When Naughty Dog released The Last of Us in 2013 for the PlayStation 3 it redefined action gaming and propelled the quality of storytelling in videogames so far forwards that it arguably became comparable to films and TV for the first time ever. Receiving a near perfect critical reception, it went on to win hundreds of Game of the Year awards from various gaming news outlets, became one of the best selling games on the PlayStation 3, and was re-released on the PlayStation 4 a year later to even greater sales success. With all this success, as well as an equally successful sequel (though divisive among the fanbase), demands were made to see Naughty Dog’s post-apocalyptic opus be given the big screen treatment. With Sony moving to translate many of its videogame properties into films, The Last of Us seemed like a natural choice, though many expressed concerns that the game is already so cinematic that it would be largely moot in translating that to a film or TV.
But following a successful deal with HBO, The Last of Us would indeed see its reach expand from the gaming medium and into TV. With a tight-lipped production, but the promise that the source material would be left largely unchanged, fans seemed hopeful that HBO would get it right.
With the season finale behind us, did The Last of Us live up to the lofty legacy of the game, or did it lose something in its transition to a non-interactive medium?
In 2003 the world was ravaged by an evolved form of the Cordyceps fungus, turning infected humans feral and aggressive. Twenty years later and Joel (Pedro Pascal) is a smuggler living in the Boston Quarantine Zone. When a car battery is stolen from him by Marlene (Merle Dandridge), the leader of the freedom fighter/terrorist group the Fireflies, Joel and his partner Tess (Anna Torv) are tasked with smuggling a fourteen-year-old girl, Ellie (Bella Ramsey), out of the zone with the promise of a working truck as payment so that Joel may search for his missing brother, Tommy (Gabriel Luna), a former Firefly.
When the job doesn’t go as planned Joel and Ellie must journey across America on foot in search of Tommy and the Fireflies, in the hope that they may be able to reverse engineer a cure for Cordyceps from Ellie who appears to be resistant to the infection.
But following a successful deal with HBO, The Last of Us would indeed see its reach expand from the gaming medium and into TV. With a tight-lipped production, but the promise that the source material would be left largely unchanged, fans seemed hopeful that HBO would get it right.
With the season finale behind us, did The Last of Us live up to the lofty legacy of the game, or did it lose something in its transition to a non-interactive medium?
In 2003 the world was ravaged by an evolved form of the Cordyceps fungus, turning infected humans feral and aggressive. Twenty years later and Joel (Pedro Pascal) is a smuggler living in the Boston Quarantine Zone. When a car battery is stolen from him by Marlene (Merle Dandridge), the leader of the freedom fighter/terrorist group the Fireflies, Joel and his partner Tess (Anna Torv) are tasked with smuggling a fourteen-year-old girl, Ellie (Bella Ramsey), out of the zone with the promise of a working truck as payment so that Joel may search for his missing brother, Tommy (Gabriel Luna), a former Firefly.
When the job doesn’t go as planned Joel and Ellie must journey across America on foot in search of Tommy and the Fireflies, in the hope that they may be able to reverse engineer a cure for Cordyceps from Ellie who appears to be resistant to the infection.
When showrunners Craig Mazin & Neil Druckmann promised that they would leave the story largely untouched, they weren’t kidding. This is about as faithful an adaptation as could possibly be done, whilst also switching things up enough to work for a non-interactive medium. There have been small omissions here and there, but these removals were of components that don’t add much to the story, and have been replaced by expansions of various other aspects of the story. If you’ve played the game then you’ll already know everything that happens, beat for beat, but you’ll be treated to some considerably more fleshed out supporting characters rather than extended action sequences in every episode, and that mostly works out pretty well.
I won’t talk too deeply about the story, as I’ve already got an in-depth review of the game where I say everything I really want to on that, but here I’m going to focus on the supporting characters that get more depth, and whether it works as well as their videogame counterparts.
