This shocking death really hurts – Rolling Stone

This post contains spoilers as the result of “The Last of Us” this week, which can now be seen on WoW.

Hurt people violate other people.

It is a vicious circle. Similar to the law of preservation of the mass, that matter can neither be created nor destroyed, pain is tilted as soon as it exists in the world, to stay and be passed on by one victim to the next.

Joel’s daughter Sarah dies. Joel internalizes this pain for the next 20 years. He refuses to build relationships with other people because he could not survive such a loss a second time. Then another girl is entrusted to him. She is not Sarah, but her playfulness and openness have something that he cannot escape despite all efforts. Joel soon begins to love her as much as for the second chance that Ellie gives him, as for the sweet, lovable child she is. He seems to have overcome the pain. He lives again.

Joel reacted to Sarah’s loss by completely closed his heart for two decades

And then he discovers that he has to let another daughter die to save the world. Joel cannot accept that. He couldn’t save Sarah from a stray ball, but he will do everything to protect Ellie. Even if that means killing many people who just want to help. Even if that means to condemn the whole world.

Hurt people violate other people. Because Joel could not bear it to let another daughter die, the father of another girl died. Abby hates Joel for murdering so many Fireflies and having destroyed any hope of a cure against Cordyceps, but above all she hates him because the doctor who tried to synthesize the cure was her father. Joel reacted to Sarah’s loss by completely closed his heart for two decades. Abby reacts to the loss of her father by transforming her heart into a glowing oven that fuels her revenge, from which she knows she will get her one day.

A revenge that you get today, here, in this shocking, gastric -turning, apparently unthinkable episode. Joel dies because Abby died because Sarah died because the world died. Hurt people violate other people.

And “The Last of Us“It won’t be the same. It can no longer be. Because Joel is dead.

Logan Roy, Wild Bill Hickok in “Deadwood”, Ralphie Ciffaretto in “The Sopranos” and of course Ned Stark

This episode, written by Craig Mazin, was staged by Mark Mylod, who in recent years as chief director of “”Succession“Was active and already experience behind the camera for one Television sequence Has in which a death could be seen that nobody saw – at least not at this specific moment. HBO has a long history of character deaths that are shocking both because of their time and the fact that they happened: Logan Roy, Wild Bill Hickok in “Deadwood”, Ralphie Ciffaretto in “The Sopranos” and of course Ned, who has not even reached the end of the first season of “Game of Thrones”. And now Joel.

In some cases, as in this, the time comes from the template: Ned lost his head in the first book of “A Song of Ice and Fire”, the real Wild Bill was only in Deadwood a few days before he was shot from behind, and Joel dies relatively early in “The Last of Us Part II”. Mazin and Neil Druckmann could have deviated from the game. You could have stretched the plot in such a way that Joel survived most or even the entire season and that Abby’s brutal torture and murder only took place in the final. Could have decided that the chemistry between Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey It is so valuable for the series that you discard the game’s script and tell a different story. You could have done a lot.

And we will see what becomes “The Last of Us” when it comes to the relationship between Ellie and Joel

Instead, they followed the plan. Joel killed Abby’s father, so followed Abby Joel and killed him. Hurt people violate other people. At the beginning of the episode, Ellie recognizes the gap between her and her replacement father, but emphasizes: “I am still me, he is still Joel, and nothing will change that, never.” But now something very important has changed. Soon we will see how this particularly injured person reacts to the fact that she has to see how her favorite person is murdered in front of her eyes. And we will see what “The Last of Us” becomes when it comes to the relationship between Ellie and Joel.

But we can think about this after we have spent the next week to digest this devastating turn in the plot and to think about how she and everything else developed.

Version of the battle for Helms Klamm

It is a memorable hour television, which, however, also tries to mislead the viewer on a large scale by using a large part of the broadcast time to show Jackson how it is besieged by a stampede from hundreds of infected. This story and the over Abby are connected in different ways, not least by the fact that Abby accidentally triggers the Stampede when it slips, falls down a cliff and disturbs the frozen sleep of the infected horde. But for a while you almost have the feeling that Mazin, Mylod and Co. try to distract the audience from the possibility that Joel could die, soon by staging their own version of the battle for Helm’s gorge – or, if you like, in view of the fact that Mylod’s half -dozen episodes of “Game of Thrones” “

has turned her version of the attack of the night king on winter fur.

However, there was no action to this extent. We know that this series can do great action like that

The rampage of the infected

At the end of the two-part Kansas City episode of the last season-in which, as in this, one of these huge mushroom monsters called Bloater was seen. But “Last of Us” as a TV series sometimes does a fighting service when she tries too much to treat sequences such as levels of a video game. Their greatest strength lies in their characters how they interact and the terrible decisions that they are sometimes forced. There are a few people like Tommy and Maria who are close to the heart of Jackson’s walls during the attack, but everything and everyone who really matters is in the area. The episode begins with another flashback from Abby It is exciting to see on a certain level how Tommy’s well -trained troops find different ways to ward off the horde of fire bombs

Up to fighting dogs, but in the end these are usually only empty thrills – or worse, like Poochie, who wants to distract us all, too

The fireworks factory

To get where Abby has her showdown with Joel.

However, it does not seem to be the best idea to set fire – attackers who are biologically programmed to ignore pain and continue to fight until they are dead if your own defense mainly consists of wood, right? The episode begins with a further flashback from Abby, or rather a dream of seeing several abbys in the hospital in Joels AmoFlauf. One wants to go in and see her father’s body. One has already seen her and tried in vain to warn the other. She knows what it looks like and what it will do to her, but she cannot stop the other Abby from going in and seeing a picture that will make her a determined avenger. This is an interesting choice when you consider how much the occupation of Kaitlyn Dever is reminiscent of Bella Ramsey as an Ellie. Later we learn that Abby 19 was when Joel killed her father – just as old as Ellie now. Mirror images from Abby, although Abby is already a reflection of Ellie.

“Which life?

It is clear that all former Fireflies – who are now working with a militia in Seattle, a city that, according to Abby, does not want to see Joel dead, but Abby wants to

really

See dead. Like her prey on that terrible day in Salt Lake City, she doesn’t even seem to worry about injuring or even killing other people to achieve her goal. After triggering the mass panic, the situation is too chaotic and scary to think about the consequences of her actions.

But if she had had a moment to breathe, she probably would have thought that it was okay because it was not hidden by anyone from Jackson to intercept her and gave her luck that Joel saved her. And when an unbeliever Joel indicates that she attacks him after saving her life, she growls: “What life?” And begins to brutally beat him with a golf club.