Summary
The Last of Us Season 2 finds its footing in Episode 4, faithfully recreating scenes from the game but supplementing them with new details and angles.
The Last of Us, as a game and a TV show, is bleak to an extent that borders on parodical, like a social experiment designed to psychologically break huge swathes of people with their so-called entertainment. But it’s easy to forget that part of the reason it’s so bleak is that it’s full of great characters and small moments of beauty, hope, and connection. Season 2 had a shaky start, but here in Episode 4, “Day One” – a nod to the game’s story structuring – this juxtaposition is really apparent. The strongest scenes are quiet, lovely moments where you can forget, just for a minute, that there’s a revenge mission wrapped up in an apocalyptic civil war occurring just outside the window. And then Jeffrey Wright tortures a naked man with expensive French cookware.
Most of this episode is taken directly from the game, but a couple of bits are totally new, including the cold open, and others are slight variations on key moments, either expanded a little or moderately tweaked. It’s the first hour where I haven’t been openly worried about a particular decision, which is good news, since it implies that Season 2 is finding its feet and getting where it’s going with real confidence and awareness of the story it’s adapting. There might be a couple of questions still lingering, but even if the route has been slightly different, the destination is, I think, going to be the same.
Nutcase Jeffrey Wright Is A Fine Addition
That aforementioned cold open is a flashback designed to provide some backstory for Jeffrey Wright’s villain, Isaac Dixon, which is interesting since he’s primarily a villain in Abby’s story, and we haven’t seen Abby since she killed Joel in Episode 2. I’m not sure we’ll see her again for the remainder of the season, either.
But Isaac is important because he’s the leader of the WLF, aka the Wolves, a group that is currently in the midst of a brutal civil war with the Seraphites, aka the Scars, a crazy woodland cult who worship a long-dead prophetess. The opening scenes of “Day One” find Isaac still in the employ of FEDRA, berating his men – including a cameoing Josh Peck, for some reason – for making light of FEDRA’s intrusion on civil liberties and subsequent mockery of the same. He switches sides – the Wolves began as a resistance force fighting back against FEDRA’s totalitarianism and eventually became the very thing they sought to destroy – and throws a couple of grenades into the back of the truck, killing all his men.
None of the dialogue in this sequence really fits but Jeffrey Wright is so good in it that it’s effective all of the same, and helps to build the character of Isaac as this oddly principled but inarguably psychopathic guy who is a real threat to everyone around him, including the Seraphite hostage we cut to him torturing later. Anyone who monologues about pans while heating them up and using them to broil the flesh of captives is someone you should probably have concerns about. And we also learn a lot about the ongoing Wolves vs. Scars conflict here, since the captive makes the salient point that every day another Wolf joins the Seraphite ranks, while the same never, ever happens in reverse. It strikes a nerve because it’s true.
Jeffrey Wright in The Last of Us Season 2 | Image via WarnerMedia
Karaoke, Disembowelment, and Taking the Subway
Ellie and Dina stumble into the middle of this war without quite understanding what they’re seeing. After a brief stop at a pharmacy where Dina nabs a few pregnancy tests and then a music store where Ellie finds a guitar and plays a really rather good rendition of A-ha’s “Take On Me”, the pair wanders into a TV station and find a bunch of WLF goons suspended from the ceiling with their dangling guts swinging pendulously from sliced-open bellies. The Seraphite logo and the words “Feel Her Love” are drawn on the wall in blood.
All of this is pretty much one-to-one with the games. The guitar sequence is especially lovely since it’s a really tender moment of sincerity between two people who’re beginning to realize rapidly that they’re in love, and Isabela Merced’s damp-eyed reaction to the performance really sells the scene. Ellie’s quick deduction that the murdered group they came across in the previous episode is responsible for the disembowelling pairs really nicely with the captive Seraphite withstanding Isaac’s torture. We’re beginning to get a real sense of how this group gets down without having seen them actually do anything yet.
When the WLF arrives, Ellie and Dina are forced to escape through the subway in a frantic chase sequence that is again ripped from the games and staged remarkably well, culminating in a heroic moment of what seems, at least to Dina, like self-sacrifice – Ellie shoves her forearm in a clicker’s mouth to stop it from biting Dina. When they’re finally able to take shelter in an abandoned theatre, Ellie turns around to find Dina pointing a gun at her.
Bella Ramsey in The Last of Us Season 2 | Image via WarnerMedia
Ellie Reveals the Truth About Her Immunity
Of course Dina doesn’t shoot Ellie! But Isabela Merced once again excels here in depicting a flurry of emotions. Not only does she think that she’s going to have to euthanise her best friend, whom she’s clearly also in love with, but she’s also pregnant, and had been imagining a happy family future that seems to be eroding in real time. Ellie’s reveal that she’s immune doesn’t sound believable. And unfortunately, the only way to prove it is to have a brief nap while Dina watches over her from a safe distance.
But when Ellie wakes up still immune, Dina finally believes her, drops her own pregnancy bombshell, and then they hurriedly sleep together (just in case you missed the very subtle hints, like the rainbows painted on the walls of abandoned buildings in Seattle). This is a bit different from the game since there Ellie and Dina spend the night together in Eugene’s weed grow, but I almost prefer this version, especially in light of their subsequent pillow talk, where Dina explains the overflow of emotion, and also why she waited so long to pull the trigger on her obvious fondness for Ellie.
With this relationship properly established now, The Last of Us Season 2, Episode 4 marks a clear turning point in the series, because the rest of the story is very much about the pursuit of revenge becoming more and more untenable in light of the potentially peaceful future that Ellie and Dina have in front of them with their – and Jesse’s, technically – baby. These are the real stakes, finally established. It’s all downhill from here.
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