Ok so The Last of Us show takes us somewhere that we never really saw in the game. In that, we woke up playing as Sarah on the night of the Outbreak and after her death, we picked up as Joel twenty years later. However, a TV show can take us into new and interesting places because it’s not as focused on making sure the player is engaged. Typically, in a game, you tend to keep things centred around one character so that the player feels like they’re experiencing things and they very much imprint on that one person. It’s why so many games had silent protagonists and it’s a technique that tends to work when you’re playing a video game.
However, TV shows can do things differently…. not like that Halo.
Anyway, TV shows can do things differently and that’s where The Last of Us has taken the opportunity to show us flashbacks to years before the outbreak, days prior and then right after the world has just collapsed. Throughout this video I’m gonna be discussing the three key scenes in the Last of Us that take us back to the past and really make this show infinitely more terrifying.
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The Last of Us Episode 1 Flashback
Ok so the first two scenes very much act as book ends of each other. In the first we have a scientist theorising how cordyceps could lead to the end of the world and the second one deals with a scientist realising that that end is now upon us. This very much sets up the threat of the infected and how we will lose as a species because of it.
However, the third one very much shows that there’s more facets to it and instead it shows that humanity will also have a hand in this too.
We are our own worst enemies and the fact this third flashback was included is very important to letting us know who the true enemy in all of this is.
I know it’s a cliche to be like ‘humanity is the true enemy’ but there’s a reason that it’s a cliche in the first place and it’s not because we’re good at having civil conversations. Things are often done out of fear, and we’ll discuss why the soldiers could have killed those people later on and the fear that drove them to do it.
Now in the first scene we pick up in 1968, decades before the cordyceps outbreak.
Here we catch something a little close to home as we initially see the topic of conversation being an influenza pandemic. We’ve just lived through a big one and like the scientist says, we always find a way out of it eventually. John Hannah seems calm and collected throughout this discussing and though it’s a struggle, we’ve seen ourselves that there is light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to things like this.
However, when the subject changes to fungi and there’s a far bleaker outlook than the optimistic view he’s just shared.
Rattling off a chilling monologue he hammers home the idea that there’s absolutely no cure and in all eventualities that we lose.
This is very much the case in what follows as well.
We watch the outbreak happen from Sarah’s point of view and killing her off shows just how bleak the entire thing is. Now I must admit, every time a tv show or movie kills a kid off I’m like…. you know what, I actually respect that and it’s for a good reason too.
Hollywood is heavily sanitised a lot of the time and it must take a lot of back and forth with the studio to be like ‘f**k them kids’.
Sarah’s death very much cements the idea that this is a lose lose situation and there’s not gonna be some big happy outcome to this. It’s a necessary move to take to show us that the scientist was indeed right and when soldiers are out here shooting innocent fathers and daughters then you know Humanity has lost its way a bit.
This is immediately followed up by a scene with another child’s death and though it was necessary to kill them you see exactly why the scientist was so doom and gloom. Joel’s emotionless face says it all as they dump their body on the fire and it sums up just how far we’ve fallen.
The Last of Us Episode 2 Flashback
Now episode 2 has us going to Ibu Ratner. When I dropped my episode 2 breakdown, I did get some comments saying that Ibu actually means Mrs, but they should’ve put that in the subtitles mate, how was I supposed to know, I’m a YouTuber. I’m a moron.
Anyway, we see her being brought in by the military to inspect a corpse infected with Cordyceps. It’s very by the book and though she’s alarmed initially by being brought in by the situation seems to calm down once the military man reassures her in the car. After discovering the cordyceps in the subject’s mouth things change though and the fear washes over her.
In a back room she instructs him to bomb the city and it hammers home just how dire the situation is. Knowing it could get out she’d rather destroy the entirety of Jakarta in the hopes of at least quarantining it and we know that several cities also adopted this strategy too.
However, as we learn here it also got into the food supply, and this is how it managed to spread so fast.
I always wondered how the infected managed to get onboard airplanes and bring them crashing down but if it was in those delicious, delicious in-flight meals then you can see how it would cause a problem.
Mrs Ratner realises how dire the situation is and being someone who has studied the fungus all her life she realises that there is no way to save the rest of the world beyond destroying her own.
She wishes to be with her family for the final few hours she potentially has, and this is when we realise how bleak things are. She’s very much accepted how inevitable the downfall of humanity is and is almost acting as if she’s on her death bed and wanting to say her goodbyes.
It’s a beautifully subtle performance that further shows how far humanity had its back against the wall.
And in desperate times we will all do despicable things.
When wandering along the road on the way to Lincoln we see as Joel and Ellie come across bodies that have been murdered by soldiers. Similar to Joel and Sarah we see that a parent and child were the target and on the opposite side of this we get a flashback in which we watch the pair boarding a military truck in order to evacuate the town.
They think they’re being led away to safety and for as paranoid as Bill was, he was infected right.
#BillWasRight
Now why did the humans execute the survivors?
Well, we don’t know for definite exactly why, but the reason was likely down to fear. Joel theorises that they reached the quarantine zone and that there probably wasn’t enough room, so the soldiers killed them. I think the fear here is twofold with them potentially have several reasons that made them do what they did.
The first is that they were going to be turned away and thus they’d end up roaming the wilderness and likely getting infected.
This would lead to there being more people to fight and like Mrs Ratner said, it’s safer to murder than risk the infection spreading.
Now the second reason I think is that the soldiers worry that these people could form their own group that would overthrow them. As we experience the last of us, we come across several factions like that who ended up storming Fedra and replacing them. The soldiers themselves were murdered and scorning a group of people could lead to several deaths on their side.
Again, it’s this idea of fear and knowing what humanity is capable of that pushes them to do it.
Worried themselves that others could kill them they strike first and this paranoia I think is also very much at the heart of why humanity collapsed.
The cordyceps are very much the catalyst that will cause us to fight amongst ourselves because the lack of resources will push us into that position.
As the scientist theorises in episode 1, we lose and it’s because of a number of factors.
Not only does the world come to a halt because of them but the survivors left behind will do whatever they can to stay alive and get what they want.
That’s very much the message at the heart of the last of us and though I don’t want to get into spoilers coming down the line, that theme does play off down the road. There are those among us who would rather doom everyone else than give up what they have and in many ways it’s what’s at the heart of the show.
Now that wraps up the video and obviously, I’d love to hear your thoughts on these scenes.
What did you take from them and do you agree or disagree with me?
Comment below and let me know and just to let you know we’re running a competition right now and giving away Wakanda Forever to 3 Subscribers on The 15th Of February. 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 is on screen right now so message me @heavySpoilers if that’s you.
If you want something else to watch, then make sure you check out our breakdown of perfect scene in Spider-Man Homecoming. We break down the entire thing so it’s definitely worth checking out if you wanna 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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