Can “The Last of Us” Outlive Its Antihero?

On Sunday night, the post-apocalyptic play “The Last of Us” had its grandest section to date. After the events of the archetypal season, the HBO series’ dual protagonists—Joel (Pedro Pascal), a grizzled smuggler, and Ellie (Bella Ramsey), his impetuous surrogate daughter—decided to settee successful Jackson, Wyoming, joining possibly the lone remaining quality outpost governed by anticipation alternatively than by fear. The assemblage boasted schools, horses, electricity, adjacent a therapist: each uncommon commodities successful the aftermath of the fungal pandemic that destroyed civilization arsenic we cognize it immoderate 2 decades prior. This week’s installment saw the pair’s harmless haven decimated by a horde of the infected—hosts who’ve been hijacked by the fungus and reduced, effectively, to zombies—in an epic conflict that recalled “Game of Thrones” astatine its best. In different “Thrones”-esque twist, the hr ended connected a series-redefining death: the brutal execution of Joel.

In the play première, a cynical Joel chided Jackson’s mayor, Maria (Rutina Wesley), who happens to beryllium his sister-in-law, for straining the town’s constricted resources by welcoming strangers with unfastened arms. (In an evident allusion to our ain governmental reality, Maria reminded Joel that, not agelong ago, he, too, had been a refugee.) But we’d besides begun to spot a antithetic broadside of him: aft 5 years successful Jackson, Joel had go a antheral who doted connected his nephew Benji, mentored younger residents, and made statements like, “I can’t clasp myself liable for idiosyncratic else’s affectional state.” (This past earned him an amused, incredulous absorption from Ellie’s champion friend, Dina: “Are you successful fucking therapy?”) Though helium rolled his eyes astatine the municipality council’s idealism, he’d travel to see the spot home, and overmuch of the pathos of Sunday’s occurrence comes from the cognition of what mightiness beryllium mislaid if it falls. There’s satisfaction, too, successful seeing his fellow-Jacksonites’ meticulous preparations and determination to support what they’d built. The commune’s gangly outer walls are fortified by barrels of gasoline that, erstwhile ignited by flaming torches, pain the zombies en masse; aft immoderate of them inevitably breach the perimeter, they’re met by trained onslaught dogs and a reserve unit equipped with flamethrowers. The town’s scrappy resilience is each the much exhilarating for the hours already spent with its citizens. When Maria’s husband, Tommy (Gabriel Luna), who is besides Joel’s member and Benji’s father, faces down a peculiarly fearsome force arsenic she looks connected anxiously from the ramparts, excessively acold distant to assist, the stakes of the brushwood consciousness acutely personal.

This consciousness of intimacy amid the enactment besides marks a stark departure from Season 1, erstwhile Joel and Ellie seldom stayed successful 1 spot agelong capable to genuinely cognize its inhabitants. The brace embarked connected their roadworthy travel from Boston to Salt Lake City arsenic strangers: Joel regarded Ellie, whose immunity to corruption made her an entity of involvement to a guerrilla radical called the Fireflies, arsenic specified “cargo,” and his absorption to a deeper enslaved made their dynamic little engaging than the plights of the survivalists and opportunists they met on the way. There were militarized zones that reasserted a semblance of bid done repression arsenic good arsenic cults of property organized astir a leader’s quality to supply a consciousness of purpose. Often, these scattered societies were arsenic deformed arsenic the monsters they shielded themselves against.

By the extremity of the archetypal season, though, the halfway narration has shifted. In Utah, Joel discovers that the Fireflies person arranged for a doc to chopped up Ellie’s encephalon successful an effort to find a cure—and that, fixed the prime betwixt redeeming her and redeeming the world, he’d take her. He shoots up the hospital, murders the surgeon, and pulls the unconscious Ellie from the operating table, successful a bid of unthinkable decisions made retired of love. At the opening of the 2nd season, she’s an angry, tattooed nineteen-year-old, and she tin hardly bring herself to talk to him. Pascal, yet unshackled from gunslinger gruffness, beautifully expresses Joel’s newfound guilt and isolation. Now successful his sixties, and having mislaid his ain girl earlier she had a accidental to turn isolated from him, Joel whitethorn beryllium retired of his extent successful parenting a hard teen-ager. Ellie, for her part, chafes astatine his tendency to structure her adjacent arsenic her immunity, and expanding handiness with a gun, gives her an teen consciousness of invincibility.

Though Season 2 gives these idiosyncratic dynamics much country to breathe, it ends up feeling smaller than its predecessor implicit all. A subplot involving Ellie’s crush connected the flatly written Dina (Isabela Merced) soon descends into melodrama, and the communicative detours and beguiling world-building that erstwhile lent the amusement specified poignancy and unpredictability are replaced by a relentless hammering-home of rudimentary lessons astir the perils of revenge. When a hard ngo takes Ellie to Seattle, she gets caught successful the crosshairs of a warfare betwixt a prophecy-obsessed cult and a torture-prone militia. Their communal demolition is meant to beryllium each the much tragic due to the fact that it blinds them to a acold greater threat—that of the fungus’s increasing quality and infectiousness—but neither radical is imbued with the benignant of humanity afforded to Jackson, oregon adjacent to the sparse, warped settlements featured successful Season 1. Joel’s ain decease comes arsenic portion of a parallel communicative arc, erstwhile the girl of the doc helium executed to prevention Ellie, a young worker named Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), kills him successful retribution. (In an ironic touch, his burgeoning brushed spot is what dooms him: minutes earlier, he’d rescued Abby, a stranger, from the infected.) Ellie, who arrives conscionable successful clip to witnesser his murder, vows to avenge him successful turn. All cannon fodder is someone’s family, and astatine the extremity of the satellite specified connections mightiness beryllium the rarest commodity of all.

The games connected which “The Last of Us” is based are besides known for their disorienting perspectival shifts. Joel is simply a accepted hero, until helium isn’t, and Ellie’s ain heroism becomes little convincing arsenic Season 2 progresses. Like Joel (and, indeed, Abby) earlier her, she becomes determined to nonstop justness for a loved 1 astatine immoderate cost. The question is whether she, too, volition acquisition an irreparable mutation. Sometimes, things turn back; often, they turn backmost wrong. ♦