THE LAST OF US Episode 9 Breakdown & Endin...

THE LAST OF US Episode 9 Breakdown & Ending Explained | Review And Game Easter Eggs

Credit: HBO (The Last of Us)

Ok, so the last Last of Us season one episode is now out, and throughout this video we’re going to be breaking down episode 9, all the easter eggs, hidden details, and also discussing that ending. First up, though, I want to thank everyone for rocking with me the last nine weeks, and we’re sort of like Joel and Ellie a bit because I’d doom the entire human race just to get a thumbs up from you.

The Last Of Us Episode 9 Breakdown

Anyway, we start off the episode with a flashback, and this features a major game cameo. Out in the woods, we join a pregnant woman running, and this is none other than Ashley Johnson. Ashley voiced Ellie in the game, and here we catch her playing her mother. So far, several big actors from the game have popped up, including Tommy’s voice actor as Perry, Troy Baker as James last week, and Marlene’s, who shows up later on in this scene.

Ellies mother is called Anna, and she was first mentioned in the last of our comics, American Dreams.

This featured Ellie and Riley, and in it, we learned a little bit about Anna and what she did before the outbreak.

Anna worked as a nurse before the outbreak, and we know that she and her lifelong friend Marlene survived together when everything went down worse than this channel’s views next week.

All that we learned from the backstory was that she died within a day of giving birth to Ellie, but here we see it fleshed out with her running to a farmhouse while being chased by an infected person. We can see a big symbol in the fireflies denoting that this is a safehouse, and you can also catch what I’m guessing is the Boston QZ in the background. As we know, this was controlled by Fedra, and though we don’t learn why Anna’s out on her own like this, it likely has something to do with the infected.

Perhaps they were out on the road and then they were ambushed and Anna ended up fleeing which could’ve led to this. Due to them searching out in the wild, I think that this might have been the road trip that they made to get to the QZ, and this could be them arriving there for the first time. The thing about insurgent groups like this is that Fedra could scan for the infected, but they had no way of telling who was a rebel or firefly. Thus, they’d still be allowed in, so potentially, this is them just traveling out to the city and then everything kicking off along the way.

Hopefully they address it on the HBO post-release podcast, and if they have, then make sure you drop it in the comments below.

Now Anna locks herself in a room and she then busts out Ellie’s switch blade which becomes one of her main weapons in the game.

She manages to kill them, but unfortunately, during this, she gets bit as she gives birth.

The cordyceps probably mutated during this moment, and this is why Ellie ends up being immune. In episode 1, we saw infection times, and due to the bite being on her leg, she has 24-48 hours with her child. Anna names her Ellie, and after the title sequence, we jump to the night to see the fireflies arriving. Led by Marlene, this group doesn’t mind shining flashlights as the infected don’t actually get alerted by them. This was a big thing in the game too, and you didn’t need to turn yours off when you were navigating around them.

Now Marlene goes upstairs to find Anna holding the knife to her neck incase she starts to turn.

She hasn’t breastfed her either in case it infects her, and she entrusts Anna with Ellie. Also, the green jacket that she’s wrapped in is what Ellie later ends up wearing when she’s older.

Credit: HBO (The Last of Us)
Credit: HBO (The Last of Us)

Anna also gives her the knife, and this is something that Marlene passed back to her in both the show and the game. They also mentioned in the American Dream comic that it belonged to Anna, and Marlene promises to look after Ellie. However she refuses to kill her initially but realising that it’s her duty she eventually decides to.

This is very much the entire point of Marlene’s arc in this entry and we see how she attempts to put the greater good above what she actually wants to do. Though she swears to protect Ellie, we see how, in the end, she approves the operation that will kill her and create a vaccine. The finale has all the morally gray areas that the game has, and in them, when you’re moving through the hospital, you find some of her voice notes talking about the situation. They’re pretty long, so I don’t want to just spend ages playing them, but there are two recorders that very much capture her feelings at the time.

The first is her coming back off the reveal that Ellie needs to be killed for the vaccine to be produced, and she’s angry that she keeps getting tested over and over like this.

