(Editor’s Note: The following review contains spoilers for “The Last of US” Season 2, section 2, “Through the Valley.” For previous coverage, check out last week’s review.)
“There are only a few things, everyone agrees that it’s just damn wrong.”
Long before and well after abby (Kaitlyn Dever) Spit these words on Joel (Pedro Pascal), it is clear that they are not true. If the proverbial “everyone” was asked about what would happen – not only that Joel would be killed, but that he would be shot, tortured and beaten to death in front of Ellie (Bella Ramsey), a young woman who became his daughter – most would agree that it was wrong.
Most, but not all. Abby obviously doesn’t think it’s wrong. Five years ago, she promised to kill Joel, slowly, and she follows through, without hesitation and with scary conviction. Manny (Danny Ramirez) also seems to enjoy it. The rest of the WLF squad is not exactly enthusiastic – their cautious, pale faces betray their silent, silent approval – but they still allow it to happen. They know that it is wrong that the rest of us are looking at, and they are also powerless to stop it.
But what kills me about this moment – for a moment so sadly sad that I could barely look at it for this review – is that when Abby promises to kill Joel, when she stares into his defeated eyes with insatiable hatred, when she says: “There are just a few things, everyone agrees to just be damn wrong” … Joel nods. He agrees with her. He meets her gaze, hears her words and accepts her destiny. He dies and thinks he deserves to die, and it is a really miserable way to go.
“The last of us“Season 2, section 2, tells a story about two astonishing attacks. fumade) Surface from their snowy hiding place to add siege to the edenic community of our characters. Led by Power couple Tommy (Gabriel Luna) and Maria (Rutina Wesley), keep the Survivors band together, stick to their defense plan and shield the invasion.
As a spectacle, there are few better ways to describe it than fantastic. Do you see the clicks crawl out under the above cemeteries they used as a cover? Fantastic. Look at the ramps drop over the walls, the barrel rolls out onto the battlefield and the burning carnage that their explosions have done? Fantastic. Fish-in-a-barrels the malfunction that set up above Main Street? Fantastic. The last line of defense are four guys with Flamethrowers? Fantastic. Loosen the dogs, just in the bang of the time, as reinforcements that turn the tide? Very, very fantastic. (Best Doggo Award goes to the Perning as a barrier on a clicker’s face in the air.)
But strengthening the shocking action scenes was the heavy tension in human drama. Jackson’s life-or-dead Last Stand started with Tommy and Maria sharing a happiness kissing and ending with their relieved embrace. In between, the two death stared in the face – Tommy, when his Flamethrowers tank ran dry and the bloater was likely to be over him (before finally To wise to her wounds) and Mary when the roofs are exceeded and in what way she turned, they add undead to their rankings.
Director Mark Mylod (an Emmy winner for “succession” who has also directed six sections of “Game of Thrones”) kept the action rooted in characters; The attack was mainly seen from Tommy and Mary’s perspective, with additional viewpoints that were mainly placed to emphasize the escalating threats around them. Tommy does not see that the trucks roll back when the lots of clicks first run into the city walls, but he feel That – the shaky ground that the city stands – and the added visual reference helps us to share his experience. In the same way, Mary is not there when Bloater bursts through the fence of tree trunks as if he is Jack Torrance who crushes through a bathroom door, but the tight framing of Titan’s entrance makes it all the more scary.
Focusing on people is always the first priority in “The Last of US”, so the second astonishing attack is even more terrible, tense and outrageous. Joel’s death almost didn’t happen. Not only could he have spent the day to help Tommy and Maria, if he had only heard their emergency radio message to return home – a relatively safe space for Joel to occupy – but Abby almost went home without finding Joel. When she saw the fortress that protected Jackson, her cohorts were ready to abandon the ship the other she returned to the ski rod. At the zero degree temperature and even colder wind cooling, Abby was about to return when she saw the two riders on patrol. Then she fell down the mountain, awakened the animals within, and the rest is history.
