The Last of Us (season 2)

The second season of The Last of Us on Max picks up five years after the events of the first season, with Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) settled in the community of Jackson, Wyoming. Their fragile peace is disrupted when past choices resurface, straining their relationship and drawing them into conflict with new threats, including the vengeful Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) and other survivors. As Ellie grapples with truth and loss, the season explores themes of revenge, justice, and survival in a brutal, post-apocalyptic world, adapting key elements from The Last of Us Part II across seven episodes.

The Last of Us Review (S2:E1)

For those who weren’t run off by the continually diminishing returns of season one of The Last of Us, the second season’s first episode might just do the job.

At least in this episode, Joel is a clinically depressed afterthought whose tearful moping is only missing a pink housecoat, fuzzy slippers, and some bon-bons upon which to munch while he genuinely sits on his front porch rocking chair and sulks. Meanwhile, Ellie, already a problematic emotional sell, has gone full steel-toed ball-busting mode and is one of the most unlikable TV characters since Skylar White.

Getting even less screentime than Joel, the fungus zombies are now mere inconveniences whose presence is used as a minor plot device (and some foreshadowing) rather than as genuine terrors. It doesn’t help that the Clickers in this particular episode look like they are wearing cheap rubber heads.

Very little happens in this episode, as its primary purpose is both to establish the current dismal state of Joel and Ellie’s relationship and to remind the audience that Ellie is a teenage lesbian.

Notwithstanding perfectly adequate direction and performances, there’s very little reason to watch the season thus far.

P.S. Have we not yet grown enough as a people that audiences can handle an accurate portrayal of the use of a shotgun? It’s one scene, but if you know what to look for, it will drive you insane.

WOKE ELEMENTS

Midget Wrestling

• Ellie’s first scene is that of her training with a muscular sparring partner. She only comes up to the bottom of his chest, and he outweighs her by at least 110 lbs. Yet, that doesn’t stop her from choking him with her legs, bodily flipping him over, and making him tap out with a wrist lock.
  • In the show’s defense, they attempt to lessen the impact of this ridiculousness by saying that had his first punch not been pulled, she would have been knocked out. It doesn’t help because there is no way that an unarmed woman of her size would have any chance against a man of his size with his level of training.
  • One of our detractors on X argued that this complaint was invalid because it’s not as far-fetched as fungi zombies. However, suspension of disbelief only works when a story plays by its own rules. Break those, and you break the spell. Her opening scene was just lazy, much like his criticism.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Lesbian

• In addition to being a gun-toting Jiu-Jitsu expert, the teenage Ellie is also a lesbian, and 80% of this episode is either her making goo-goo eyes at a girl she likes, or some other hint or reference to her sexuality.
• The scene in which she finally kisses her crush is coincidentally set in a church. I’m sure it wasn’t just so the waspiest man in the community could get self-righeous and huffy about them making out in public and call them dykes, so that the show could paint him as a bigot who was particularly afronted because it was happening in a church.

The Chickpocalypse

• I said it in my review for the first season of The Last of Us, but in a post-apocalyptic world, any and all remnants of society would devolve to a much more anarchic, survival-of-the-fittest state. No time or patience would be given to modern ideas like feminism and equality. Even if a woman were lucky enough to find a relatively safe community in which to live, normative gender roles would almost certainly and quickly take root. Yet, this show insists on giving girls the size of my morning constitutional fierce roles.

  

  • Ellie taunts Dina about entering a building with zombies in it by asking her if “you’d rather let the men handle it
  • Aside from Ellie and Dina (played by the miniature Isabela Merced), they’ve now added twelve-year-old-looking Fireflies who are on the hunt for Joel (two men and three women). There are few things more terrifying than when an itty-bitty, freckle-faced girl in pigtail braids swears vengeance.

Manopause

• If you plan on playing a drinking game while watching, either drink beer or choose not to drink when Joel cries. The aging Joel spends the entirety of the first episode moping around either on the verge of tears or actually crying because Ellie is being mean to him.
• He is visiting a therapist so that there can be a scene in which his therapist utterly emasculates him and he leaves… yup… in tears.
  • He’s also there so that the show can not so subtly show how poisonous not sharing one’s feelings can be. *Barf.*
• The show’s perspective on Joel’s intervention on Ellie’s behalf after the man called her a dyke, is that he’s anachronistic and misogynistic for not letting her handle it.

The Last of Us Review (S2:E2)

Simply by virtue of having almost no story and being a 30-minute monster battle, the second episode is a massive upgrade from the celluloid sadness of the previous one. That doesn’t excuse the series from continuing to fail in its mission to make you care about the characters. What good are giant monster battles and bigger “twists” if the audience isn’t emotionally invested in those to whom “X” is happening? None– but that’s what episode 2 of The Last of Us delivers.

WOKE ELEMENTS

Butch v. Femme

• Many found the the video game’s Abby’s unrealistic musculature and fortitude to be problematiclly woke. However, the live-action version suffers from the opposite end of the woke spectrum. She is played by a rail-thin 5’2″ paperweight. She’s not intimidating. Her character is not shown to be especially smart or clever. There is no reason for her group of comically diverse 20-somethings to follow her, and especially not into battle. More importantly, her size makes comic a scene that was supposed to deliver a huge emotional payoff.