The second is far more heartfelt, and it’s actually addressed directly to Anna. She apologizes for breaking her promise and says that she has to go through with it because this could save everyone. She says that Anna and her daughter will be reunited soon and also states that she won’t kill Joel because he’s the only one who may understand how difficult this choice is. Like him, the pair had both looked after Ellie, but this choice to spare Joel damns them all.

There’s also some really cool imagery in this moment, and Anna ends up giving birth to Anna beneath an illustration of a tree. Trees have a neural network underground, like the infected, and Ellie being born under this carries the symbolism that a network could spring from her that saves humanity.

This could also be seen as the tree of life, and it’s some really nice imagery to add to the scene.

Now you know I hate the guy, bloody hate him, but Ryan arey, bloody Ryan Arey was chatting with him about the episode through the week, and he spotted that Anna sings the song The Sun Always Shines on TV by Ah-ha. Take on me was played at the mall, and Ellie also had one of her tapes in her room.

Now from here, we jump to the present and find Ellie coming off the back of the winter chapter. In the game, they used every season to tell a sort of self-contained story, and we had things like the Tommy and University sections in the fall before Joel’s recovery took place over those cold winter months. The final section took place in the spring, and in that, they added in a couple of extra sections that we don’t get here. We began with Joel and Ellie out on a highway, and the former was the one doing all the talking for once.

This is where we begin, and we even have the camper van that you can go into in the game and get supplies from.

Similar to that, Joel has found stuff inside of it, and he tries to shake Ellie out of the deep feelings that she has. In the game, she was very much aware that she was at the end of the road and that things were almost over. It’s important to keep in mind that Ellie actually wanted to go through with everything, even if it meant her death. This is why Joel lies to her at the end, as he knows she wanted her life to mean something, which is a line she drops in Part 2.

I’ll not spoil too much of that, but little things that help portray her thoughts are, in my opinion, important to bring up. On the highway, Ellie also noticed an advertisement for a plane, which the show sort of touched upon when they came across a downed one in Episode 3. Ellie said that she’d had a dream where she was on one, and after going to the cockpit, she realized that no one was flying it.

To me, this symbolised her realizing that no one actually had a clue what she was doing and that the adults she’d entrusted all along were just as directionless as she was. When you’re a kid growing up, you think that older people have everything together, but then you become one and realize you’ve got no idea either. Ellie believed people like Marlene and Joel would lead her and help her deal with things, but this episode shows that they’re driven by instinct and their own desires.

Ellie And Joel In The Last Of Us Episode 9

Now, whereas we find Ellie sitting on the back of a truck, the game had her zoning out to an engraving of a deer.

This was her clearly remembering all the things that happened for her to meet David, and it calls back to the one that she hunted during the winter. Ellie is also wearing a red checkered shirt in both the show and game, with Joel also donning the same clothes in both too.

From here, you moved through an abandoned quarantine camp that was set up on the early days of the outbreak before moving into an underground tunnel. This was full of infected people, including runners, clickers, and two bloaters. A little trick for you: if you sneak through, you can actually avoid fighting all of them, and you just get to the end with Ellie, and it’s all gravy, baby.

Anyway, from here, the pair made their way deeper underground and came across a tunnel that had burst, allowing water to seep in. When trying to navigate over a bus, this sprung free, and Joel was trapped in it as it was carried along with the water. Ellie saved him, but the pair almost ended up drowning, and with her passed out, Joel had to swim through, and on the surface, he attempted to resuscitate her. It’s at this point that the fireflies appear, whereas in the show they just pop up out of the blue.

Anyway, back to the highway, and we see Joel messing about with a backpack on the ground, similar to what you do in the game when you’re crafting and checking supplies. Honestly, they really recapture the opening of the chapter here with the high way perfectly mirroring how it is in the game.

Now we also get mention of Joel teaching Ellie guitar in both the show and game.

Credit: HBO (The Last of Us)
Credit: HBO (The Last of Us)

We’ll talk more in the super spoiler section about how this plays into Part 2, but it’s important to show Joel is regaining his humanity. He was completely shut off from the world, but now he’s becoming a parent once more and showing interest in picking up a guitar again and showing Ellie his hobbies.

We also see the sign for Salt Lake City, and this was a location that appeared on the map in the university.

You really see the pair’s relationship flourishing in these moments, with Ellie predicting beat for beat about what they’re going to do to scout out the area. It’s a great moment between Mando and Grogu, and here they head in before we get into the giraffe scene.

