[Beware of spoilers ahead for both The Last of Us video game and TV show.]
While it’s hardly news by now to say that HBO’s video game adaptation has taken the world by storm as its viewership numbers continue to grow on a weekly basis, its fourth episode was released last night and has continued the show’s trend of excellent television paired with some of the best adaptation work I have ever seen.
The show’s first episode does a spectacular job of setting the tone for the show moving forward, showcasing HBO’s utter belief in its latest critical and commercial darling with a high budget, and an even higher standard of writing, acting and directing. What the episode proved more than anything, however, is that the show deviates from the source material only when showrunners Craig Mazin and Neill Druckmann (who also co-created the video game) deem it necessary for the betterment of its storytelling through the medium of television, while still maintaining the video game’s spirit and even much of its scenes and dialogue, marrying the two approaches in a manner I don’t think I have ever quite seen before.
When episode 2 rolled around, I largely knew what to expect, despite the fact that the first episode strived to make it seem as though Anna Torv’s Tess was going to hang around a little longer than she actually does. Yet Mazin, Druckmann and their creative team managed to find new ways to surprise us, even when the episode is the closest the show has been to the source material thus far. This is barring the opening scene, which feels like a chilling extension of the pilot’s own intro, goes a long way in better explaining the frightening extent of the fungus’ spread and how they attempted to curtail it with bombs, consequently offering effective context as to why the cities were so badly destroyed, and just in time for Joel, Tess and Ellie’s into the tilted skyscraper, which is one of the videogame’s most iconic images. One of the most notable changes to the franchise’s lore is how they depict the infected as having something of a hive mind, where if you so much as step in the wrong piece of fungus, it could alert the infected to your presence, even from a significant enough distance. Tess’ death was also slightly altered, but once again in a manner more heroically befitting of the character from a TV perspective, as she blows herself up in order to save Joel and Ellie after having been bitten herself.
However emotional that scene was, nothing could have prepared us – both fans of the game and newcomers alike – for episode three, “Long, Long Time”. There had been much hype around the episode prior to its release, with many critics deeming it the best episode of the season, and it certainly did not disappoint. This episode marks the most significant deviation from the source material thus far, but once again it is done purely in service of the narrative for a television setting, and after an episode that turned countless viewers into blubbering messes, one cannot argue with the results. Sure, it’s a bottle episode, but one that any show should strive for dramatically, regardless of its budget, and it is driven in no small part by the absolutely stellar performances from Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett. For a show about people surviving in a zombie apocalypse twenty years on, to have the balls to take a step back and tell one of the most endearing love stories in recent memory is a lesson many should learn from Mazin and Druckmann. This will likely go down as the best episode of the season, and is not only a sure thing for being named one of the best episodes of television this year, but will likely go down as one of the greatest hours of television ever.
Finally, we have the latest episode, which refocused on Joel and Ellie after having left Bill and Frank’s compound with supplies and a car. Here, we find the show once again easing back into the beats of the video game, even incorporating Ellie’s reading of a delightful book of puns, right down to her joking about the pages of Bill’s men’s porno magazine sticking together. As breath-taking as the previous episode’s deviation from the source material was, it is somewhat comforting to see the show matching the game almost beat-for-beat once again, before they are forced to crash into a laundromat by ambushers, a scene fans of the game were anticipating with bated breath. Though, yet again we see Mazin and Druckmann use another storyline from the game, in this case, the tragic tale of Henry and Sam and merge it into this incident while introducing an extra layer to it through the introduction of Melanie Lynskey’s character, who is an original creation maliciously seeking the brothers. It is yet another instance of clever adaptation, while never losing focus on Joel and Ellie, who certainly needed to begin bonding to avoid any pacing issues. They did just that through Joel’s physical and emotional protection of Ellie, as well as her so-bad-they’re-good jokes. The ending has been left at the perfect turning point, being held at gunpoint by Henry and Sam, and it will be interesting to see how they have changed their story, whilst marching toward the brothers’ tragically inevitable demise.
Episode 5 of The Last of Us will air on Crave this Friday, February 10th, to avoid competing with the Super Bowl on Sunday.