It’s been more than two years since the end of The Last of Us Season One, and even longer for the show’s two weary postapocalyptic heroes: taciturn Joel (Pedro Pascal) and his surrogate daughter Ellie (Bella Ramsey). When the second season begins, a lot has happened between the two, and they’re going through a rough patch. They’re not talking much, and spending more time with the other residents of the walled community of Jackson, Wyoming, than with one another.
“But I’m still me, he’s still Joel, and nothing’s ever going to change that, ever,” Ellie insists.
What The Last of Us Season Two presupposes is, maybe something is going to change that? And not entirely to the series’ benefit.
The HBO drama’s first season was a miracle. It was an adaptation of a beloved video game that managed to function as a compelling character study. It had action that evoked the idea of gameplay without leaving the viewer feeling bored that they can’t control what the heroes do to survive an attack from the zombie-like “infected.” It offered Easter eggs for fans of the game, but didn’t treat the game as required reading for non-gamers. And it featured a pair of spectacular performances by Pascal and Ramsey. It disproved the idea that you can’t make great art out of material from a game.
The season was also relatively compact. Even though the story took Ellie and Joel from Boston all the way to Salt Lake City, with many detours along the way, its concern was almost always about the two of them. The one significant departure — the acclaimed third episode, an improbable postapocalyptic love story between two of Joel’s friends — was also primarily a duet. No matter where Ellie and Joel traveled, no matter how many monsters they faced — whether the infected or completely human kind — the show was always about their relationship, and how each of them helped lift the other out of past traumas. Pascal and Ramsay had the kind of chemistry most productions couldn’t even dream of. Within the narrative of the show, Ellie’s superpower is that, through a fluke of when and how she was born, she is immune to the cordyceps infection that everyone else gets when bitten by one of those unholy mushroom-styled creatures. Bella Ramsey’s superpower, though, is how they let all of Ellie’s emotions flow out with such force, with Ellie’s adoration of Joel hitting just as hard as her rage over the various horrors she endures.
The first season was fairly faithful to the game. So is the second, which covers roughly the first half of The Last of Us 2 game. (Both are made in collaboration between TV veteran Craig Mazin and one of the game’s creators, Neil Druckmann.) This means much less of Ellie and Joel together, a more expansive supporting cast, and a storyline that’s twistier in what happens, why, and how we should feel about it.
That kind of ambition, rather than simply resting on the laurels of what worked last time, is usually to be commended. There’s some excellent material we get as a result of this change in focus, particularly in new supporting players Kaitlyn Dever, Isabela Merced, and Catherine O’Hara. Ramsey is still riveting playing Ellie as an open wound, and Pascal still has some lovely moments as Joel struggles to reconnect with Ellie. And when the series wants to pump up the spectacle, it does it with a level of scale and execution that at times rivals Game of Thrones.
But there are also some odd issues with pacing and point of view. The season ends on a frustrating note. And whenever we get a glimpse of, or reference to, Ellie and Joel hanging out in better times, it’s hard not to wish that the show was still primarily about the two of them, rather than all these other people and problems.
Liane Hentscher/HBO
The season opens by rewinding to the immediate aftermath of events in the Season One finale, where Joel massacred a hospital full of people who hoped to use an unconscious Ellie to mass-produce a cure for cordyceps — which Joel objected to upon learning that Ellie would die in the process. Joel lies to her about what happened, she eyes him suspiciously, and then we shift to seeing the survivors of this slaughter — led by Abby (Dever) — vowing to get revenge on Joel by any means necessary.
Then it is five years later. The two are now fixtures in the Jackson community, which is led by Joel’s sister-in-law Maria (Rutina Wesley). A former contractor, Joel is helping to expand the town to accommodate more refugees. Ellie is now a regular on patrols, often paired with either Joel’s brother Tommy (Gabriel Luna) or her best friend (and not-so-secret crush) Dina (Merced). Life isn’t perfect, but it’s relatively secure and calm compared to the outside world. Joel even has time for regular therapy sessions with the town’s resident psychoanalyst/alcoholic Gail (O’Hara), in an effort to reconcile with Ellie.
This paradise can only last so long in such a reality — and in a show that is not about to radically morph into a postapocalyptic Gilmore Girls. Abby’s group is still out there, as are all the remaining infected, and other human factions still to be introduced. Soon there is violence and terror, and then arguments over how to respond to that, and then Ellie being as headstrong as always, consequences be damned.
The new characters are well-used, as are ones with expanded roles like Tommy and Maria. Dever is perhaps better known for comedies like Booksmart or the Tim Allen sitcom Last Man Standing, but between Justified, Unbelievable, and Dopesick, she has a remarkable dramatic resume, too. Though a few years older than Ramsey, she’s roughly the same size, and capable of the same level of volcanic rage. Abby’s a different physical type in the game, but the show treats her as Dark Ellie — which is saying something when you consider how dark the actual Ellie is to begin with. Between this largely dramatic performance and her role in Apple’s The Studio, Catherine O’Hara is showing she can be just as interesting when playing relatively understated characters than when she’s going full Moira Rose from Schitt’s Creek. As Ramsey’s primary scene partner for a good chunk of the season, Merced has an almost impossible act to follow, but she and the writers make Dina and her journey compelling, too.
Liane Hentscher/HBO
But there also feels like exactly the wrong amount of several other new characters, notably Jeffrey Wright as Isaac, leader of a group of survivors based in Seattle. We get brief glimpses here and there to establish some of what’s going on that Ellie doesn’t know about. But it’s never enough to make those people or their problems fully come to life. The finale suggests that the third season will deal much more with that side of things, but in a way suggesting this season might have been better off only showing things that the characters from Jackson see and know about.
Mostly, though, it’s the lack of Ellie and Joel that keeps the season, while still strong overall, from hitting the heights of that first year. In the style of the Bill/Frank romance that won Nick Offerman a guest actor Emmy for the first season, there’s an episode that reveals much of what Joel and Ellie were up to during that five-year gap. It’s a helpful change of pace for a season where a good chunk of the episodes cover a span of only a few days. And it’s a superb showcase for Pascal and Ramsey — maybe too superb. As good as all the newbies are, as tense and scary and thrilling as many of the set pieces are, it’s hard to come away from the flashback episode wanting anything other than as much of those two characters in close proximity as possible.
This is the hand that Druckmann dealt himself when the second game was written, though. The Last of Us plays that hand as well as it can, particularly in the way it explores cycles of abuse and trauma, and how hurt people hurt people. But as a genre show that’s always prioritized interpersonal relationships over blood and guts, it’s disappointing that there’s so little of its most potent relationship of all.
Season Two of The Last of Us premieres April 13 on HBO and Max, with episodes releasing weekly. I’ve seen all seven episodes.