In the game, you ended up going into the Logan James Bus Station terminal. I always thought this was a reference to Wolverine, as his full name is Logan James Howlett, but if you’re from Salt Lake City then make sure you call me an idiot in the comments.

Anyway, they spot a ladder, and Joel suggests boosting Ellie up there to grab a ladder. This is a mechanic that happens in the game, and you’d often throw Ellie up places so that she could drop it down. Now this was something you’d gone through time and time again, but they changed up the dynamics by having Ellie drop the ladder like what happens in the show.

 

Joel goes up like four flights of stairs, so I’m not sure how long this giraffe’s neck is, but this moment is ripped right out of the game.

It was done to show that there was still beauty in the world even though everything had come tumbling down and though humanity might be on its last legs, the rest of the animals that live on the planet have continued to thrive. Giraffes in the show and game carry a lot of symbolism, and they’re very much meant to represent innocence. Sarah had a giraffe toy in her room; the characters passed one in episode 2; there was one up in the kids room in episode 6; and they popped up throughout both mediums at several points.

In spirituality, a giraffe is also a symbol of grace, and they represent patience. In the game, this was you taking a breather for the first time in a long while, and here you just looked over the herd and had a moment to relax.

From here, they go to a different part of the roof, and we get a scene-for-scene recreation of what happens in the game.

Now Joel offering Ellie a chance to go to Tommy is not really the thing that he wants for her; it’s what he wants for him. This is his chance to become a father again, and he ends up doing it anyway at the end when he goes all Rambo on everyone.

This is something that he brought up around the campfire in episode 6, and it was the future that he wanted for himself. We’ll talk about how this plays into Part 2 during the spoiler section later on, but it’s very important to keep in mind.

Ellie wants to go ahead, though, and finish what they started, which takes them to the makeshift QZ camp.

This too is ripped right out of the PlayStation classic, though we do get two very different emotional moments playing out. Both center around Sarah, and in both the show and game, we get Joel explaining what happened. In the series, he says it wasn’t Fedra, whereas in the game it was.

Anyway, in the game at this moment, Ellie ended up handing over a photo of Sarah to Joel. Back with Tommy, he tried to do the same thing, and we learned that he’d returned to Texas and had stopped by their old house, which is where he found it. Joel refused to look at it or acknowledge it, and it showed how much of a closed book he now was.

Ellie revealed she’d stolen it, though, and here she attempted to give it back to him. He ended up accepting it and realizing that he couldn’t outrun his past, and it showed that he’d finally moved on from feeling nothing but constant grief and pain.

Here he talks about almost ending his own life, and he reveals the scar on his head was self-inflicted.

This is a question Ellie asked out on the road all the way back in episode 3. Joel said that someone shot at him and missed, and I wrongly assumed that this scar was from when the soldier shot at him and Sarah. Joel says he wasn’t scared; he was ready, and the character actually discussed people who take their own lives in the game. Ellie says that they took the easy way out, whereas Joel says that it’s never easy. Here he goes further into that and says he wasn’t scared; he was ready. He just hadn’t seen the point in living anymore after Sarah died, but he flinched when pulling the trigger, and he still doesn’t know why. When we look at it, he lived the next 20 years with nothing to really live for until Ellie came along. He simply can’t go through that again, and he doesn’t care who he has to kill to spare himself that pain. He’s also seen the worst of humanity, and the argument is definitely there about whether it’s worth sparing one good person for us. Nihilists could say that humanity deserves what happened to it, and Joel very much represents the riley mindstate of wanting to spend whatever time he has left with the person he cares about.

Ellie says time heals all wounds, but he says it wasn’t that that did it.

Ellie has saved him, and in return, he does what he sees as saving her and thus saving himself.

It’s kind of pick your poison on what version you prefer over this or the game, and though you know I’m a diehard fan of the latter, I think it worked better in the show.

Now the mood is lightened by some puns.

However, the fun is spoiled by a firefly flashbang. It might not be; I’m not a weapons expert, and every time I get it wrong, people kick off, so yeah, if it’s not, call me an idiot in the comments below.

