What’s next with “The Last of Us”? – Rolling Stone

This post contains spoilers as a result of The Last of Usthat will be streamed on WoW this week.

Ellie and Joel. Joel and Ellie. That was the duo that made the first season of “The Last of Us” so special. The combination of these two broken souls – she needs a father figure, he needs a replacement daughter, both are afraid to admit this fact – paired with the spectacular representations of Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascalthe HBO series lifted beyond the usual clichés of a post-apocalyptic survival story.

This did not exactly make the series a beacon of hope. Finally, the first season ended with the fact that Joel massacred a hospital full of people who tried to synthesize a remedy for the plague that had infected most of humanity. Just because he couldn’t bear that Ellie should die. But their connection and the interaction between the two actors were great to make the series popular with humans who normally have no patience for zombies (or zombie -like creatures) that run amok in a destroyed world. As long as Ellie and Joel were there, at least part of it seemed to be okay.

And now?

The episode of last night ended in a terrible way. Abby (Kaitlyn Dever), whose father, a doctor who was the first person who had killed Joel in the last episode of the first season, felt Joel with the help of her militia friends. And brutally hit him with a golf club. When Ellie then appeared to save him, Abby Joel stabbed her throat with the slope’s shaft she had broken on his body.

It is a development of action that played the game “The Last of Us Part II” and have been waiting for the last few years when, how or whether the TV series would handle it. In good and bad. The showrunner Neil Druckmann (who developed the game) and Craig Mazin could have delayed this with seven episodes until much later in this season. Maybe by spending more time in the long break between the seasons. Or just more dealt with life in Jackson and the various threats outside the isolated city that Abby is not exposed.

Or Mazin, the experienced screenwriter, who was not involved in the game and is therefore not so much attached to it, could have seen how well Pascal and Ramsey worked together in the first season. And how much the audience reacted to them. He could have tried to convince Druckmann to steer the series in a different direction.

Joel’s death – do the spectators cut off?

Instead, they followed the template and left Joel’s death at the same place in this season as in the game. However, the attack of a horde of more infected on Jackson is an invention of the series. No delay, no denial. Only cold, cruel death.

And at least some non-gamers among the spectators say that Joel’s death was the last episode of “The Last of Us”.

It will take a while before we see whether this turn has an impact on the swelling rates of the series. Be it on HBO or Max (or, in Germany, on WoW). The Last of Us Part II Has sold worse so far than the original game. But it has only been available for five years, while the original was released in 2013. Many gamers were upset about this development. Some because they thought that the core of the game was Joel’s relationship with Ellie. Others because they did not find it good that the heterosexual male hero was killed while the queer lived on female antihero.

Threats to murder against Laura Bailey

Guess which group was responsible for covering Laura Bailey, who played Abby in the game, with threats to murder. On Sunday evening, Pedro Pascal tried to keep Kaitlyn Dever from a similar fate by publishing this loving contribution on his Instagram account:

From an anecdotal point of view, my social media mention have been mainly a mixture of two reactions since last night. 1) Gamer who were impressed that the series not only adhered to it, but also did not delay to maximize the broadcast time for Pedro Pascal. 2) Non-gamers who are either not sure whether they want to continue looking or have said they are ready. Some watched mainly because of this relationship. Although they are generally not particularly enthusiastic about the genre. Others said that the world was currently so bleak that it cannot cope with Joel’s loss – and his sadistic death (even if the majority of the torture was not shown). And currently no such fiction would like it.

There is a lot of excellent material in the pipeline

I saw the entire season. And In my review I did my best to rewrite Joel’s death while talking about my own relative dissatisfaction with what the series has become without him. There is a lot of excellent material in the pipeline. Bella Ramsey is an excellent actress. Ellie’s relationships with figures such as Dina (Isabela Merced), Tommy (Gabriel Luna) and Jesse (Young Mazino) are captivating in different ways. Especially when she is with Dina. Still, they are not Joel. And if there are later flashbacks with Joel, the chemistry between Ramsey and Pascal puts all other relationships in the shade. However, since this season covers only half of the history of the second game, I can only assess how well the series works at short notice without Joel. And not whether his failure ultimately pays off.

This is also an unusual situation in that it rarely occurs that a series writes its main or co-co-actor from the plot so early. Especially from free pieces. David Caruso left Nypd Blue After the first season to follow a film career that never came about. The series got along well without him. Partly because his replacement was so good Jimmy Smits. But above all because Caruso had already been replaced by his co-star Dennis Franz in the hearts of fans.

game of Thrones Ned did not die very late in the first season. Even earlier than Joel. Which also corresponded to the original. But although Sean Bean was the greatest star of the cast at that time

And although NED was our original main character, the plot was so far advanced at the time when he lost his head that his death was not as fundamental to the series as the death of a half of the two main characters, around which it was mainly.

Pascal is currently the most famous got

Alumnus, after playing a figure that was introduced and killed in the same season like Ned.

A life without Joel? In general, successful series remain successful even if a main or secondary actor has to be replaced. Be it because the actor wanted to go. Or because the creative team decided this. Unless the series has been running so many years that a certain decline in spectators is inevitable anyway. (See “The Office” without Steve Carell or “Files X” without David Duchovny.)Perhaps the most obvious example of the death of a figure that triggered a mass exodus of the fans was “The Oc”, whose number of spectators collapsed after the producers (in a decision that

they later regretted