This text comprises spoilers by the second episode of The Final of Us Season 2.
Gamers of the sport on which HBO’s postapocalyptic drama The Final of Us relies knew it was coming—“it” being the loss of life of the present’s protagonist, Joel (performed by Pedro Pascal). The Season 1 finale noticed him slaughtering dozens of individuals in a Utah lab to save lots of the teenage Ellie (Bella Ramsey); her immunity to the mutated fungus plaguing the nation might have led to a remedy if Joel hadn’t stopped the scientists from experimenting on her. In Sunday night time’s episode, set 5 years later, Joel suffers the results of his actions: Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), the daughter of one of many docs he killed, finds him, captures him, after which tortures him till he dies.
The scenes culminating in Joel’s loss of life moved way more shortly in video-game type: Abby’s crew subdues Joel as quickly because it learns his identify. The subsequent time he seems on-screen, the participant sees him by Ellie’s eyes: She finds him on the bottom, battered and unable to talk, and is compelled to look at a stranger execute the person who has develop into her surrogate father. The sequence conveys Ellie’s disorientation and shock; she has no thought who Abby is or why her group has attacked Joel.
The tv sequence, nevertheless, indulges within the second’s brutality. Abby delivers an extended speech to Joel about why she’s going to kill him. His torture is prolonged and graphic; at one level, there’s a transparent shot of a damaged golf membership piercing his pores and skin. On the identical time, a horde of “contaminated”—zombified individuals reworked by the fungus—abruptly descends on the close by city: Jackson, Wyoming, the one place the place Joel and Ellie felt secure. At its finish, the episode cuts between pictures of Ellie’s despair and the city’s destruction, her ache echoed by the townsfolk reeling from the invasion.
The most effective issues in regards to the TV adaptation has been its potential to increase previous the boundaries of the sport’s storytelling. From the leap, the present was prepared to reinvent facet characters and subplots, whereas infusing the themes of the online game’s first installment—survival and unconditional love—into its smallest creations. These thrives helped the drama overcome the difficulty of translating a online game to a unique medium, reproducing the emotional expertise gamers had when controlling the characters’ each transfer themselves. Joel and Ellie’s world got here alive in these new scenes, and felt wealthy and distinct from these of different postapocalyptic initiatives.
The place Season 1’s plot detours match comfortably inside its overarching storyline, nevertheless, Season 2’s have to date been awkwardly inserted. Take the prolonged sequence depicting Joel’s loss of life: It requires Abby to elucidate her motive, which isn’t revealed till a lot later within the sequel sport; the season attracts upon solely the primary half of The Final of Us Half II, the sport’s second installment. As an alternative of the jolt of watching a personality we barely know homicide, with out clarification, a personality we love, we extra predictably see the present’s main antagonist do what she mentioned she’d do. To make up for the diminished shock, the difference packs in additional deaths throughout the assault on Jackson. As terrifically acted and made as The Final of Us stays, the present has develop into a punishing watch, with out the primary season’s elegant insights.
In some methods, the unrelenting cheerlessness is sensible. Season 1 was about how bonds are in-built unimaginable circumstances, and each plot tweak underscored that concept. Totally different sorts of relationships had been scrutinized: romantic, platonic, familial. The second season, although, is about how bonds can fracture. The sport explores the notion that violence is unavoidable, cyclical, and generational, earlier than forcing the participant to sympathize with Abby and query whether or not anybody is totally a hero or a villain. However as an alternative of a cautious commentary of animosity, what the present presents are examples of undiluted ache.
Subsequent episodes do embrace glimmers of ingenuity that attain the shifting heights of Season 1, most notably in an hour exploring Ellie and Joel’s relationship earlier than his loss of life, in addition to in Ellie’s scenes along with her love curiosity, Dina (Isabela Merced). However the present’s restricted creativeness turns into extra obtrusive the longer it goes on. Later within the season, Ellie and Dina head to Seattle, the place Abby ostensibly is, however they get caught in the midst of a particularly violent turf conflict between factions of individuals they know nothing about, leaving the battle opaque. These asides stop The Final of Us from delving into Ellie’s bigger emotional journey of getting to rediscover her humanity whereas she’s overwhelmed by her grief. As an alternative, the present posits that the entire characters have gotten misplaced within the darkness. As Dina places it in a forthcoming episode, “Everybody’s previous is fucked.”
Should the current be, too? The present beforehand argued that the reply isn’t any, that some individuals search for the sunshine, that there could be selflessness in even probably the most egocentric acts carried out on the finish of the world. Now, although, The Final of Us is as blinded as Ellie is by distress. Joel has died, and the viewers should sit with the consequences of his loss of life. However Season 2, by leaning thus far into its characters’ anguish, has develop into extra round and suffocating in its storytelling. It’s a form of discomfort that no quantity of world-building could possibly ease.