Anyway, in a scene that’s reminiscent of Sarah waking up in episode one, we cut to some blinds flapping back and forth before we find Joel in a hospital bed. Windows are very important in the last of us, and one was used on the menu screen with a similar set up to this being used at the end of the Bill and Ted episode.

Joel initially believes that he sees blood, but this then forms into a firefly shape, foreshadowing what’s to come.

Now from here, we get a scene that riffs on the game with Joel and Marlene talking.

Firefly Hospital In The Last Of Us Episode 9

They also add in some extra lines of dialogue explaining how and why Emily is immune. As we learned in episode 2, the Cordyceps work almost like a hive mind with the vast networks of wires they have underground. This very much extends to how they work with the immunity too, and they see her cordyceps as normal, and thus they don’t attack or multiply. These chemical messengers being replicated could end up being a cure.

Now there are some certain things that come with this, and if you ever get into talking about whether Joel was right or wrong, you’ll run into people who say that the vaccine wouldn’t have worked anyway and that there was a chance it could fail. There’s definitely that possibility too, though the second game does make it way clearer. Either way, the fireflies having this cure would’ve completely shifted the power balance on the planet, and they would very much become the rulers of earth, deciding who got immunity and who didn’t.

They’re as cruel as the rest of the groups we’ve encountered in the show, and as we know, they completely hate Fedra. They’re also complete f**ks, and who knows whether they’d even be able to replicate it at scale.

I think whenever I’ve played through this section of the game, I’ve always thought that the big thing Marlene didn’t do that she should have done is let Joel and Ellie say their goodbyes.

As soon as she got into the hospital, she was pretty much scanned and rushed to surgery. They wanted that cure as soon as possible, and whether that’s to gain power or to save people, I’ll leave that up to you to decide. Marlene says she was there when she was born, but she’s very much sacrificing her inner feelings to do what she sees as best for the planet.

What I love about the ending is that there is no right or wrong answer, and you can fully see Joel as the bad guy. Had people not played as him and watched him in the show, then I think that would definitely be the case too. On paper, this is a story about a man who stormed a hospital and used it as a shooting gallery so that he could kidnap a girl and lie to her about what really happened. These aren’t the hallmarks of a hero, but I can also see why people don’t like Marlene either. Had Joel let them do it, they could’ve held the world to ransom, and though I don’t think stopping them from doing that is his intention, there are questions to be asked.

In an addition for the show, Marlene interrupts her guard to give him Ellies switch blade, and this carries a lot of significance.

Anna gave it to Marlene at the beginning, and I very much viewed this as her trying to get rid of the guilt she’s going to carry every time she looks at it. This item brought with it a promise that Marlene has gone back on. Now she did try her best to be fair, and she even enrolled Ellie in Fedra so that she’d be far away from the fireflies dealings. Still, her immunity brought them together, and Marlene now sees Ellie as a hope for humanity. The blade is of course so he can survive but Joel is too gonna remember her everytime he looks at it as well.

We get an added shot that also wasn’t in the source material, with a tear rolling down Marlene’s face to show how difficult this was.

Now it is also possible that she suspected Ellie was immune due to the birth, and this is why she wasn’t immediately shot when she revealed she was infected. We don’t really find out how Ellie ended up with the fireflies, but it’s possible she went directly to Marlene after hearing about her from Riley.

Credit: HBO (The Last of Us)
Credit: HBO (The Last of Us)

Now in the game, Joel was taken out by one guard in this scene.

However, here he’s escorted by two, but he still manages to get the upper hand.

He stops at a sign before he hits the stairwell so he can see what floor she’s on, and then he makes his move by killing them both.

Such a good moment, and he interrogates the guard like what we get here.

He takes Ellie’s knife back along with his backpack and switches into terminator mode. We talked about this last week with the interrogation scene there and how, when Ellie is in danger, he won’t stop at anything to save her. There’s no line he won’t cross, no one he won’t kill, and he mercilessly moves through the halls, firing at people even if they surrender. This bit was so intense in the game too, and you pretty much just worked your way through the hospital, killing everyone you came across.

I really think it’s a beautiful montage, and I got goosebumps seeing this play out here.

Similar to the game, you hit the children’s ward, and we can catch the paintings that they had on the wall, which are perfectly captured in the show. We also have the rooms off to the side, and this is where you’d find the recorders and so on.

