This is a recap and review of the second episode of the second season of HBO’s The Last of Us. Expect spoilers for season 1 and game 1 (and the episode itself, of course), but also some references to and comments about the second game (though without spoilers).
In the second episode of the second season — titled Through the Valley (for reasons that I’ll get to in just a moment) — the Jackson settlement gets attacked by a horde of infected. Meanwhile, Joel (played by Pedro Pascal) and Dina (played by Isabela Merced) run into someone in need of saving, and, elsewhere, Jesse (played by Young Mazino) and Ellie (played by Bella Ramsey) explore Eugene’s secret hideout. Through the Valley was written by Craig Mazin (Chernobyl) and directed by Mark Mylod (Succession, Game of Thrones, The Menu).
“I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,”
Because of the nature of this episode and the, for some, shock twist it includes, I should probably get into spoilers immediately rather than burying the lede. So, let’s get to it. At the end of this episode, Joel Miller is dead, and, other than through potential flashbacks or hallucinations in future episodes (my lips are sealed, you’ll have to play the game or wait and watch future episodes to find out), Pedro Pascal’s time on the show is largely over. It’s a big blow, but it is also taken straight from the game. The decision to off the original game’s lead very early in the follow-up was a controversial one, which a toxic vocal minority didn’t take well. In fact, the game (similarly to some episodes of the show) was subsequently review-bombed by this group. It’s important to note, however, that, many of these people never actually played the game, as images of the cutscene in which he dies were leaked by a hacker prior to the release of the game, meaning that a lot of genuine fans of the games, like myself, were spoiled. I hope TV-first viewers didn’t share that fate, but I have seen some people ‘in the know’ being a little bit too haphazard with their spoilery references to golf clubs and whatnot.
Just like how this was a hard blow to fans of the games (heck, Joel is still my PlayStation avatar), this will likely also be tough for TV-first viewers. It’s essentially The Last of Us‘ version of the Game of Thrones Ned Stark death. But, like that show and its shocking death scene, The Last of Us is far from over, and this event should have massive consequences for the attitude and approach that certain characters take in the coming episodes. Nonetheless, losing a star like Pedro Pascal will be a difficult pill to swallow for the TV-first viewers, and a lot of pressure rests on Bella Ramsey, Kaitlyn Dever, Gabriel Luna, Isabela Merced, and the writers to make sure the TV-series does as good of a job continuing the narrative as the game did.
Oh, and what about that episode title? Well, it is a reference to the song of the same name by the artist Shawn James. In the episode, we actually hear a cover of the song sung by Ashley Johnson (who voiced/played Ellie in the game and played Ellie’s mother in season one) as the episode comes to an end. Not only is it a strong musical note to end the episode on, but it is also a direct reference to one of the trailers for the video game. In the very first announcement trailer for the second game (which was heavily discussed at the time for what it may or may not have deliberately teased), we see and hear Ellie play this song on her guitar. Since we got to hear this song on the show, I’m hopeful that we’ll still get to hear the song that the first episode title referenced somehow, even though the timeline changes mean it would have to be non-diegetic in the show.
Let’s now have a closer look at the major events in the A and B-stories.
Joel comes face to face with Abby
The episode itself opens with Abby (played by Kaitlyn Dever) as she is having a dream in which she is confronted by herself telling her not to go inside the operating room where Ellie was supposed to have her operation and where, as the episode later reveals, Abby’s father was killed by Joel. It’s the one moment of violence motivating her to do what she does later in the episode, but her conversation with herself in the dream also emphasizes that it’s something deeply traumatic to her, of course. Something she can’t move past, but also something that she wishes she hadn’t actually seen. Maybe then it would’ve been different. But alas, here we are.
Joel is absent for much of the episode, actually, as we later learn he and Dina went on patrol. This reveal is key for a variety of reasons. We learn this moments after Ellie tells Jesse that, despite everything, he’ll always be her Joel. This is an important indication that Ellie wanted to talk to Joel, and that she was trying to — she wanted to — work past the incident that had made their relationship strained. She wanted them to be good again. But the other reason why the fact that Joel went out with Dina in the show is important is that this reshuffling of the patrol participants is the one major change to the A-plot in this episode. In the game, Tommy is with Joel while Dina is with Ellie. There’s a direct show-reason for Tommy staying in Jackson, which I’ll get to later, but, moreover, him being with Dina means that her motivation for what comes next (and her knowledge about what had happened — e.g. her noticing the W.L.F. logo) changes drastically. This is a change that makes a lot of sense for the narrative. That said, it also means that we don’t get to see Ellie and Dina explore Eugene’s weed outpost together, which is a sequence in the game that has some pivotal scenes.
