The Last of Us is one of the greatest story driven video games to have ever been made, and one about a lot more than just an infected, NOT ZOMBIE, apocalypse. It has recently been adapted into a fantastic HBO Max series, with the first season covering Part I. There is a fungus among us, and its name is cordyceps. It’s nasty, taking over the muscular system and brain function of the infected, controlling them for the one goal of spreading across the world. The infected are not typical zombies, they’re a hive mind connected through the cordyceps, and they are definitely not slow-moving and easy to kill. But that’s not what this story is about. The infected are just the backdrop for a love story between a father, Joel (Pedro Pascal), and his surrogate daughter, Ellie (Bella Ramsey). And in this world of Federal Disaster Response Agency (FEDRA) run Quarantine Zones (QZ), rebel Firefly groups, wastelands of pirates and cannibals, and dead cities full of infected, it’s not an easy world to survive in. You see, during the initial outbreak of the fungus, Joel lost his daughter, Sarah, and since then he’s become a smuggler, doing what he can to survive. Joel does whatever it takes to survive, and doesn’t care for the lives of others, very clearly a violent man in the games. However, this is the biggest difference between the games and the show. In the games, Joel kills, and he kills a lot. In the show, we don’t see him kill all that often, and his anger is more hidden. Initially reluctant to take on Ellie, Joel decides to keep her with him once his partner, Tess, dies outside of the Boston QZ.
As the show progresses, we follow Joel and Ellie crossing the country to find Joel’s brother, Tommy, and getting Ellie to the fireflies in California. But this is Joel’s mistake: Joel begins to care about Ellie, and he will not lose another daughter. He kills anyone who threatens him and Ellie, and kills them brutally. His love for Ellie and his need to make right Sarah’s death causes him to become a man that even his own brother is afraid of. When Joel eventually gets across the country from Boston to California with Ellie, a choice is brought to Joel. You see, Ellie is immune to the cordyceps fungus. She can’t be infected, except Joel finds out that if he leaves her with a doctor in California, Ellie will die to find a cure for cordyceps based on her immunity. Rather than potentially save the entire world, Joel proceeds to not only save Ellie, but do so by killing every single person in the hospital. Every person defending the doctor with Ellie in the operating room, both nurses with Ellie, and the doctor operating on her. Ellie wakes up asking what happened during the surgery, and Joel lies and tells her they were attacked by raiders and everyone died, but Ellie can tell something feels wrong. In the games, Joel is a constant one man army, killing hundreds of infected and dozens of people left and right to save Ellie. In the show, Joel isn’t a walking tank, he’s still a man, but he’s a father with a love for a surrogate daughter, and can and will kill everyone that tries to take her away.
The choice to cast Pedro Pascal in the role of Joel was an outstanding choice for the way they decided to portray Joel. Joel is much more reserved, much less outright angry and violent, and Pascal is fantastic at acting through his body language and head movements. Pascal most famously stars as Din Djarin in The Mandalorian, a role in which he must wear a helmet for the entirety of the show, and conveniently also has a surrogate child in Grogu, or more commonly known as “Baby Yoda.” Pascal has experience playing a character that prefers to act, or fight, over talking, and in The Last of Us, it makes Joel much more intimidating without needing to be constantly violent and angry. The presence Pascal has in a scene has its own power, one that can’t be matched by anyone else on screen. Well, that is until Bella Ramsey enters the scene as Ellie. Ramsey provides a contrast to Pascal’s Joel, as Ellie prefers to talk a lot. Ellie is constantly trying to get Joel to talk to her, by sharing puns from her book or just asking Joel about his life. So, when we finally see her make Joel open up to her later in the first season, it shows Joel is starting to care. In the same vein, when we see Ellie become quiet we can tell something has really gone wrong or really affected her. Joel and Ellie are very much opposites of each other, but the chemistry between Pascal and Ramsey on screen create two characters that the audience can really care about and relate to.
Season one of The Last of Us on HBO Max was fantastic, making Joel’s actions much less ruthless and much more protective, and the small ways they continue to change the show through the multiple coming seasons. Fans of the part II game know where Joel’s actions and lies to Ellie lead them and their relationship, but the show has already shown it’s not afraid to change major story elements from the game, so the next seasons based on part II will continue to grow the love story at the center of it, and more specifically, how a person can do anything for their love, but that doesn’t mean what they do is good.
