“Okay.”
The second season of The Last of Us begins with the phrase that final season closed on—a heartbreaking second of ambiguity between Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey), the lady he now sees as his surrogate daughter. As you might recall Joel lied to Ellie by saying that her immunity to the cordyceps an infection that has turned a lot of humanity into shrieking zombies wasn’t replicable, and that Ellie was now free to carve out no matter post-apocalyptic life she selected. The reality is far grimmer than that: Joel realized that making a possible remedy would kill Ellie, and whereas she was unconscious within the working room, he murdered the Firefly resistance motion to set Ellie free.
“Future Days,” the present’s season two premiere, units up that lie as the primary small domino that may cascade into the central battle of this season, and past. That “okay,” delivered splendidly by Bella Ramsey within the first season and replayed as the primary second within the premiere, leaves it as much as the viewer to determine whether or not Ellie really believed Joel. Picking up 5 years later, The Last of Us does not but give us a definitive reply.
What is clear is that Ellie is chafing beneath Joel’s overbearing and protecting nature. Now a younger grownup, Ellie is relishing the work of protecting herself and others secure. She loves sparring observe, occurring patrol, and her butterfly knife. She hates feeling like anybody is treating her like a child, and the complicated nature of her buddy Dina’s (Isabella Merced) mischievous advances—romance fits Ellie awkwardly, at the same time as she begins to entertain the concept. The two share large chemistry, preventing and flirting collectively within the present’s most extended motion sequence as they battle a brand new breed of contaminated that’s able to stalking and deceiving them.
Joel, in the meantime, is doing his greatest to be a pillar of the group. He and Ellie have arrange store in Jackson Hole, Wyoming—a populous group briefly visited final season, now thriving and approaching pre-zombie apocalypse normalcy. Joel’s previous life in development has offered him with ample work in Jackson, as he works intently along with his sister-in-law Maria (Rutina Wesley) and brother Tommy (Gabriel Luna) to satisfy the quickly rising group’s wants. Maria and Joel choose up an argument they appear to have had many instances already, about needing to steadiness welcoming refugees whereas ensuring they deal with their very own. Joel leans conservative, and Maria leads with compassion.
There’s a pleasant, lived-in really feel to this scene, though I’m unsure The Last of Us is especially eager about digging into this specific ideological argument. At the tip of the day, the questions Joel asks his nephew—what’s inside Jackson’s borders? (People) What’s outdoors? (Monsters)—appears to reply it clearly.
Joel has it much less simple in remedy—which is a factor he does now, in trade for ziploc luggage of sub-par weed. Gail (Catherine O’Hara, in a beautiful dramatic flip) has been harboring anger in direction of Joel—we study he killed her husband Eugene in a second of desperation. It’s a bit jarring to listen to about one thing so consequential that occurred totally off-screen, however Craig Mazin, who writes and directs this episode, is clearly organising a thread he intends to revisit. We already know that Eugene will seem in an upcoming episode performed by Joe Pantaliano, and that data is thrilling. Like this scene, that one is not going to have originated within the sport. Eugene is simply somebody talked about in passing in The Last of Us Part II, whereas Gail doesn’t exist in any respect.