(Editor’s Note: The following review contains spoilers for “The Last of Us” season 2Section 4. For previous coverage, check out last week’s review.)
Section 4 begins with a simple, if surprising, choice: two men change.
Already in 2018, Isaac (Jeffrey Wright) Rides in an armored car with a gaggle of Fedra Chucklefucks and sits in silent them when Josh Peck’s Super-Bro-Y soldier tells a horrible story about any other asshole called Greenberg who beat the shit by an innocent man because he believed the word “disseminating” meant “meant” jerking. ”
After the laughter has dropped, the nervous new guy dares to the caravan in douchebags to ask a question: Burton (played by “The Gilded Age’s” Ben Ahlers) want to know why they continue to call citizens “voters”. Clearly annoyed that this child does not appreciate humor in his terrible story, Peck’s “thoughtless” narrator brushes it – “because that’s what we damn call them, who cares?”
But Isaac wants to answer.
“Because we removed their rights,” he says. “We removed their voting rights and someone started calling them voters to mock them.”
Before he can say much else, driver is warns Isaac to a group of people gathering on the road. The crew in the back immediately assumes that they are WLF – or wolves, because they were noticed in Previous section – And start preparing for a struggle. But Isaac tells them to stand down. He knows that they are “all Greenbergs”, and rather than letting them attack some random strangers for fun, Isaac comes out on their own to greet the unknown “voters”.
Except that they are not unknown. Isaac greets its leader by name. “You Hanrahan?” he asks, after she identifies him as Isaac. The two nod against each other, and Isaac turns quickly, goes back to the armored vehicle and throwing two grenades inside before locking the door. All Greenbergs are dead – all except the new guy. Isaac pulled out Burton when he went to meet Hanrahan (Alanna Ubach), note his naive and consider it a key that separates factor. The rest of them was a lost thing, but Burton, maybe, could still think for himself.
So he asks him to: “Now make your choice,” Isaac says. And Burton does. The young rescued soldier may not have had much choice – clearly, Isaac would kill him if he did not join – but he still changes, just like Isaac did, and their motives are still in line. Isaac decided to leave Fedra and go with the wolves long before he heard the Greenberg story, but you get the feeling that he was affected by hearing it too many times from one too many people. He turns on his colleagues Fedra agents because he is disgusted by what they do. He sees a better path and chooses to walk it. Burton follows precisely in his footsteps.
Eleven years later, when Isaac tortures a scar cap, we see Burton again. Now the wide -eyed lamb is a hardened wolf. Like his savior – and unlike the other, the Greener officer who monitors the door – Burton has become desensitized for the violence that is supplied to the “animal” inside. The naked man chained to a wall that was seared and beaten with a burning saucepan only gets what he deserves, just as Josh Peck’s soldier got what he deserved for a decade earlier. Burton learned to think in this way from Isaac, and Isaac learned this from his own still shared experience.
A long time ago they made their choice and look where it has got them. Burton is not what anyone wants to be. His face, just like Abys (Kaitlyn Dever) Dour, unforgiving face, is not by a happy man. His choice kept him alive, physically, but his soul may have died in the armored truck. Isaac is not better. Although he did nonchalance during the hearing, his own funny story betrays his true misery. He tells the prisoner of the scar that when he was young he was shy; He didn’t know how to talk to women, so he cooked for them. When he got better at it, he promised to one day own a Mauviel saucepan – the best of the best. Today he does, “just not how I planned.” Instead of using Mauviel to make dinner for people he likes, he uses it to burn the meat from his enemies’ limbs.
Isaac took a gesture of love and turned it into a weapon of hatred – a recurring theme in “The last of us“Whether it is Abby to use the love she has for her dead father to drive her revenge against Joel (Pedro Pascal) or Joel with the love he has for Ellie to motivate his killing spree to save her. Love can be beautiful, but it can too be destroying. Love can change you, and it can change within you. The question (as Catherine O’haras Gail posed so clearly last week) is whether our individual nature leaves us to Love’s Mercy, or if we have more choices on the issue.