First up are Bill (Nick Offerman), and Frank (Murray Bertlett). In the game, Bill accompanies Joel & Ellie for a short while to help get them a working car because Bill ‘owes Joel a favour’. Frank isn’t a character you meet as such, because you find his dead body following a suicide. This is a moment for Bill to reflect on losing the one person he could rely on in the apocalypse, and a bonding moment for Joel and Ellie.
In the show however, Bill & Frank have an entire episode dedicated to them, almost devoid of other characters aside from a brief appearance from Joel, Tess, and Ellie. The episode, titled ‘Long, Long Time’, is without a doubt one of the best episodes of TV I have ever seen. It moved me to tears in a way that I have never experienced before, and as an isolated hour of television is simply incredible. I loved what was done with them here, and I found it considerably better than how the scenario played out in the game. It worked much better like this for a non-interactive experience, rather than having Bill, Joel, and Ellie travel through an infected school and fight off assailants; plus the inclusion of Frank as an actual character, and seeing how his and Bill’s relationship tracks over almost twenty years is very moving. Plus how things end up is totally different to what happens in the game so it is one of the few rare instances of the show doing something original.
Next is Henry (Lamar Johnson) and Sam (Keivonn Montral Woodard). In the game Joel & Ellie meet these brothers in the former Pittsburgh Quarantine Zone whilst both pairs are being hunted by the raiders who have overtaken the QZ. They work together to escape the savages that want nothing more than to loot their corpses for anything useful, and it all comes to a boil in a three-way battle between raiders, infected, and our survivors. In the show there’s some contextual changes to the situation, but it plays out almost the same way. The setting changes from Pittsburgh to Kansas City, the raiders have been swapped for the QZ citizens who have overthrown a corrupt FEDRA (the military police who run the QZ’s), and Henry is a FEDRA informant who is being hunted by the QZ citizens.
On paper it sounds like a great change as it adds so much more depth to the situation and shines a light on how the QZ’s were never a perfect system and what can happen when the citizens revolt against the leadership. It also gives Henry a backstory beyond just wandering around with his little brother trying to survive. Woodard is also deaf, and that is incorporated into the character of Sam. So, all this sound like improvements that add a lot of depth, but unfortunately it all feels rushed and none of it is given a decent amount of time to develop.
We don’t get to see the FEDRA corruption, nor the downfall of the QZ, so the rebellion leader Kathleen (Melanie Lynskey) just seems irrational and angry, and the whole thing with Henry being a FEDRA informant is treated as a personal vendetta for her rather than painting him out to be a morally complex character. Sam's disability also isn't incorporated in a way that made any sense highlighting it in the first place. Not that having a deaf character should be a gimmick of some kind, but we don't get to see how Sam had adapted to surviving without his sense of hearing in the same way that A Quiet Place for example does for one of its characters. It’s a bit of a mess honestly, and it needed an extra episode and some tweaking to actually land the way I think that Mazin & Druckmann wanted it to.
I won’t talk too deeply about the story, as I’ve already got an in-depth review of the game where I say everything I really want to on that, but here I’m going to focus on the supporting characters that get more depth, and whether it works as well as their videogame counterparts.
First up are Bill (Nick Offerman), and Frank (Murray Bertlett). In the game, Bill accompanies Joel & Ellie for a short while to help get them a working car because Bill ‘owes Joel a favour’. Frank isn’t a character you meet as such, because you find his dead body following a suicide. This is a moment for Bill to reflect on losing the one person he could rely on in the apocalypse, and a bonding moment for Joel and Ellie.
In the show however, Bill & Frank have an entire episode dedicated to them, almost devoid of other characters aside from a brief appearance from Joel, Tess, and Ellie. The episode, titled ‘Long, Long Time’, is without a doubt one of the best episodes of TV I have ever seen. It moved me to tears in a way that I have never experienced before, and as an isolated hour of television is simply incredible. I loved what was done with them here, and I found it considerably better than how the scenario played out in the game. It worked much better like this for a non-interactive experience, rather than having Bill, Joel, and Ellie travel through an infected school and fight off assailants; plus the inclusion of Frank as an actual character, and seeing how his and Bill’s relationship tracks over almost twenty years is very moving. Plus how things end up is totally different to what happens in the game so it is one of the few rare instances of the show doing something original.
