It’s brutal and cruel, smothered in loss and grief. But there’s light here, too: Ellie’s book of puns, Joel offering to teach her guitar, a couple finding peace with each other amid the carnage. (“Long, Long Time” is among the best TV episodes I’ve ever seen, and it’s just two people in love living day by day. That episode took an Easter egg from the game and turned it into a masterpiece.) The infected are horrifying, but the real heart of the show is in the smaller moments, when Joel and Ellie aren’t stabbing monsters in the neck.
TL: One of my favorite “take a deep breath” moments of Season 1 shows Joel and Ellie near the research hospital in Salt Lake City, when a downtrodden Ellie comes face-to-face with a giraffe. The understated, beautiful scene follows a near-death experience, and while Joel processes his own trauma and Ellie’s, he manages to let his guard down to revel in a surreal silver lining: petting a giraffe like a giant dog.
DB: Scenes like that make the show so great — and remind us just how phenomenal the game is, too. With its perfect pacing, nuanced narrative and gruesome action sequences, developer Naughty Dog raised the bar for single-player, narrative-heavy action-adventure games.
TL: The Last of Us and Naughty Dog’s earlier Uncharted series changed how I see video games: the stories, the characters, the visuals. Now, to be clear, I also love a good zombie kill. In Season 1, when Joel and Ellie are trying to escape Kansas City and must fend off a deceptively brutal warlord, her troops, scores of infected and the biggest, baddest, most bloated zombie we’ve seen yet … my pulse is still racing.
DB: Don’t forget the pulsing ground moment! It still gives me shivers watching that horde of infected rise from the earth like an exploding pustule — and equally brutal in its violence.
TL: Speaking of violence … it’s fair to say that protagonists from the first game, like Ellie, are not necessarily “heroes” in the second game, right?
DB: There are no “heroes” in Part II, and I’m not expecting that to change in Season 2. The game is a wildly depressing dive into the self-inflicted wounds that come with blind revenge, of what grief and regret do to the soul.
TL: Morality in this series is never black and white; it’s more blood-soaked shades of gray. That blurred line between heroes and villains alienated some fans of the game — who were forced to play as the presumed antagonist in the sequel. Not everybody liked looking into that mirror.
Next season on “The Last of Us”
TL: Part II came out June 19, 2020, about eight months after I moved to Seattle. Playing the sequel was a thrilling (if a bit on-the-nose) form of escapism during the days of the pandemic lockdown as I worked remotely, holed up at home, and gradually, cautiously explored around town. I was living in the University District at the time, after all the UW students left in 2020; scenes of a deserted, spooky city showed up in my dreams, sometimes real, sometimes virtual.
DB: As a fresh Seattleite at that time, what locations stood out to you?
TL: I get the heebie-jeebies every time I walk by the Paramount Theatre (called the Pinnacle in the game) because of (redacted to avoid spoilers) in Part II. The Great Wheel and the aquarium on Seattle’s waterfront, where Ellie doubles down on her vengeful crusade … I have seen terrible video game violence in these places. I carry those scars with me.
DB: No scars for me, fortunately, since I didn’t live in Seattle at the time. (I can’t say the same for the protagonists, though.) But now I get visceral flashbacks to Part II every time I drive past the Seattle Convention Center. When I moved to Seattle, it was one of the first places I truly explored (and yeah, maybe I was a bit leery of running into an infected, but can you blame me?).
TL: So, looking ahead: What moment are you most excited for in Season 2, beyond the obvious answer that we will obviously not mention (possible spoilers)?
DB: Obviously. I’m actually curious to see where Season 2 ends, since we know Part II is being split across two seasons of TV. No spoilers, but there are moments in the video game that change everything: certain deaths, certain confrontations, certain realizations. I have to imagine the season will have a cliffhanger of sorts. (Secondarily, I want to see how the show splits screen time between its two leads, who frequently intersect but take two very different paths along the way.) You?
TL: I’m curious to see how Seattle shows up on screen. (Though it’s set here, the show was largely filmed in British Columbia.) As for the action itself … the scene at the aquarium (if it's in the show) is one I’ll need to watch alone before seeing it with friends, so I don’t spoil the shock with my reaction. Jaws. On. Floor.
And, of course, The Scene That Shall Not Be Named. When do you think that happens in the season? I swear that’s the last thing I’ll say about it.
DB: It’ll be the first or the last thing they do. I’m willing to bet on the latter, because that would be the ultimate cliffhanger.
(0) comments
Comments are now closed on this article.
Comments can only be made on article within the first 3 days of publication.