With Isaac, his shady past makes it difficult to see if he has always had a cold for him or if he is adapted to cold around him to survive, like so many other characters we have met. But Burton’s past is clear. The man in the armored car and the man who protects the door is not the same person. The former learned to behave as the latter, and his appearance in the section, connected to Isaac’s story, which means a similar transformation, is an important role in understanding what is at stake for Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and your (Isabela Merced), as they face their own potential turning point.
In section 4, the circumstances change dramatically for our two joints. Your find out that she is pregnant. Ellie finds out that yours is pregnant. Your tells Ellie that she is in love with her, and Ellie doesn’t have to tell your the same thing because Dina already knows. Still, suddenly, these two patrol friends are involved in each other in a whole new way. They are in love. They start a family together. “Holy Shit,” says Ellie. “I will be a father.”
But is it enough to change the idea? Ellie is closer than ever to find Abby, closer than ever to avenging Joel’s death, closer than ever to embrace the dark turns that her love for him has taken. Dina is also, and she refuses Ellie’s suggestion that she stays to protect herself and her child. “Together,” she says, holds Ellie’s hand and stares out at the city where Abby is waiting. But is it … right? Again, showrunner and co -creators Craig Mazin Owning an act that is usually seen as good and right as, potentially, bad and wrong. As much as we want to see Ellie and Dina stay together – to fight for each other, to protect their love for each other – they risk everything they have just received for revenge, and revenge has repeatedly proved to be as dangerous as it is unmatched.
We saw just as much in Abby’s face after she killed Joel, and we see it again in section 4. Isaac and Burton are at war with the scars. The choices they have made, from 2018, have led them to a place with heartless accident. But they stand at these choices. Their stiff conviction is their armor; They must believe that even if they hunt, hurt and kill people, there are worse people out there, do worse things, for worse reasons. If they stop believing that if they question it even for a second, they may not like the answers. They can look at what they have done and see pain, fear and ruin. When they look back at them in the mirror, they can see the face they despise most: Greenbergs.
At the end of section 4, Ellie and Dina must decide which way to take. They can squeeze on with the assignment they have agreed to; They can continue to hunt revenge, continue to chase Abby, continue to follow Joel’s footsteps until they become his hardened, wild successor.
… or they can change.
Rating: B+
“The Last of Us” Season 2 releases new episodes on Sundays at 21 o’clock at HBO and max.
Streak
• Apart from the parallel stories framing Ellie and Dina’s story this week, there are further omens by ruin spread across section 4 – which when they find the dead bodies in the armored truck, and Ellie compares them immediately with the deceased Apollo 1 astronauts. Although I am not sure why she has NASA on Noggin, Ellie, who causes three dead explorers near the outskirts of Seattle, is not good for the three explorers (Ellie, Dina and Dina’s baby) who are deeper in the city. The fact that Seattle does not turn out to be all that hospitable is hardly a warning – very few places in “The Last of Us” is welcoming – but intended for Ellie or not, the dismantled bodies hung for everyone to see sure feels like a message. Finally, call me cynical if you have to, but I’ve always found A-ha’s “Take on me” to describe a tragic romance-you should enjoy love while it lasts, because it will be away in one day (or twooooooo).
• However, that song was very sweet. So fun to see your absolutely Disappointment Over his dreamy guitarist (soon to be) girlfriend.
• “What happens to all rainbows?”
“I don’t know. Maybe they’re all optimists.”
• Someone starts the production to change Seatles official motto to “Happy Stolt Rainbow Town.”
• Nice to see Ellie’s hand-to-hand combat training comes in handy.
• Holy crapThat subway was tight! The red flange put such an ominous visual tone, and looking at the loops creep around the flame – knowing that it would pull a horde of the infected on the WLF soldiers – while your counted those she could listen to her fingers (until she stopped her fingers) really reinforced the voltage. Once it rabid non-zombies Turned out, there were some less convincing moments-no infected who tried to tip the subway cramped at the top? Only one came close enough to bite Ellie before they pressed through the turn style? – But the acute claustrophobia in combination with the murderer site made it an exciting, memorable sequence overall.
• “It’s a small thing, but when you start hiding small things, they become big things,” says Ellie, referring to how annoyed she was wearing long sleeves to hide the scar on her arm … but also what is she hiding now?