Next is Henry (Lamar Johnson) and Sam (Keivonn Montral Woodard). In the game Joel & Ellie meet these brothers in the former Pittsburgh Quarantine Zone whilst both pairs are being hunted by the raiders who have overtaken the QZ. They work together to escape the savages that want nothing more than to loot their corpses for anything useful, and it all comes to a boil in a three-way battle between raiders, infected, and our survivors. In the show there’s some contextual changes to the situation, but it plays out almost the same way. The setting changes from Pittsburgh to Kansas City, the raiders have been swapped for the QZ citizens who have overthrown a corrupt FEDRA (the military police who run the QZ’s), and Henry is a FEDRA informant who is being hunted by the QZ citizens.
On paper it sounds like a great change as it adds so much more depth to the situation and shines a light on how the QZ’s were never a perfect system and what can happen when the citizens revolt against the leadership. It also gives Henry a backstory beyond just wandering around with his little brother trying to survive. Woodard is also deaf, and that is incorporated into the character of Sam. So, all this sound like improvements that add a lot of depth, but unfortunately it all feels rushed and none of it is given a decent amount of time to develop.
We don’t get to see the FEDRA corruption, nor the downfall of the QZ, so the rebellion leader Kathleen (Melanie Lynskey) just seems irrational and angry, and the whole thing with Henry being a FEDRA informant is treated as a personal vendetta for her rather than painting him out to be a morally complex character. Sam's disability also isn't incorporated in a way that made any sense highlighting it in the first place. Not that having a deaf character should be a gimmick of some kind, but we don't get to see how Sam had adapted to surviving without his sense of hearing in the same way that A Quiet Place for example does for one of its characters. It’s a bit of a mess honestly, and it needed an extra episode and some tweaking to actually land the way I think that Mazin & Druckmann wanted it to.
Finally, there’s David (Scott Shepherd) and his community. In the game this community have turned to cannibalism because they have been unable to find food. They hunt anyone who comes nearby, and they eat them. David takes a shine to Ellie because of her hunting and survival skills, but clearly also wants to start a sexual relationship with her despite her only being a child. In the show, David is feeding the community human meat without them knowing (sometimes their own citizens), because he doesn’t want to admit to them that he’s lost control of the situation and can’t feed them. He sees a potential leader in Ellie, and wants her to take over from him, and again makes sexual advances.
I straight up don’t like this one as much as in the game, even in concept. This stage in the game is designed to showcase just how desperate some communities have become, and how willing they are to sacrifice their own humanity just to keep living. David is despicable, he knows what he is doing is morally wrong, but he doesn’t care because he can keep living, and his followers similarly don’t mind.
In the show it framed David as a flawed saviour. He wants to do good but he’s fighting a losing battle and doing whatever he can to stop the ship from inevitably sinking. The community follow him for no other reason than they lack the drive to survive of their own accord, and he keeps the truth from them in the fear that they may see him as a monster. It just doesn’t add up, and because his harsh edges are being smoothed down to create a character that’s not just objectively evil it means that the whole message of people willing to lose their humanity to survive is lost.
Pascal and Ramsey were excellent choices for the casting of Joel & Ellie. Whilst Pascal has proved himself time and again as the man of few words, Ramsey I had to admit I was somewhat hesitant over when it was announced that she would be playing Ellie. Thankfully though she brings a lot to the table, and I like that Ellie is generally less vulgar in the show than she was in the original game. Crucially, she doesn’t lose the attitude needed for that character, but she does have a more childlike quality to her in the show that Ramsey plays into well.
I straight up don’t like this one as much as in the game, even in concept. This stage in the game is designed to showcase just how desperate some communities have become, and how willing they are to sacrifice their own humanity just to keep living. David is despicable, he knows what he is doing is morally wrong, but he doesn’t care because he can keep living, and his followers similarly don’t mind.