Like in the game Joel steps through the main door and then he sees Ellie about to be operated on. In the game, the doctor grabbed a scalpel and held it up to Joel, whereas here he just says

This character becomes very important later on, and we do get some focus on him as Joel leaves carrying Ellie. He leaves the other nurses alive, and, “Ey, you’re a better man than me, mate, because I was smashing them like the like button.

He ends up getting to the elevator, and in the game he’s chased by soldiers, but I think it makes more sense to have him just make his escape without them breathing down his neck. It’s very much done in the game to keep up the tension, whereas here he’s clearly internally struggling with what’s going on.

Now The ending of The Last of Us is something that has stuck with me since I first played the game back in 2013. Killing doctors like this is clearly crossing the line, but you could see things from Joel’s point of view, as you’d been playing as him for the last 10 hours or so.

As Joel leaves, he carries Ellie out, and this is symbolic for a number of reasons due to it being how he carried Sarah at the start of the series. She very much represents the daughter that he lost, and he gets put in a similar situation to how he was with her. Whereas we had a soldier standing with a gun drawn, ready to shoot them, we see that Marlene now stands between him and the life he should have.

Marlene tries to talk him out of it, and she says that if Ellie doesn’t die for something like this then she’ll no doubt die for something miniscule because of the way the world is. The infected could tear her apart, raiders could kill her, and we’ve seen throughout the season how many threats lie around each corner. Joel says it’s not up to Marlene to decide, but that’s very much the case with Joel as well. However, she correctly says that they both know what Ellie would do, which is confirmed later on in the story by the character herself.

Now, just like in the game, we get the resolution of this scene playing alongside Joel driving Ellie out of there.

Let’s play these scenes together so you can see how they compare.

Now an important addition here is the line about raiders attacking the hospital. I always wondered why Ellie didn’t question why they got out of there so quickly without saying goodbye, but this lie helps to explain why they had to leave right away.

It also means that if they go back, they can see the bodies, and this lines up with the idea that they were attacked by an unknown group.

We see Joel mercilessly shooting Marlene, and her wound is a repeat of last time with her getting hit in the side. This shows just how far Joel is willing to go, and she’s meant to be a sympathetic figure in this moment. She’s clearly badly wounded, but Joel isn’t willing to take any chances, and he kills her because there is the chance that she’d try and come for Ellie again. Marlene has very much given up her humanity in deciding to sacrifice Ellie for the vaccine, whereas Joel has found his once again through regaining a daughter.

The car breaks down by the roadside, and we get a similar thing to what happened in the game.

Ellie looks at her bite mark, and she very much views this as the thing that was driving her, but it now no longer really serves a purpose beyond protecting her from getting infected.

Joel says they have a five-hour hike ahead of them, which they joke about managing, and this is a callback to episode 3, when they discussed hiking for five hours then too.

Like in the game, he starts to talk about Sarah and how the pair would’ve been friends.

 

We can see conflict within Ellie, and she is clearly weighing up whether to question Joel or not as he spouts off stories about her daughter.

Just like the game, they arrive overlooking Jackson, but here we see it carries the updated design from Part 2 with the giant wall surrounding it.

The pair look over it, and we get Ellie asking the question in a scene that’s pulled right out of the game.

 

This, of course, goes over Riley, and the line about losing their minds together is a reference to this.

The Last Of Us Episode 9 Ending Explained

It also cements the survivors guilt that Ellie feels, which is reoccurring here once more. Ellie is once again living while people are dying that she could’ve helped, and she bears the burden of it.

She is very much wanting to know that there isn’t another side to it and that all the deaths meant something. Riley, Tess, Henry, and Sam all died so that she could get to the hospital, but their lives were very much wasted in her eyes because of Joel’s actions.

He swears that everything he said was the truth, and Ellie says OK.

This is a line that has always stuck with me, as she’s not really saying whether she believes it or not; she’s just saying, “Okay, I will accept that version of events. Rather than contesting it or asking further questions, she is happy to live in this reality where she has a father figure who isn’t a monster and that he tried his best to get her to the fireflies, but it didn’t work out.

Now did he do the right thing?