Would she have gone back, which Owen (Spencer Lord) wanted? I doubt that. Even herself I think she would have found a way to come to Joel, but about what adds heart pain, they do not matter as much as her will, Joel’s will and what has become Ellies. It took Abby Five years To find Joel. Who knows what and who she lost during that time, but her determination just got stronger. Her conviction only got stronger. But her understanding of what happened to her father – her understanding of Joel, whether he did or why he did – remained exactly the same.
It called to think of a line from earlier in the section, when Ellie cheated on Jesse (Young Mazino) when he said there may be thousands of clickers hiding under the snow. “Ah, security that is masked as knowledge – very Ellie by you.” His theory turned out to be true, and given that it can be true is what saved the city. Had they acted like Ellie, nice to know something they don’t, everyone would probably be dead.
Abby and Ellie’s similarities are also not something would want to consider right now, but the section is starting to choose from them. In his nightmare that opened section 2, Abby sees himself walking towards the hospital room where Joel killed his father. Another version of Abby – a version she doesn’t recognize – tells her not to go in, and Abby does anyway. She says: “I don’t know you,” and then we have to look at when this other Abby, outside the hospital room, breaks down in tears. She crying because she remembers what happened to her father? Or she cries because she knows what is happening her – How Abby is changing when she sees his body?
Ellie has also seen the body of her dead father. She even had to see him die. “I will kill you,” she says, attaching to the ground. “You will all fucking die.” It is impossible to blame her for threatening them right now-it is easy to wish them all dead, right then and there-but it is also difficult not to see the bike for self-destructive violence. Joel killed Abby’s father. So Abby killed Ellie’s father. Now, if Ellie kills Abby, she is all that remains. And she is likely to remain in the same state as Abby at the end of section 2, go back to Seattle, her face sprayed in blood, a look of injury, not satisfaction, etched over her face.
“There are only a few things, everyone agrees that it’s just damn wrong.”
What is right and what is wrong for Ellie will undoubtedly take up the rest of season 2, even if Losing Joel makes it difficult to look ahead. Before, back in Salt Lake City, Joel was exempt from the rule. “Everyone” could see that what he did was wrong. Killing 18 soldiers and a doctor while trying to save humanity is generally a choice that most people would notice as wrong. It is one we hope Ellie is not intended to repeat.
But for Joel it wasn’t wrong enough. Not then. Right now it was the only right thing he could do – for himself, mainly, but for Ellie too. Sure, she said she wanted to go through the life -threatening procedure, but she was just a child. Joel was able to argue – and really did, during the years that followed – that she did not know the circumstances, and she did not know what she was giving up.
Life. A full life. A life of adventure and romance, reverence and joy. He gave it to her. Could it be wrong? Could it be universal, unequivocally wrong?
At that hospital, Joel may have become a villain. But that’s not all he was. And he didn’t deserve to go out like this.
Rating: a
“The Last of Us” Season 2 releases new episodes on Sundays at 21 o’clock at HBO and max.
Streak
• Ok, how smart are These clickers? They hide under their own corpses. Their loops are hiding behind dead roots in the city’s tubes. Some of them, like the one who attacked Ellie in the premiere, learn to fool and wait instead of blindly rushing everything that moves. This fungus is emergingAnd it’s damn scary.
• The first shot of Joel in section 2 is when he extends his hand to help Abby. Damn, craig. Way to turn the knife.
• With that said, the first time I looked at section 2, it felt like Joel’s death lasted for an eternity. But on a (reluctant) relocation, his time in Ski Lodge lasts less than 10 minutes. Sufficiently convey Abby’s blood -loud without going beyond what viewers can tolerate must be a difficult balance, and Mazin (who wrote the section) and Mylod (director) managed to find it. There is plenty of time to process a sudden, heartbreaking loss, but seeing it happen, along with Ellie, never reaches an excessive level.
• I love the closing shot of Ellie, return to the city, where Tommy and Maria are already starting to rebuild. But Ellie is not looking forward to. She looks back at Joel’s body, as if she is already too focused on the past to see what the future may have.