In the show it framed David as a flawed saviour. He wants to do good but he’s fighting a losing battle and doing whatever he can to stop the ship from inevitably sinking. The community follow him for no other reason than they lack the drive to survive of their own accord, and he keeps the truth from them in the fear that they may see him as a monster. It just doesn’t add up, and because his harsh edges are being smoothed down to create a character that’s not just objectively evil it means that the whole message of people willing to lose their humanity to survive is lost.
Pascal and Ramsey were excellent choices for the casting of Joel & Ellie. Whilst Pascal has proved himself time and again as the man of few words, Ramsey I had to admit I was somewhat hesitant over when it was announced that she would be playing Ellie. Thankfully though she brings a lot to the table, and I like that Ellie is generally less vulgar in the show than she was in the original game. Crucially, she doesn’t lose the attitude needed for that character, but she does have a more childlike quality to her in the show that Ramsey plays into well.
There are two things that stand out with the show that bug me though, and this is beyond comparisons to the game, its just what I noticed. The first, and most important out of the two I feel, is how fast the show moves through things. I felt like it needed to be longer, especially because with the nature of the story being a journey across America, Joel and Ellie don’t stay with the side characters for long, so when you only get an episode, sometimes even less, with these seemingly important characters, things just move too fast. More time needed to be spent building a relationship of some kind, in the game this is done interactively so the limited time didn’t feel so limited because you were actually doing things with them, the show therefore needs to have more scenes that allow for bonds to be built or broken accordingly.
The second thing is where are all the infected? This is a post-apocalyptic world where the majority of humanity has been turned into mushroom zombies, and yet I think in the entire season there are maybe five scenes with infected? I understand that to stop the show being repetitive action sequences they’re used sparingly, but you actually kind of forget that they’re there at all most of the time. There’s also no explanation on Episode Five’s ‘Bloater’, the big infected that’s immune to gunfire. It’s the only one we see all season, and there’s no query from any of the characters as to why that single infected is different to the rest, which is very important in understanding how the infection mutates over time.
I think the best summary I have heard of The Last of Us so far is that the game is widely hailed as the best story in all of gaming, but nobody will be saying that The Last of Us has the best story in all of TV. It’s not inferior to the game, in a lot of ways it’s actually better, but it lacks the depth that other made for TV stories afford to characters or places. It’s not long enough, it doesn’t allow certain elements to breathe the way they need to, and the result can at times feel rushed. Whilst some elements of this review do seem overly negative, I don’t mean to say that the show is bad. It’s just different from the story I already know, and sometimes it works for me and sometimes it doesn’t. The Last of Us is a great show, and I think it could be a contender for one of the best shows of 2023. I’m really excited to see how the sequel gets adapted in future seasons, and from a technical perspective everything about the show is fantastic.
The second thing is where are all the infected? This is a post-apocalyptic world where the majority of humanity has been turned into mushroom zombies, and yet I think in the entire season there are maybe five scenes with infected? I understand that to stop the show being repetitive action sequences they’re used sparingly, but you actually kind of forget that they’re there at all most of the time. There’s also no explanation on Episode Five’s ‘Bloater’, the big infected that’s immune to gunfire. It’s the only one we see all season, and there’s no query from any of the characters as to why that single infected is different to the rest, which is very important in understanding how the infection mutates over time.
I think the best summary I have heard of The Last of Us so far is that the game is widely hailed as the best story in all of gaming, but nobody will be saying that The Last of Us has the best story in all of TV. It’s not inferior to the game, in a lot of ways it’s actually better, but it lacks the depth that other made for TV stories afford to characters or places. It’s not long enough, it doesn’t allow certain elements to breathe the way they need to, and the result can at times feel rushed. Whilst some elements of this review do seem overly negative, I don’t mean to say that the show is bad. It’s just different from the story I already know, and sometimes it works for me and sometimes it doesn’t. The Last of Us is a great show, and I think it could be a contender for one of the best shows of 2023. I’m really excited to see how the sequel gets adapted in future seasons, and from a technical perspective everything about the show is fantastic.