“I saved her,” Joel tearfully told Catherine O’Hara’s Gail about his and Ellie’s relationship. Well, this time around, he also proclaims that he saved a young woman’s life, only this time it’s the one person in the world who most wants to see him dead. No good deed goes unpunished, he must’ve thought. Although Dina’s presence and certain details about how Ellie reacts to Joel’s death are changed for the show (I don’t believe we see her crawl to him — like she’s Simba and he’s Mufasa — in the game, but it’s a heartbreaking image that the show does a good job of executing), Joel’s torture and death sequence is, more or less, straight from the game (although lines of dialogue are changed partially so as to line-up with the structural changes from last episode). It’s extremely brutal, and it fills you with shock, hate, anger, and so many emotions. It’s a well-acted moment from Dever, whose intensity does exactly what it was meant to, but it’s Bella Ramsey’s panicked reaction (pictured above) that is the performance the episode will be remembered for. The prosthetics and make-up departments, along with Pedro Pascal (who’s now had his head brutalized in death sequences in two different HBO shows), deserve a lot of praise because seeing Pedro’s Joel like that, twitching, brutalized, tortured, is done extremely well. Although he’s lying down on the ground and barely moving, there are subtle performance notes from Pascal that I found to be really effective. You could still feel him.
What comes next? Well, I won’t spoil anything, but one of the core narrative themes is that of a vicious cycle. As the saying goes, hate and vengeance-fueled violence is a vicious cycle. Joel was forever changed, further hardened, and made occasionally brutal by the death of his daughter, Sarah. Abby was clearly changed, hardened, and made occasionally brutal by the death of her father at the hands of Joel when she was only 19, and now Ellie faces similar emotional and attitudinal changes in the wake of Joel, her surrogate father.
Unlike the game, Tommy stays in Jackson
As I said, other than changing up the patrol participants, the A-plot is mostly the same as the game, with minor details or lines changed up. However, the B-plot is a show invention, and it makes good use of HBO’s budget. It’s a thrilling war sequence that definitely brings back memories of the great white walker battles in Game of Thrones. One key difference, though, is that said show had an ensemble cast with multiple people that we are vested in. I feel that this is the main reason why they opted to place Tommy in Jackson rather than with Joel, as Tommy is the closest thing to a key character in the show, other than Joel and Ellie.
That said, although the sequence features some really strong moments, e.g. explosions on the outside, the dogs attacking en masse, people watching in fear from the basement, and Tommy and Maria being separated, there really isn’t that much of a terrible feeling that someone we know well will meet their end. It’s the episode’s one weakness. Although at the same time, our emotional investment in the A-plot is definitely felt, as we all know what Joel is riding into with Abby, and perhaps that is enough. However, seeing Tommy go toe-to-toe with a bloater with only a flamethrower that’ll soon run out of firepower makes for great tension and suspense, and it is very similar to a kind of situation you could run into in the game. Another moment that I thought worked exceptionally well was the quick, blink and you’ll miss it, moment when an inhabitant of Jackson shows his bite mark and quietly accepts his fate as his neighbor fires a gun at him, putting him down. In another show, we might’ve seen someone hiding the bite mark and fighting back, but not here.
Overall thoughts
This was always going to be a tough episode to pull off due to the emotional blow and the moment of violence that it is all building up to. It makes for a tough and shocking moment of television, which HBO is no stranger to. It’s its Ned Stark-moment, it’s its Red Wedding-moment, and I, honestly, think they do a good job being (mostly) faithful to the horrifying events of the game, while, at the same time, injecting the show with an almost video game-level esque and cinematic battle sequence that puts the HBO budget to good use. It’s a devastating showpiece episode that will live long in memory with excellent cinematography, cinematic action, and moving performances. It’ll be very interesting to see if the showrunners are up for the challenge of taking the narrative to the next level without its central star, which the video game managed to do with an extremely engrossing narrative.
A
– Recap and review written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.
I'm Jeffrey Rex 