Well, that is definitely up for debate, but deep down he knows that it’s not what Ellie wanted, which is cemented by the fact that he has to lie to her. Had it been what Ellie was really after, he wouldn’t have hid the truth, and he doesn’t want to seem like a selfish monster in her eyes. He wants to be the father figure in her life that she’s been craving, and he knows that telling the truth will completely shatter this illusion. Now, this works both ways as well, with Ellie not so much believing the lie as accepting it.

Since first playing the game, I’ve always referred to it as the Godfather of Gaming,” and that’s mainly due to this ending.

In that seminal film, Michael’s girlfriend Kay arrives at his home, and his sister bursts in and accuses him of murdering her husband. Michael denies all this because he is attempting to retain the idea in Kay’s mind that he’s a good man who isn’t like the rest of his family.

However, we end with mobsters coming and clearly treating Michael like a mafia head, and the door is then shut on her as she realizes the truth deep down.

That’s very much the case with Ellie too, and she is now going on to a new life in Jackson with Joel, believing that he’s not someone who’s just doomed humanity. Now you can totally see things from Joel’s side too, and I think that had anyone else been given Ellie, we likely would’ve had a different ending. Marlene and the rest of the fireflies were happy to sacrifice her, but the fact that Joel was someone who never got over his daughter makes him the worst person to be escorting her.

He sees similarities and eventually comes to believe that Ellie is very much his daughter, which is cemented by certain things that he does. He calls her baby girl at the end of episode 8, and this is a nickname that he also used with Sarah. Joel also glances at his watch at several points, and these all happen in moments in which he sees similarities.

Even Ellie playing soccer with Sam causes him to do it, and it’s laced throughout the show. They did remove the moment from the scene at the end in which he does it but it’s important to bear in mind that it was there originally. Joel’s need to find a reason to live is also cemented by the fact that you find something to survive for. When he lost Sarah, he was willing to give up, and he attempted to end his own life. However, he must have had hope deep down that things would work out, which is why he flinched. He’s now found the thing to make him whole again, and he’ll do whatever he can to keep Ellie by his side, even if it dooms the last of us.

It’s a chilling way to close out the season, and I’m so glad they kept the scenes the same. It was perfect the first time I saw it, and I still think that it’s perfect now.

That closes out the episode, and for the next part of the video, we’re going to be talking about the consequences of this and what it leads to in Season 2.

Now there are major spoilers here, and with the first season following the game so closely, I imagine that season 2 will follow the second game pretty closely as well. So if you don’t want to know what happens, then I highly recommend you turn off now. Heavy spoilers ahead, and I mean heavy spoilers, like, people are going to be mad.

Anyway, with that out of the way, let’s get into the spoiler section.

Ok, so the first thing we need to talk about is the fact that Joel dies early on in the game. He’s killed by Abby, whom we discover was the daughter of the doctor whom Joel kills in order to take Ellie. For years, Abbie trained her body to peak perfection so that she could track down Joel and get vengeance. This happens as well, and along with a group of people, she heads out from Seattle to Jackson. Joel saves her from a hoard of the infected, but she still ends up killing him, which is what sets Ellie off on the quest to avenge him.

Now the next thing I want to talk about is the line about the guitar in the RV. Part 2 opens on Joel’s, and this is a very important item that recurs throughout. We know that in between this part and part 2, Ellie learns to play it, and we see her pick it up and strum away at several points in the game.

Credit: HBO (The Last of Us)
Credit: HBO (The Last of Us)

The ending of it very much centers around it, and after failing to kill Abby and being let go, Ellie ends up living on a ranch with her girlfriend Dina and her son. This is a sheep farm like what Joel said he wanted for the season, and with this added context, this is very much Ellie living Joel’s dream. We also get references to the moon comment with a flashback showing Joel taking Ellie to a museum for her birthday. They end up sitting inside a shuttle pod, and with a helmet and headphones on, Ellie imagines going through liftoff.

Now back to the guitar, and after Ellie experiences constant PTSD flashbacks, she ends up leaving to hunt Abby down after Tommy tells her that she was spotted in Santa Barbera. Ellie ends up finding her completely disheveled after being captured by a group of slavers known as the Rattlers.

She ends up saving her, but as she goes to sail off, Ellie once again gets a PTSD flashback, and she forces Abby to fight her. During this, Abby bites off her fingers, and though Ellie gets the upper hand, she decides to let her go.

Ellie returns home to find that Dina has left her, but that she’s left some of her belongings, including Joel’s guitar.

Ellie goes to play this, and she attempts to do Future Dayz by Pearl Jam, which is a song that Joel played to her at the start of the game.

Because of her missing fingers, she’s unable to do this, and she’s very much lost everything, including a piece of Joel, in this quest for revenge.

That closes out the game, and we end on an open window, similar to how the scene with Sarah started in Season 1.

I also imagine that the hospital scene will return, but we’ll see it from a new perspective, like we did in the game.

Abby rushed in to find her father dead in the wake of Joel’s rampage, and I was actually surprised they didn’t at least hint at it to her in the final episode. I still think that season 2 will play out how the first did, but maybe they just didn’t want to cast yet or have the conversation around the controversial finale yet.

Honestly, I feel kind of sorry for whoever is going to play her, as there’s going to be a lot of backlash over it.

Anyway, that’s all the spoilery easter eggs in the entry.

Now that The Last of Us first season is wrapping up, I thought I’d give my final thoughts on it as a whole. If you’re asking whether I think the game or show is the best, then I have to go with the former. I think that the game is probably going to remain my favorite of all time for most of my life, and I thought it would be difficult for a series to top this. However, the series started off really strong, and after those first three episodes, it crossed my mind a number of times that I actually thought this was better than the game. The characterization, changes, cast, and both action scenes and drama worked really well, leading to such a strong start. However, I do feel as we got into the latter parts of the season that the formula became very clear and every episode sort of slotted into us meeting a new character, having an adventure with them, and then watching them die. It happened across the board, and I think that the latter episodes lost a lot of their variety.

Though I enjoyed episodes 6 and 7, I think putting them back-to-back made it feel like the story was dragging a lot, and if you compare things to how these moments are handled in the games, there’s a lot more variety. They broke things up with the infected and raiders attacking, whereas outside of the ones that popped up at the end of each episode, you didn’t really have any dynamics.

There are so many stellar infected scenes that didn’t make the cut in the series, which I think is a shame because the clicker moments in episode 2 were so well handled. I wanted to see this translated to things like the hotel basement, the trip wire trap when they arrive at Bill’s, the sewer escape, and so on. In every episode, they tended to cut the infected moments, and I think that’s probably going to be a turnoff for general audiences who were sold on this being a big post-apocalypse show. It did become more than that, but yeah, I just felt like some of the things that I first thought of when I thought of the game were exorcised so we could get some dramatic moments.

Now saying that I think the last two episodes really went out on a high, and I think that the finale especially was really well done. I was worried when I saw the run time that it wouldn’t deliver, but it really did, and watching Joel walk through the hospital like that really struck a chord with me. I knew it was the wrong thing to do, but I was also so glad that he was doing it.

The Last of Us is a complex show, and though it did falter at some points, I think that this was overall a brilliant adaptation for what’s truly a stellar game.

Now, if I’m scoring it, then the game for me is a 10/10, with the show coming in at an 8.

There are some brilliant moments in this, but yeah, to me, it set a high bar early on, dropped off a bit, and then picked it up at the end.

Phoooo, season 2 is next, I guess, and yeah, that’s going to be an interesting one to discuss.

We will be back for that, but yeah, a huge thank you for rocking with me for the last nine weeks. I’ve tried to make this the obsessive gamer breakdown, and I hope you’ve had fun with us going as in-depth as possible to point out the most miniscule and stupid things.

Anyway, I’d obviously love to hear your thoughts on the season, the game, and if there’s anything we missed.

We hope to see you guys back at the panel soon, and we’re running a competition right now and giving away The Rocky 4K Boxset to three subscribers on the 15th of March. All you have to do to be in with a chance of winning is like the video, make sure you subscribe with notifications on, and drop a comment below with your thoughts on the episode. We pick the comments at random at the end of the month, and the winners of the last one are on screen right now, so message me at @heavyspoilers if that’s you.

If you want something else to watch, then make sure you check out our breakdown of the perfect scene in Spider-Man: Homecoming. We break down the entire thing, so it’s definitely worth checking out if you want to know more.

With that out the way thank you for sitting through the video, I’ve been Paul and I’ll see you next time. Take care,  Peace

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